Dudes!

My name is Jake. I am a 4 year old Weimaraner. I am really cute and really smart. Susan asked me to blog for her tonight (I guess she's feeling lazy, plus she's complaining about some computer that has parvo!).

I like to play with a ball. My favorite ball is a Kong ball - a hard, red rubber ball about the size of a tennis ball that bounces really good and high. My dad throws it for me, and I chase it relentlessly. My dad says I am obsessed with this ball.

Last Sunday we were out playing like normal. My dad was throwing the ball, and I was chasing it. One time it went up in the air real high, and I followed it carefully. It went up sooo high, so I jumped up after it as it was coming down. [My dad said he was watching this, and he thought "Uh, oh" as the ball was coming down and I was going up.]

When I went to catch that darn ball, I didn't time it quite right and that danged thing went right down into my throat!! Oh, my gosh - it hurt! And I was choking!! I couldn't get enough air!! My dad ran to me - he tried to give me the Heimlich, but the ball was the perfectly wrong size, just big enough to get down into my throat, but such a tight fit that Heimlich stuff couldn't budge it.

I was panicking! My throat hurt like crazy, and I could barely get air. Dad called Susan's hospital, but they were more than 1/2 hour away. Too far. He called 911, but those darn humans don't come out for dogs choking. My dad ran me to the car (and I'm no light weight - I weigh 65 lbs!) and got me to am EMT. The EMT tried to get that ball out, but it was just jammed in there too tight, and he didn't have the right equipment to grab it or to keep me from struggling against him. I was really panicking, and my dad was really freaking out. So he and my mom put me back in the car and raced me the 1/2 hour to Susan's hospital. I thought I might not make it - my tongue was blue, I was retching horribly, and I had a lot of bloody saliva coming from my mouth. I kept almost passing out - my eyes stared blankly, and my dad told me he thought I was dying. He kept trying to do the Heimlich on me, but the ball wouldn't come out. So he tried to do CPR on me, but air just couldn't get past that darn ball!

At Susan's hospital, I staggered out of the car. They carried me back to a big room with tables and needles and tubes. I was still fighting for every breath, and I was stuggling. Susan tried to look in my mouth, but I was so scared and panicked I had my jaws clenched shut real tight. Susan's tech's tried to relax me, but my eyes were panicked and they held me close to try to calm me. Susan put a needle in my leg, but I hardly felt it because I was so scared. Then all of a sudden she put a white medicine into the needle in my leg, and I started to relax. All of a sudden, I fell asleep.

Susan told me what happened after that when I woke up: She gave me medicine to make me sleep, then opened my mouth. She was shocked to see my airway completely occluded by that darn ball. She tried to get it out with her fingers, but it was jammed in too tight - she couldn't get it up through my jaws. So she put her fingers outside and behind my jaws and pushed hard. No luck - still jammed. So she put her hand down my throat and edged the ball slightly to the side so I could get some oxygen while she thought about what to do. There wasn't much time, she said. She was getting ready to do something called a 'slash tracheostomy' on me. This is where she would have made a quick surgical incision on my throat and then put a tube in my trachea (windpipe). After that, she could get me completely anesthetized on gas and then could hopefully work the ball out without having to worry about me not getting oxygen while the ball blocked my airway (because the tube in my throat would give me ample oxygen). But then she decided to make one more try at shoving that darn ball out. She gave me as much oxygen as possible. Then once more she put her fingers outside and behind my jaws, felt the ball and shoved really, really hard. The ball finally slipped forward a little. She pushed even harder - as hard as she could. Pop!! All of a sudden the ball popped out, hit her in the chest and bounced across the floor!

Phew!! My tongue turned pink! She gave me some medicine to keep my airway from swelling up too bad, and some pain medication. I woke up fine. Once I woke up, my throat was a little sore, and I retched and drooled a little. But the next day I was feeling pretty good, and to let her know that, I had to bark a lot, don'tcha know.

She told my dad not to let me play with that ball any more - he told her not to worry about that! Only bigger balls for me now!

So dudes, even if you love your balls, make sure they are big enough that they can't go in your throat! Take it from me....