You ate what?

Digger spent most of yesterday miserable and horribly inert at times. No barking at the postman, no drooling over our dinner, only eating under sufferance when I hand fed him morsels of rice and fish. He wouldn't walk more than a few steps before giving up - I guess because of stomach cramps. My poor sweet boy did manage a momentary grin at me when I came back from walking Mojo. Needless to say we were getting really concerned, and he slept in our room so we could keep an ear on him. Throughout it all his breathing and heart rate stayed normal, so we thought we'd wait till morning before taking him back to the vets and scheduling an x-ray. (It's odd, but whenever one of our four-legged family has a crisis, it's always a bank holiday.)

Anyway, this morning he had the poop to end all poop. A proper Digger dumper.  And most of it was tough plant material (not sticks, thank goodness, so no perforation scare) that was instantly recognisable as reedmace. There was one particularly tough chunk complete with roots.



Mojo discovered reedmace a long time ago. We live along a canal with wild vegetation on the banks - in fact, the exact conditions that Airedales were originally bred to hunt along. Mojo pulls the tall stems up, then peels the tough outer layers to find a soft, floury core that's totally yummy. It was a food source our ancestors probably used before agriculture. Smart Mojo figured it out very quickly. Digger, on the other hand, has very little common sense, and seems to have just devoured the lot.

Anyway, he's feeling much better since his apocryphal toilet time. He's going to take a few days to get back to his usual self, but his appetite and joy for life are back.

Many thanks for your Airezen. It worked! Especially on a mummy who was feeling helpless and worried sick.

So, Digger...
You were only a few months old when you ate a visiting child's sock and had to be rushed to the vet.
You were about a year old when you tried to eat a fishhook with three barbs and mummy had to catch it just before it went past the root of your tongue and down your throat.
And at a year and half you've tried to top yourself with a reedmace.
Pack it in!