Every night when we go up to bed the girls are given their bedtime snacks.  They expect them and, when we’re late getting upstairs, they let us know!  One evening last September the girls, my husband and I all headed up to bed armed with a piece of chicken J-E-R-K-Y (I have to spell it because this is one of those words that they know) for each of the girls.  My husband gave them their snacks and we got started on our normal bedtime routines.  I stepped out of the room to place something in my office and when I came back Gabby was going nuts.  She was pawing at her face and gagging and rolling and it was blatantly obvious that there was a problem.  We assumed that she had a piece of jerky stuck in her throat and we proceeded to stick our fingers down her throat to try and dislodge the jerky.  It didn’t work.

Gabby kept rolling and pawing and choking and gagging; she was struggling and we couldn’t hep her.  After numerous attempts to dislodge the piece of jerky that we thought was in her throat we hopped in the car to rush to the nearest emergency veterinary facility.  We were preparing for a 20-30 minute car ride and we were worried that would be too long.  My husband held her while I drove and Gabby kept pawing and choking and gagging.  We whispered to her, we spoke to her, we sang to her and we stroked her, but she continued to thrash around. 

About halfway into our drive to the emergency vet my husband heard something crack and Gabby stopped struggling.  She was breathing; she was alert; she was licking; she was content and no longer in distress.  We pulled over to evaluate the situation and after she happily wagged her tail when we sang to her we knew that she was okay.  We felt that we had narrowly escaped a medical disaster.  After a phone call to the emergency vet to make sure we shouldn’t bring her in anyway we were back in bed and the girls were all sleeping.  After a restless night with constant “Gabby checks” I called our primary vet in the morning to confirm, again, that she didn’t need to be seen.  We were told by the emergency vet and our primary vet just to watch for vomiting and blood; fortunately neither surfaced.

My husband and I spoke at length about moving closer to an emergency veterinary facility that was available 24/7/365.  For us, our girls are our daughters and a 20-30 minute car ride without medical treatment in an emergency situation is too long for our comfort.  We have not yet moved (although we still consider it an option), but we did make a change.  Every night we take the girls’ chicken jerky snacks and cut them into pieces about the size of Cheerios; they are not allowed to have full chicken jerky fillets anymore.  Since we began cutting the treats we have not had a problem and I hope that we never will again.

As a follow-up to Gabby’s incident, the next time we saw our primary vet we discussed what happened and she suggested that maybe the piece of jerky had gotten caught in the roof of Gabby’s mouth.  Thinking back we agreed that this was probably what happened because at no time did Gabby have trouble breathing and because of the fact that my husband actually heard the jerky snap.  It was somewhat of a relief to know that Gabby was uncomfortable rather than in distress, but it was still a very scary situation that has left an imprint on our hearts.  After four months of tiny little pieces of chicken jerky for bedtimes snacks for all of our girls Gabby is as happy and healthy as ever!  She is such a joy to be around and oftentimes when you look over at her you’ll find her blissfully wagging her tail back and forth, back and forth, back and forth!

♥ WE LOVE YOU GABBY ♥