About 10.30pm, we were about to go to bed and noticed Zorro didn't seem quite right - he was standing in a real hang-dog way and holding his tail upright and generally looking uncomfortable. About an hour earlier Ali had been grooming him and he'd seemed fine.
I ran my hands over him and realised as I got to his ribs that his abdomen was hugely swollen. He normally has a really petite little waist but his belly was sticking out further than his ribs, it was the size of a football...
The only thing we could think was that he must've eaten something in the garden that the cat had brought home (she's a notorious thief, brings back various disgusting offerings from bins and people's kitchens
). Anyway I of course started panicking that he had bloat (I know it's not common in cockers but nevertheless, he really was enormous). He kept just lying down looking really listless and was breathing very rapidly and you could feel his heart going ten to the dozen (gums were fine though but even so...). So we rang the emergency vet who said it might be bloat and it was best to err on the side of caution and bring him in, as he'd not been sick, no wind etc etc. Just as we were firming up where to go, he was sick and brought all his dinner back up, so the vet said that was good as it hopefully meant it wasn't bloat (as with bloat they can't get anything in or out of their stomach). So we had to watch him for half an hour and call back with an update.
Half an hour later, he was still really uncomfortable, whining slightly with the pain
and although his belly had gone down a tiny bit it was still pretty huge. The vet said that at least it was no bigger so to keep watching him and call back if it didn't improve.
Eventually he asked to go out, but promptly just snuggled into a little shrub thing in the garden (walking seemed pretty bad for him). I got him moving around to try and encourage something to happen and he was then sick again. The vet had said if he just brought up saliva that was a bad thing - it was dark (midnight by now) so I couldn't see if he'd brought anything up. He was trying to sniff around whatever it was and getting grumbly with Bella for having a look, so I picked him up under one arm, grumbling away and with vomit dripping off his ears, and plonked him inside. He then ran upstairs and trailed his lovely ears all over the bed (the onlly negative thing to those Ringo ears
) so while I was outside in my bathrobe inspecting the vomit with a torch, Ali was changing the bed.
Anyway he had brought up absolutely TONS. God knows what it was, there were white floppy bits, chunks of meat and god knows what else and it absolutely stank - he has 100g of mince for dinner and there must've been at least 3 times that amount.
Thankfully that made his belly shrink considerably and he was much more comfortable, but breathing very rapidly and still not a happy boy. We kept him upstairs with us to keep an eye on him, and 3 lots of vomiting later (mostly just bile but we had the ears in it every time and did two linen changes on the bed!) he finally settled down to sleep and his belly was about half the size it had been. Phew.
Anyway this morning he woke up, not his usual bouncy self but obviously much better, and gave us both really gentle little kisses (a bit yukky as he stank having thrown up all that bile!
) but it was really like he was thanking us for having taken care of him. Poor little man.
He had a gentle little breakfast and seemed fine when we left this morning and the dog walkers are going easy on him & keeping an eye on him just to make sure.
Sometimes it's so much like having a baby isn't it!
