Pepper VS Wasp

Monday, October 16th, 2006 at 8:17 am

Last Thursday after I walked and played with Pepper in the morning, Pepper was a bit muddy so I decided to wash his paws. I hung him outside to wait for me to get buckets of water. On the way to the house I saw one wasp flew pass me but I did not think of anything. I washed Pepper, dried him and put him into his crate to sleep as usual. At lunch time he got up and whined when I had my lunch which I thought it was a greedy whine, I told him to stop and go back to sleep which he did. About 2:30 pm, I took him out to pee he tried to scratch his face on his way to his toilet. Once he turned his face to look at me I saw a bit lump on his right eye. I was frightened. I thought it must be that wasp I saw this morning. I called HG and told him. I was crying :(( because I felt so guilty that I did not do anything to protect Pepper. HG called the vet and she said we can give him antihistamine tablets to stop the swollen. HG stopped at the pharmacy on the way home. He left the office a bit early because he thought I was panic which I was a little bit. After we gave him the medicine, he tried to scratch the left eye which we tried to tell him that it was the wrong side but we were wrong. Because it was not only one stung he got from that wasp. It was another two on the left eye which was just starting to swell. He seemed to be normal apart from swollen eyes. He did not try to scratch his eyes as much. We thought it might be ok.

At night when we went to bed, we gave him more medicine. After about 5 minutes, he threw up. The first time was not too bad, it was more like his food and not too wet. I cleaned up and after I put things away he started the second one in his crate. This time was quite liquid. He threw up about 4 times upstairs and his crate was so smelly even him would not want to stay in. We decided to bring him downstairs to the other crate and I decided to stay with him. He threw up about 3 times downstairs which at the end it was yellow liquid and his mouth was foaming. At one point he lied down as he was so exhausted. We tried to call him to move to the mattress but he did not move. We had to shake him to wake him up. At that moment, he scared us. I was working downstairs to keep myself awake and Pepper was lying on the mattress next to my desk. He was ok until the morning. When HG got up and got ready to work. HG took him for his business in the morning but he did not do anything but peed. He went to his crate upstairs to sleep which gave me about 2.5 hours sleep before I had to get up. At first we planned to go to spend the weekend in Alva with HG’s parents. His dad would come to get me and Pepper and HG would go from work and meet us there. HG tried to call his dad to tell him about the situation but his dad left the house already. So we decided to go and thought it might be good because I could get some more sleep during the day and dad could look after Pepper while I was sleeping. Pepper was so lively and was so good all the way from our house to Alva. His eyes were not too bad. When we were in Alva I cooked some rice with scrambled eggs for him. I gave him very little and he ate them all. I tried not to give him a little of water very so often, so he would not get dehydrated. He was fine and did #2 quite a lot when he went out for a walk with dad.

Saturday morning, I heard thud, thud sound. I knew it was the sound of pepper’s tail hit something but it was usual to hear it in the morning. Then I saw our bedroom’s door was wide open. Pepper went to mum and dad’ bedroom. He wagged his tail again their bed. I told HG and he went to get Pepper back to our room. While HG was getting dressed, Pepper was about to throw up. HG managed to make him did most of it on the tray. I cleaned up the mess on the wall and the tray after HG took Pepper out. Since his sick were only yellow foamy liquid, we thought it might be about the acid in his stomach which meant he was hungry. It was because we could not give him a lot of food the day before but what I should have done was giving him a handful of his kibbles just before he went to bed. So we gave him just kibbles, half a cup and waited for 10 minutes and gave him more.

During the day he seemed to be quite hot. We thought he might have fever because his body was a bit hot and he drooled all the time. So we gave him more antihistamine tablet which seemed to help.

Sunday morning he seemed back to himself, lively and playful. On the way home we stopped at pet shop and bought him some toys and treats.