Very stressful and upsetting night

Knightley ate a pill of my migraine medication this evening and hubby and I freaked the hell out. We very very quickly phoned the emergency vet, and I was struggling to hold back tears as I spelled out the medications name. They said a vet would phone me back in 20 minutes as they were dealing with several emergencies.

Both hubby and I instantly got onto google and read up on the med Knightley had eaten in the meantime. We were extremely relieved to find it was one that was actually *given* to dogs, but he had eaten a dose about 4-5 times more than he would have been given. We partly relaxed, but still worried and monitored his behaviour closely as per the emergency clinics instructions.

However, it was nearly an hour later and there was still no phone call, so I called back. I don't know what they had done with me, but I immediately spoke to a vet. He basically said due to the amount of overdose, Knightley needed to be made to throw up, and perhaps there would be other treatments. I wasn't sure whether to take him there or not, as because they had not phoned me back and I had had to phone them eventually, I knew a good part of the medicine would have already been absorbed. But the hubby and I discussed it and we decided since the vet was pretty adamant it was the right thing to do we better do it, just in case. Knightley seemed ok, just maybe a bit quiet - although that could be due to my intermittent tears of guilt (even though I didn't know where the medicine had come from).

So we jumped in the car and drove for half an hour across Canberra to the emergency vet surgery. Virtually as soon as we got there they took Knightley out the back and gave him an IV injection to make him throw up. They couldn't specifically see a green pill in the vomit, but hopefully any lingering stuff came up. Where they injected got bandaged up with this adorable bone bandage. They also fed him a 'slurry' of activated charcoal to absorb any lingering toxins in his stomach and intestines, which he didn't seem to like very much but was well behaved nevertheless. A huge bill later he was emptied of stuff and we were out the door.

He seemed more sprightly on the way home, which was good to see. It is going to take a while for the fur to grow back on his foreleg where they shaved it to get to the vein.

I am going to work harder at keeping my medications away from the front part of the house completely, and will start looking into training a default 'leave it' even if I am not with him. We were lucky that this medication wasn't all that toxic for dogs, but if I am not more careful, I may not be so lucky again.