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ARTICLE 120: antifreeze DECEMBER 2003 for the past few days my dog has been sick. (if you read this column every month you know that i have a boston terrier named RICKEYDOG! boston terriers are small quiet black-and-white dogs which have bulbous eyes that point in different directions.) usually i try to avoid going to the veterinarian because they always want to do expensive things to the dog, it is like a bad mechanic! i know that rickeydog was made by qualified craftsmen and that he is built to last so i do not want to get his brakes replaced or some kind of gasket repaired every time he needs to go to the vet and make sure his ears do not have bugs living in them or something!! but lately he has been walking around slowly and coughing so i decided he needed some help. of course the first thing i did was to try to see if i could just buy him some medicine online!! it is hard to find anything other than body part enlargement pills online though and all i found was a site called DOCTOR LARRY. (www.drlarrypetvet.com) the first thing on the site was a warning telling people not to let their dogs have antifreeze!! i turned around from the computer and saw rickeydog laying down on the floor behind me. RICKEYDOG did you eat antifreeze, it is a poison!! i told him. he did not say anything so i picked him up and tried to smell his breath. it did not really smell like antifreeze but i do not really ever drink antifreeze so i do not know! he just looked at me with one eye and then the other and then back to the first eye. it did not look like he was doing too well so i figured i should take him to the vet before anything bad happened! i am pretty sure where he got the idea to drink antifreeze. sometimes he talks to other dogs and there is this scraggly pomeranian who is always wandering around in the alley near my house. probably the pomeranian told him that he would get a good buzz from antifreeze, i think that the people in the alley probably have a bunch because they are the sort to have a garage full of dangerous chemicals in leaky cans! i try to keep rickeydog away from foul-mouthed criminal dogs but it is not always easy. a life of walking around in the alley and eating garbage probably sounds good to a young dog who knows nothing of the hardness of that way of life!! RICKEYDOG YOU ARE NOT A HOBO DOG, YOU CAN NOT LIVE THIS WAY!! i told him. i took him out to the car and drove to the vet. i had to sign into the office and write his name on this sheet, there were a bunch of people there already in the waiting room, they all had dogs so I was not sure that there was enough time to make sure rickeydog would be okay!! NURSE, it is a dogmergency, rickeydog ate some antifreeze given to him by a hobo dog, maybe he wanted a good dog buzz but instead he just got sick!! i need to see the vet immediately!! then i opened up the waiting room door and walked down the hallway to the little dog offices where you wait for the doctor once you are out of the waiting room. i heard a man talking behind one so i opened up the door and brought in rickeydog!! there was some woman with some kind of beagle or something there just sitting on a table. the doctor and woman just looked at me so I picked up rickeydog and came into the room! DOCTOR, rickeydog is very sick, perhaps he had some bad antifreeze, doctor larry says it is a pet danger!! please administer the anti-antifreeze immediately! i told him. the doctor got kind of mad but then looked at the dog and told me he had some sort of dog cough disease and that he just needed some kind of pills. i got them from the nurse at the front and drove back home. i think the people in the waiting room were pretty mad but that is what they get for waiting around instead of trying to fix their dogs! the number one key to dog health is getting their oil changed every three thousand miles to prevent engine problems. if most pet owners would do this, they would have trouble-free dogs for life! (also they should raise their dogs right so they do not grow up to be antifreeze-drinking hobo dog troublemakers, it is a shame.) (back to the writing index page)