So yesterday afternoon I took Ruby to a vet in town who keeps 7-day-a-week hours -- not an "emergency" vet of the sort who charges $200 for you to walk in the door, but a regular veterinary practice. They have a bunch of vets and operate a kind of veterinary factory, but they at least are vets.

She still had diarrhea, and yesterday (Sunday, naturally) she barfed up all the food I gave her. The food was bland diet: chicken and rice.

After we waited two hours to be seen, during which Ruby played with a six-year-old child until everyone but the child was blue in the face, this vet shows up. I explain about the UTI and the switch from the Royal Canin S/O to the ultra-premium canned food ("ultra-premium" per Dog Food Advisor) and the discovery that she wasn't being fed enough and the several days of galloping diarrhea and the flatulence and the fact that she woofed the food she'd had yesterday. What I expected was for her to administer an antibiotic and give her an anti-emetic. What I got was something amazing.

"I don't think she has parvo," says this woman...and then she goes on about how she proposes to treat the dog for parvo. She claims the pup is dehydrated (more about which below), and she comes up with a printout of tests and worming and on and on, adding up to $266...just for starters!

I don't even think about this: I say "I don't have that kind of money, and besides, I've got a doctor telling me she thinks I have cancer, and this is more than I can deal with." I walked out, with them grabbing at my shirt-tails (almost literally!) trying to drag me back.

Now, lest you think I'm a monster, let me explain the reasons I do NOT believe this dog has parvo:

a) Said vet told me the dog is dehydrated and needs IV fluids.

Don't think so. There's NO "tenting" of the skin and no paleness or tackiness of the gums. She didn't even look at the dog's gums, come to think of it.

b) The dog has no fever.

c) The dog has no abdominal pain.

d) The dog has had all her shots, right on schedule.

e) There's no blood in the dog's stool. Her puddles are not yellow and not black; they're ordinary dog-poop brown

The breeder, with whom I spoke yesterday evening, said if she has parvo, that would appear in a later stage. But if she does have parvo, she's had it for three days or four and so IS in a later stage.

f) In parvo, the odor of the feces is caused by the partially digested blood content; it's said to smell  like something that's died, which is not the case here. It's true her diarrhea, like all diarrhea, stinks enough to knock you unconscious. But SO DOES HER BARF…and the smell is the same.The barf, obviously, would not smell the same because something that bounces out fairly quickly, virtually undigested, is not coming from the intestine.

g) The dog has no fever. Dogs can have parvo without a fever, but after three days, one would expect otherwise.

h) The dog has been charging around like a rocket this morning with Cassie. Supposedly the FIRST sign of parvo is lethargy. Except for the fact that she crapped out like a rock after her interminable adventures at the vet's office, she has shown nothing that could be described as lethargy. 

i) The second sign of parvo is supposed to be loss of appetite. If you put food in front of this dog, she will eat it. But then, she IS a corgi. Corgis will eat anything at any time, even if they are at Death's door.

j) The breeder said she's had several dogs, including an entire litter of Boston terriers, get parvo. She said that when a puppy gets parvo, the whole process is very fast and the dog is likely to die quickly. This dog is nowhere near dead. Yet.

k) Worming the dog on top of treating it for parvo is clear and present ridiculous. The dog has already been wormed, and besides, if the dog has parvo, we've got bigger fish to fry.

l) As I was describing this misadventure to my son, with whom I also spoke last night, he was silently counting up the number of times I've changed her dog food in the past eight or ten days: five changes.

Now, you know and I know what happens when you change a dog's food even once. It's amazing she didn't get the wobbles the first time, when I switched from the urinary prescription diet to Castor & Pollux. Then when I went over to PetSmart in search of premium canned dog foods at less than Whole Foods prices, the C&P I found was a) also being sold at WF prices and b) something altogether different from what WF was selling, and then I also bought some Wellness (highly rated at Dog Food Advisor), and THEN I switched her to a bland diet (chicken & rice). So, effectively she ended up  being presented with three or four different dog foods in just a few days.

m) The breeder also said she would suspect the dog food switches more than parvo. In the first place, the dog has had all its shots, on time, which she thought should push the possibility of parvo to the bottom of the list, and in the second place it's not parvo season. In addition, it is 110 degrees out there! The pavement is too hot for the dogs to walk on it, and so they haven't been outside in so long their claws are getting overgrown from disuse! When exactly was she supposed to be exposed to this parvo? While she was walking from my office to my bedroom? Or while sniffing her way up the hall from the bedroom to the kitchen?

My son said that when he put Charley on the bland diet, it caused the dawg's intestines to "explode," quoth he…"all over my house!" So there's reason to believe switching to bland diet could be just as stressful as switching to commercial dog foods, if the dog's innards are already irritated enough. He also said it took Charley 5 days to get over the projectile diarrhea and about three weeks to fully recover. 

Yesterday evening I got my regular vet's answering service on the phone. They said his office opens at 8 a.m. That will just give me time to call them before I have to jet off to class. I won't be back till noon, but maybe I can get in to see him tomorrow afternoon.

But between you and me, I don't think we're looking at parvo here. We're looking at an opportunity to fleece the customer.

Right now, it's 6 a.m., the puppy is still alive. After harrying Cassie over the ball and climbing all over me trying to figure out what on earth I was doing on the toilet, she's stolen a sandal and is out in the hall banging it around. That is not the sound of a dog who's knocking on Death's Door.

Just once, just ONCE, wouldn't it be nice if the crazy-making little crises would occur one…at…a…time?