The problem with fiber and pets..

.. is that pets sometimes *eat* the fiber. In this case, Jali managed to down a fair chunk of KnitPicks Crayon last night.

This is not, in and of itself, terribly surprising. She was a stray and has always been terribly food oriented. However, she hasn't really eaten non-food things for quite some time. Until recently, that is. She started sometime in the last year (we think pr'bly because of all the changes - she lived with mom and dad for awhile, then moved to a new house, she's getting old, change is harder) by eating more and more paper-like things - tissues have always been too tempting, but she stepped up to actual *paper*, and then started in with Jack's socks (usually dirty) every now and then.. so it's not really *all* that surprising that she's moved onto other things. But this was the first time she's ever eaten yarn, and it's not because it hasn't been available. And it's not as if the yarn was there all day and she decided to munch.. she was "alone with the yarn" for all of about 10 minutes, when both of us were home. So that trend is disturbing in and of itself (according to the emergency vet tonight, it may, in fact, be sign of senility.. *sigh*).

What's more disturbing is that it's caused some rather significant physical trauma (not surprisingly; nor is this the first time she's eaten something she shouldn't that has had adverse effects). She apparently managed to keep it all together all day until Jack got home (I dropped him off and then, without coming into the house, ran off to a Board meeting). Apparently, she saw him, got so excited, and then lost all her self-control right there. He thought at first she was being spiteful - she can be rather willful at times - and yelled at her. It took him a few minutes to realize she was in distress and not intentionally being bad, but by then she was scared and thought she'd been bad, which made it all the harder for him to try to help her. *sigh*

By the time I got home from the Board meeting, he had things cleaned up. So when she stopped in the arch between the dining room and the kitchen and acted like she was in trouble when I got home, I knew something was wrong. Jack caught me up and then the emergency vet called back (Jack had called and left a message, then called again and talked to him, but he called us to return the message not realizing he'd already talked to Jack) and we talked to him again and the upshot is if she's still in obvious physical discomfort in the morning, we have to take her in for x-rays and barium and all that possibly leading up to surgery. But that's the worst case scenario. The emergency vet was pretty sure she'd pass the remaining yarn by tomorrow morning and be on the road to happiness, and advised us to give her "a glop" of petroleum jelly to help ease things through in the meantime. The advantage to having a dog who'll eat anything is that.. well.. she'll eat anything. :/

In any case, at the moment, she's not in any obvious physical distress, but she is considerably more subdued than she usually is. We suspect she's exhausted from a day of rather extreme discomfort, which would explain the lethargy. Here's hoping a good night's sleep will solve everything. Including Jack's guilt about yelling at her..

In the meantime, this week of all weeks, I'm not dealing particularly well with a sick little pig. If things are not well by morning, I will neither be at work tomorrow nor at the event Saturday. I .. haven't been able to figure out what to say to others when pets pass mostly because I can't imagine what anyone would be able to say to me that would be any comfort whatsoever if it were Jali..

*sigh*