Day 115 / 81 To Go: Pulling an all-nighter

Posted by: Cris

This post will have to be short and without pictures, having been pre-empted by the events of the last 2 hours. About 2 hours ago, I heard the dogs down messing in the koi pond and yelled at them to get out. Theres only about 2 inches of water in there, just what filled back up after the rain last night. A few minutes later they were in there again so I headed down the stairs to yell at them in person. I made it down to the middle floor when I heard one of the dogs start screaming in serious serious pain. I sprinted down the of the way and burst into the yard. Sherpa was flailing around out of control in the koi pond and my head lamp quickly flashed into the corner of the pond to find a little Cane frog sitting there - Sherpa was in a full-on neurologic attack and I dragged her out of the pond and up to the porch where she collapsed but kept screaming and screaming to the point all the neighbors were out on their porch to see what was happening. Within a few minutes, she went into a bit of a daze and just lay there panting, eyes glazed and I thought she was going to stop breathing and die right there in my arms. I was basically just waiting for it to happen. The whole scene was just extremely awful.

We called an emergency vet line along with what we could find on the internet. The vet suggested we bring her to the emergency clinic for $400 and they weren't really going to do anything but monitor her and give her an IV.

Long story short, after about 45 minutes of her laying there basically unresponsive but still breathing and with a normal pulse, I carried her upstairs to my bedroom and now, 2 hours later she is showing signs of life. She initially started by reacting when I left the room - lifting her head to see where I was going. Now she is up and walking around the room, still clearly in a bit of a daze and tired and her back legs are a bit uncoordinated but she is up, drinking a bit of water and hopefully we are out of the woods. But, I'm sure I'm going to be up all night keeping an eye.

Apparently, Cane frogs are all over Hawaii and kill 30 dogs per year. Time to fill in the koi pond with gravel and build that deck Tim and I were talking about right on top of it.

Hopefully, next week is better than a blown fuel pump and my pack leader almost dying.