I forgot to report about how I nearly killed poor Reagan. So I will now.

We had the sprinkler on because here in Houston it's been approximately a thousand degrees for the past few weeks and we've had approximately negative 10 inches rain. We usually let the dogs play in it while water. Reagan and Didi like to dance in the water and bite at the nozzles.

So we sat outside for about 30 minutes and then it was dinner time. We decided to leave the dogs outside to keep playing while we had dinner. Then we went outside again. I saw a splat of water on the porch. I was like, oh, someone drank too much water and puked it up. Rinsed it away. No problem.

Then Reagan came by and puked again. Gave him some pettings, rinsed the porch again.

Then he puked again. And again. And then again. Eventually he went and laid in the corner, retching occasionally until he brought up a bunch of frothy bile. That's when my mom and I gave him a thorough looking over, which he was uncharacteristically docile for. He was really pale and panting hard and drooling gobs. Mom posited that he might have eaten something odd while we were in and I countered with the possibility of bloat from drinking tons of water and running around like a mad dog. Since either way he needed to see a vet, we packed him in the car for a harrowing drive to the ER vet. Mom drove and I sat in the back with puppy, fanning him while he drooled all over and belched pathetically.

I must say I've never seen a dog look so sick. He had that far away look that I've only seen in animals in labor, he wouldn't respond to words or pettings. I didn't know that a dog could look pale, but he managed.

At the vet the receptionist said, "What a pretty dog!" which made me look at her bizarre because his chest was drenched in drool and vomit chunks and I was holding him because he refused to get up, his ears were flopping around like he couldn't be fussed with controlling them and he wouldn't open his eyes. I wonder what most dogs look like when they go there?

While we were signing in someone ran out of the ER crying and the receptionist called out "Do you want your cat back!?". The way she said it made it pretty obvious that the cat in question had downgraded from animate to inanimate. That bodes well, doesn't it?(This part is, unfortunately, not a joke. Someone's pet really did die while we were there and the receptionist really did respond in this way, leading me to believe that Animal ERs and Human ERs have similar curves away from basic compassion as the need to cope well with tragedy exceeds the desire to act like a human-freaking-being.)

Then the most frusterating part. Having the parade of people coming in to examine the dog asking the same thing about your dog. "What's wrong with him?"

The main reason this is frusterating is because if you know your dog, you know what's wrong but it's not easy to put into words. Sure you can say lethargy, drooling, vomitting, etc, but it doesn't evince the urgency you feel when a being that is familiar to you is in distress. It was everything I could do not to flap my arm toward the dog and say "LOOK AT HIM!" Because to me, his face and his body language evinced extreme distress. To others it evinced a sleepy and drooly dog.

X-rays and 300$ later, it turns out both me and mom were wrong. His problem was extreme nausea and pain caused by swallowing a ton of air and water. During his X-ray he offloaded some watery poo and some foul gas in the back, which is awesome, which cost me an extra 10 dollars in hazardous waste disposal which is not awesome.(<- this is a joke! 15$ was the real fee and i assume it was for shots and i don't know.. glove fees. Whatever they spend their disposal change on!)

He got some awesome nausea medications and pictures of his insides and orders to take it easy and walk gently and expect mucho farts.

He has survived! He farted all night though. YUCK!