Angel's visit to Doggie Hospital

Rosy and I have had quite a few anxious days regarding Angel recently. It started 5 days ago when Angel stopped eating her normal meals. 3 days ago I took Angel out for her morning constitutional 6km run/walk. After Rosy had pointed out to me that Angel's hind legs were a bit wobbly. I started getting concerned when Angel would fall over herself while she was running around. She had been eating some strange things off the beach and the thought had crossed my mind that Angel had had some sort of food poisoning. I cut the walk short and brought Angel back to the van.

Rosy called the local vet and they said it sounded like a tick. And armed with that information Rosy started scouring Angels thick coat. Low and behold, underneath Angel's collar was a dirty big (5mm) grey tick - a paralysis tick to be precise. Rosy knew what to and she instructed me on how to extract the little bugger, which I was able to do without leaving some of it embedded in Angels neck.

Off to the vet we went, with Angel and tick. The vet was a nice guy called Dr Steve (nice name, I trusted him immediately). His main concern was whether we got the tick off in time. Apparently, the tick will cause a bacteria to progress through Angel's body, which will cause difficulty with her breathing and eating, apart from causing paralysis in her limbs and eye lids. What they did was give her a blood transfusion, and overnight stay to enable them to keep an eye on her deterioration. Rosy was visibly upset and I didn't know what to expect.

The following day, the vet gave Angel the all clear to recuperate with us back at the van. She is under strict instructions not to do anything that would cause excitement as her breathing has not completely been cured. She is a van-bound dog for one week and then she can go on very short walks during the second week. Our task is not to allow another paralysis tick on Angel this season as she may not recover.

Angel has made some doggie friends here at Bonny Hills, so I went over to their owners and just told them what had happened, just in case they were wondering why Angel hadn't made her presence known for a few days.

So now I have Rosy bound to her banana lounge chair waiting for her foot to heal, and Angel laying on it with her, not understanding why we haven't taken her for her walks of late.

I can't wait until all three of us are back on the beach.