Hauling an ailing pet off the the veterinarian is no different than visiting the doctor when need be. And nor is making a trip to the local 24-hour emergency veterinarian centre any different than that urgent trip to the emergency room of a local hospital. There are others there whose pets are in distress for one reason or another, their health impaired, due to injury or a medical condition of a chronic variety, or some nasty virus or bacterial culture that has taken advantage of a vulnerability.

It is not a pleasant way to spend a day, or a night, as the case may be, since in either case, rushing off to emergency does mean a whole lot of hours spent waiting, patiently or otherwise, to be seen by the magician that will make everything right.

In our instance, being there, or even considering going there brought back painful memories of rushing our miniature poodle Button there as she approached her 20th year, after she had experienced a horrible seizure, two and a half years ago. The memory of that dreadful night still resonates and always will; we took her there, and returned home without her.

Riley has experienced bouts of diarrhoea before, now and again, but hasn't had such an episode for years. And then, suddenly, for no apparent reason, it happened again four days ago. Only quite a bit worse than we've been accustomed to. We responded in the usual way by changing his diet to a rice-and-boiled-ground-beef bowl (only this time I thought it might be more palatable to him if I substituted lean ground turkey), and sprinkled over it FortiFlora obtained from his veterinarian, to amend the problem.

And it seemed to work, for a day, his urgencies becoming less frequent and his stools tightening up.
And then, a complete reversal, the condition returning with a vengeance. Which would make the fourth night in a row when every hour-and-a-half or two hours he would ask to go out to relieve himself. Which meant, of course, getting dressed to venture out into the minus-14 degree snowy backyard with him time and again, and a whole lot of interrupted sleep.

And this morning, I decided that instead of the steamed rice and ground turkey alternative I'd prepared that he was turning his nose up at, I'd do the old tried-and-true rice and ground beef, and that was refused by him, so he didn't take in the FortiFlora I'd sprinkled over it. It takes a lot for that little fellow to refuse to eat, and we found that really concerning. All the more so when he threw up, after having had far more water than he generally does, because he needed to rehydrate himself.

So off we went with him, and the veterinarian who eventually examined him, when our turn came up, felt that on the surface nothing appeared to be wrong, and she prescribed an anti-inflammatory for him, and recommended we try wet canned dog food to see if that might spur his appetite until he returns to his normal little self.