Tozer Emergency

Tuesday morning I was due to run some errands. From time to time, the folks down at Bongolo Hospital have a need for this or that. I've been shopping for a variety of items lately- batteries, tire tubes, copper tubing, anti-termite wood treatment, spark plugs, pulleys, and more. Along the way, I'm learning a lot about Libreville.

However, Tuesday morning, I just was not feeling like it was the day to run errands. Hmm... laziness? Surely not. Well then? I couldn't quite put my finger on what it was, but I decided I should do a quick check of email and then resume a big project we have going on to clean out and rearrange a large storage closet at the guest house.

As I was walking down the driveway to our residence, I noticed that Tozer, our Rotweiler-Doberman-German Shepherd puppy, was following me but walking in a zig-zag fashion. As I got to the front door, I saw where he had apparently had diahrea or had thrown up. It was a strange color. That's when I saw that our lower storage closet door was open and that a baggy of small purple granular stuff had been bitten into and was now on the ground. OH NO!

I took a closer look at Tozer, saw that he was salivating excessively and look very confused. I yelled to Alace that we should get to the vet quickly. About 20 minutes later we were at the vet's, only to find our that she had been called away. Her assistant was very nice and gave an initial shot of something. Soon, the doctor arrived, she put in a doggy IV and Tozer was given 3 more shots! WOW! During this time, Tozer had another round of diahrea on the exam table, which the assistants quickly cleaned up. We were very concerned, of course.

They put one of those plastic guard things around his neck to keep him from messing with the I.V. and were told that it would be best for him to spend the day there for observation. We were sad to leave him, but knew it was for the best. Before we left, we sensed that he was turning the corner a little.

We returned at 5:30pm and Tozer was doing great. However, the doctor requested that he spend the night just to be sure. So, the next morning we were there to pick him up. He was so happy to see us. Sam's face was licked clean of any and all things!

I took some photos with my cell phone (above). We showed them to some of our African friends. They were very surprised to see a DOG receiving such high level of care. As you can guess, they don't see many people getting that kind of attention from a doctor.

We are thankful that Tozer is ok. We are thankful that I was around, with our only car, to respond quickly to the emergency. In the end, we think it was a bag of purple dye that caused the problems.

So, Tozer is becoming a very important part of the family! Our staff here really loves him to. Our night guard just remarked this evening that Tozer is starting to hang out with him through the night.