Sunday, July 9, 2017

Never, ever give your best friend Tylenol!

Many of you at the Johnson City Dogpark have noticed my beloved bichon frise Michael Jackson.

That’s him—with his brother Joe (my sheltie)—in the photo with this blog post.

(We named him Michael Jackson because we got him eight years ago on the day the King of Pop died.)

He’s 27 pounds of adorable, romping, playful fur.

One person recently told me a bichon is a “step above a dog.”

Well put.

But I almost killed Michael Jackson two nights ago.

He had a fever in the middle of the night—about 1 a.m.—and I gave him a 500 milligram crushed tablet of Tylenol in a spoonful of peanut butter. Actually forced him to swallow it cause he was so warm.

For whatever reason, my wife Patsy awakened about one hour later and decided to Google “dogs and Tylenol.”

We were shocked and horrified to discover that Tylenol is extremely deadly toxic for canines!

So we got dressed, scooped little MJ up into our arms and hurried to Robinson Emergency Animal Hospital.

Yes, we were told, our bichon frise could have died.

Yes, a dog that ingests Tylenol can suffer massive kidney and liver damage.

Yes, “Jackson” (as we call him) needed to be hospitalized, medicated and put on an immediate IV.

Two days, a lot of anguish and several hundred dollars later, our beloved dog is back home and doing pretty well. He’s not 100 percent back to his old self but we hope he’s getting there.

Moral of the story: Never give your dog Tylenol.

A friend, a regular at the dogpark, also told me yesterday that grapes or raisins or dark chocolate can also be deadly for a dog.

So be careful—fellow dog lovers—what your pet swallows.

Dogs don’t always benefit from what helps us humans.







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