A Note From Joey and Maggie: Poop Watch 2009

The Ravenous Dachshund

How many days does it take for a Dachshund to pass a small foreign object?  In the case of your Long and Short of it All hostess 'Maggie,' it takes 4 days!
See, last week there was a typical Friday night, and we were waiting anxiously for Dad to come home from work.  We miss Dad when he's gone, but what's really exciting is that we know when he comes home, we get our evening meal.  Ahh, wonderful, glorious food.  Raw meat - good for the soul - like our ancestors the wolves eat. 
We badgered him as soon as he walked in the door for the sustinence which makes us whole.  Joey usually gets so excited that he can't stand it; he has to go to the end of the hall at the back of the house and peer around the corner while Dad is preparing the food - just waiting for the call to COME AND GET IT!  Maggie though, she wanders around Dad's legs when he's preparing that meal, you never know when something might drop!  And drop it did.
Dad grabbed a "chub" out of the freezer - a 1 pound package of raw meat and bone which is packaged in plastic and has metal clips or staples on the ends - kind of like what you might find around breakfast sausage for humans.
Dad was working up a sweat slicing away at that metal clip around the frozen meat so that he could thaw it in the microwave when suddenly - YES!  The metal clip fell on the floor.  He made a mad dash for the potentially dangerous foreign object, but he was WAY TOO SLOW.  Maggie had gobbled it down, complete with about an inch of gathered plastic stapled through it.
Uh Oh.  Why was Dad giving Maggie this look?  That look of horror, bewilderment, and a little bit of anger on his face, especially when he knows that what just happened was nobody's fault but his own?  It's certainly not Maggie's fault. 
The next 4 days were just heaven.  We got all these extra treats so that Maggie would pass that staple and plastic.  We got pumpkin, bananas, blueberries - every few hours to provide some fiber for Miss Maggie's digestive tract.  We got lots and lots of fish oil and essential oils - borage oil, flaxseed oil, safflower oil - let's grease things up a bit.
It was entertaining to watch Dad pick up Maggie's poop and examine it with such zeal - breaking it apart, feeling it through the plastic poop bag, studying it under a light.  We thought he was going a bit mad honestly.  This went on for days, and it certainly must have seemed like an eternitiy to him.  When was that metal clip and plastic finally going to make its appearance?  On Christmas Day when Maggie is so sick that it hasn't yet passed, and we end up at the emergency vets on Christmas morning?
Finally, on Tuesday evening, Dad was at his wits end.  He wasn't studying Maggie's droppings with such intentment anymore. Did he miss the staple - had it passed?  Surely not.  Then, suddenly - there it was - like finding the holy grail, that staple and plastic had finally passed, and it was all in one piece laying in the lightly snow-covered grass. 
We hadn't seen Dad so relieved in the longest time.  This aura of calm settled over him, knowing that things were going to be all right, and that Maggie wasn't going to end up in the ER. 
Honestly though, we can't wait for Dad to mess up again and drop another metal clip.  There's nothing like full bellies for days on end - and it was priceless to watch him squirm.