Ok so Tim had done extensive research and we had both decided that dogtopia would be a great place for Lou to go while we were away in Vancouver. Dogtopia specializes in daycare. So the dogs play from 7:00AM til 12:00PM, then nap from 12:00-2:00PM and then play again from 2:00-7:00PM. And on top of all the play time they have a webcam, so we figured we could watch Lou while we were away, this was going to be great.
Well, the dogcam was not "on" as often as we would have liked, frequently we tried to watch him and it was disabled. We were slightly disgruntled but got over it.
The day after we got home from Vancouver, I went to pick up Lou. I asked the girl if Lou ate, and she said that he had. So I was pleased. Then they went and got Lou. He came bounding down the stairs, clearly very excited (which is no surprise with Lou). But then I saw him...he was SOOO skinny...I couldn't believe it. But I told myself at least he's still having a good time, maybe its not that bad.
I brought Lou out to the car and he hopped right in, so I thought to myself he's probably fine.
On our way home, about an hour trip, I must have fed Lou by hand about 10 times. He was ravaging for food...so sad. And he looked sad. It broke my heart. I called my mom and Tim, and obviously not being able to see him they didn't understand exactly what I was talking about. And the really weird thing about Lou was he made ZERO noises...for anyone that's met Lou you know he "whines" and "talks" all the time, I thought it was odd to have such a quite dog in the car.
Lou was happy when we got home, and ate again. Now I was concerned if I fed him too much he'd get sick. Lou is known for having a really bad stomach, so I tried not to overdue it, and thank god didn't.
Later on Tim got home and agreed that Lou definitely looked horrible, he was once again my Holocaust dog. We decided to let Lou sleep in our room, something I swore I would never do, because he was so sick (or maybe it was tired, we had no idea). Well Lou did fine in our room, but in the morning Tim decided I needed to take Louie to the vet to get him checked out. So off to the vet I go with Lou, which means I have to carry him to the car, and then carry him to the vet's office. Now Lou might have lost some weight but he was still 43lbs. Anyway the vet techs agreed right away that there must be something wrong with him, because how could he get so skinny after only a little over a week.
The vet checked him out, and everything looked good. She ran some blood tests, to the tune of $110, but all came out ok. She thinks that either Lou wasn't fed or he didn't eat. I'm not so sure what happened, but we all no Louie and he loves to play, so its possible that he just played way TOO much while we were gone.
Lou's been sleeping now for a few days and is on the mend, and back to being his crazy, psycho self!
Yes, we took Lou to an indoor swimming pool for dogs only. The reason we did this is because Lou loves to chase dogs/balls in and out of the water, but many of times he gets out so far that we're afraid he's not going to make it back in. He doesn't have a typical "dog swimming stance", as opposed to being almost horizontal, Lou is much closer to vertical. His front paws are way above the water, flailing all over the place, so we're hoping that with a little intervention he can get better at swimming, and stop scaring us...
