Midian Ranch Blog

This is the web log for Midian Ranch, an isolated homestead in rural Nevada. It is owned by Jason and Tina Walters, whom are also its regular posters. This blog is exclusively for the enlightenment and edification of our friends, family, and colleagues.

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Location: Gerlach, Nevada, United States

Tuesday, August 11, 2009

Baby Cassidy

Baby Cassidy and Tina

Monday, August 10, 2009

Poisoned Dog

This why I know that John Farnsworth is really my friend: he helped me make my dog puke.

I was busy counting books in the warehouse and hanging out with the dogs the other day when I heard a crunching sound. Didn't think much of it at first, but then I heard it again. Suddenly it occurred to me: I'd recently put a half dozen little green blocks of rat poison out. Panicking, I dashed around the warehousing, checking the locations where I'd put them.

Yep: Michelle had eaten them all.

Well, at the time I wasn't certain if she had eaten them alone or if Snap had helped her. I was fairly certain that he wasn't that stupid, but I couldn't be sure. Panicking, I shoved them both into the car and bolted for Planet X Pottery on the far side of the Granites. Rachael Bogart is a veterinarian and, correspondingly, the most logical person to find under the circumstances. Along the way I called General Mills; the manufacturer of the poison. Helpfully, they had a poison hotline! (Three, actually: children, house pets, and livestock). They advised me to get the poison out her as quickly as possible by inducing vomiting, or risk death by poisoning within four hours. Rachael seconded this recommendation, so it was off to Gerlach to find John: the town EMT and thus the only person around technically qualified to induce vomiting in children, pets, and those rare adults in our area who don't regularly induce their own vomiting via liquor consumption.

John and I forced hydrogen peroxide down poor Michelle's throat, then down Snap's (who took it far more stoically). The peroxide bubbling away in her little dog tummy, Michelle projectile vomited out blocks of poison, dog food, and what appeared to be a mouse. Then she kept right on going and going, until I had to hold up her head like a teenage girlfriend while the dry heaved in the bushes.

Snap, being kind of macho, simply refused to puke. No matter. The next stop was the Emergency Veterinary Clinic in Fernley two hours away. (Not to worry. He puked up all over my truck on the way there. No poison, but they were both covered in it by the time we got there.) There was fun to be had there for Michelle: liquid charcoal for her stomach and she got her temperature taken... the only way you can take a dog's temperature, if you get my drift. THEN a two hour drive back to the ranch for something both of them hate more than poison, puking, or getting their temperature's taken.

A bath.