Day two of mushroom-gate.
The puppy survived the night completely unscathed. I, on the other hand, was exhausted. The only sleep I got was plagued with nightmares about being chased by mushrooms—and no, I didn’t eat any myself. The first thing I did upon waking (after taking the puppy out to pee) was to hit the laptop for another round of Google, followed by a phone call to the vet as soon as they opened.
The consensus was that I should stop worrying as the puppy was behaving like a completely normal puppy, both eating and drinking as well as playing.
But, given the fact that I can never just let anything go with a “most likely everything is fine”, I escalated the issue to the University of Georgia mycologist to identify the remains of the mushrooms in question. I emailed the pictures and waited for a response.
“It is very unlikely that the mushrooms were deadly.”
So…twenty-four hours had passed and no ill effects from the mushrooms. The vet, my husband, and the University of Georgia were all urging me to relax. Even if the mushrooms were poisonous, I induced vomiting fairly quickly after he ingested them, and a day later he was acting normal.
So I took a deep breath, closed all but one of the Google pages on mushrooms, and went on with the rest of my day.
I had forgotten what it was like to have a house full of kids. Both of the teenage girls were home, and they brought a friend. Add one almost twelve year old, and you have a recipe for disaster. I may be exaggerating. There were no disasters, but there were definitely too many cooks in the kitchen.
And by that, I’m not talking about cooking dinner.
Raising a puppy requires dedicated concentration, and a well defined plan. That plan can be easily derailed when others in the house decide to go all rogue dog trainer on you. Especially when they didn’t read the puppy training book and they don’t understand the methods you have become so devoted to.
Too many cooks in the training kitchen makes for an overdone dog. Or an underdone one. I’m not sure. I think I need to enroll in puppy kindergarten. Or find something more interesting for the girls to do.
Perhaps I could get them to organize the kitchen cabinets, or bathe the cats. That should keep them busy! Maybe I just need to do all of my puppy training at six am. It’s not likely I’ll find any teenagers up at that hour! Of course, I’d rather not be up at that hour either. But sometimes you have to make those kinds of selfless sacrifices. I’d better get to bed if I’m going to get up that early tomorrow.
Until the next time…I’ll be coming up with excuses to sleep in!