My boyfriend’s Mom has a new job: Snail Exterminator. She spends hours at night wondering around our garden with a bedside lamp attached to a long power cable, searching for evil, slimy, smelly slugs that are munching on her flowers. Her precious, prized flowers.
I used to have a little place in my heart for slugs. When it rained in London, I would carefully walk down the sidewalk so as not to hear that horrible CRUNCH, and then feel really bad that I’d just squished a poor slug. All he wanted was to get to the otherside of the street to check out the other neigbours garden. Because he had just finished eating all of yours, naturally.
Nowadays however, I am on the side of my boyfriend’s Mom. When she came in after the first night of slug-killing, she showed me a skewer of about 7 slugs. She asked if I would like to have a kebab, I politely declined. I was slightly horrified, being one who is on the verge of becoming a vegeterian: I’d become one if my home province’s slogan wasn’t I Love Alberta Beef. Altogether that night she had slaughtered 108 slugs.
My opinion of slugs and snails changed after my boyfriend’s Mom’s first mission. The next morning (she had been outside until AT LEAST 2am, I’m sure) she told me she had no doubt that the dogs must be eating snails, or perhaps had tried, because there are so many in our garden, and oh, aren’t they delightful and tasty to stinky little dogs? Especially since Morris’s name can be translated to French: Maurice, and Max could possibly become Maxim and then we’d all HAHAHA (deep and garish French laugh, like the chef in The Little Mermaid) and drink some burgendy with that fine little meal.
I was slightly horrified at the idea that my dogs could be ingesting these little delicies especially as one stinky dog was in hospital for three days last week:
I had woken up at 6am on Saturday, and believe me, I NEVER wake up that early unless Santa Clause is coming round for milk and cookies, therefore it was rather unusual that my brain was all WAKE THE FUCK UP! MAX IS RETCHING! QUICK! CATCH THE PUKE BEFORE IT…oh, wait a sec, he’s not on the bed. Thank God. BUT WHAT IS THAT?! I went to check on Max and sure enough, he was in the hallway looking very upset and staring at a pile of white foam. I recoiled in disgust, gave him a sympathetic pat on the back and went back to the bedroom, TO CHECK THE BED. Which my boyfriend was still sleeping in. There, in a glorious large pile of repungent, flagrant, purposefulness was last night’s dinner. All in tact, mind you. So I knew that my Saturday was going to be AWESOME.
I decided to stay up with Max, even though the bed was calling me, well actually no it wasn’t, and yes I did clean away the delightfulness that was in my boyfriends dreaming reach, although I considered for a slight second that it would be a good way to get back at him for not getting me a birthday cake a couple of months ago. I took Max downstairs and thought that watching a little bit of The Breakfest Club would help soothe him, and so there we were. By 8am however, he’d been sick a further two times and so by this point, I was getting a little bit worried. Especially since he looked so upset, usually he’s all, ‘BLEEECH! Okay, Let’s go play now!’ So I called up the vet for an appointment. Thirty minutes later we were at the vets and Max was kind enough not to do any business from either end on the vet’s table, although I wouldn’t have been so angry at him about it after he had the thermometer stuck up his little bottom. Poor thing.
The vet wrote it off as a ‘tummy bug’, gave Max a pain killer injection and an antibiotic injection, told me not to feed him for 24 hours, and have a nice day. I think my vet is a cat person.
Max was much better after his little visit with the vet, and we didn’t feed him all day, even when we had pizza for dinner. He was slightly miffed. Like when your boyfriend decides to have pizza for dinner when you’ve been sick all day, and you would really like a piece of that pizza, even considering it won’t stay in your stomach for very long. But at least you consider the taste coming up won’t be so bad, right?
We fed Max the following morning and still, everything was brilliant. Until noon. Where he looked up at me with these big brown eyes, looked at the floor, looked back at me, and then opened his guts to the puppy gods all over the floor. I called the vet, and was all, “Can I have my forty quid back? He’s thrown up AGAIN. You promised he wouldn’t, WTF?” They advised to put him on water only and if he reiterates his fondness to the puppy gods, to call back immediately. Therefore, I had the excellent opportunity to speak to the vet again 30 minutes later, and by now, Max was in a total state, so I demanded that they see him. However, since my local vet has to spend the day contemplating God and how awesome Christianity is, I had to take Max to the emergency vet - I could hear the Pound sterling sign rolling in the emergency vets eyes OVER THE PHONE.
At the emergency vets Max was barley moving due to severe dehydration. We sat there with a Russian couple sitting across from us with a little girl, and our dog sprawled out on the floor in front of the air-conditioning system. The little girl didn’t approach him. She’s a cat person. Or maybe its because I had a sample of Max’s poo in my hand (in a container, of course). The vet took his time to see us, and I kept pacing back and forth, hyperventilating and considering whether to kill the vet or the nurse or the receptionist or perhaps the Russian couple first if Max died on the floor there.
Finally we were seen, and really, the vet was actually kind of nice. He was a dog person. He did ask however if Max bites. I gave the guy this look that basically said, ‘Are you a fucking idiot? Are you? I think you are because seriously, my dog is a fucking shih tzu, he is the size of a rabbit, and he is DEAD ON THE TABLE. NO HE DOESN’T FUCKING BITE. NOW SAVE HIM!’ The vet gave him a look over, checked out the poo for us and informed us those aren’t worms - its a little bit of love from Max’s intestinal inflammation possibly caused by colitis (or Irritable Bowel Syndrom). I nearly chocked on last nights pizza. I couldn’t believe it, this vet was going to pass this whole charade off as IBS. Dogs don’t get IBS! Women who are fussy eaters get IBS! Max eats EVERYTHING! To which, after I had stopped screaming at the vet in my head and retuned to reality, the vet asked if Max had eaten anything such as snails. I scoffed. Max would never do such a thing. And besides, I don’t have any snails in my garden. I am such an awesome gardner that I would totally know that…(in fact, my Dad would be appalled at the amount of gardening I do which is the equivelant to the amount of make-up I would expect him to put on every morning for work).
The vet then said that Max was severely dehydrated and that he would have to be put on an intravenous drip and rehydrated overnight. Thus was the first time that one of my little babies who like to attack the post man, who made my Mom spill coffee all over herself, who puke in my bed, had to be admitted to hospital. I was beyond terrified and as the vet left the room to get the contract I would sign to say, ‘If you kill my dog, its okay because I constnted to it’ I started balling my eyes out and burrying my face into my little puppies tummy while he laid there, not too aware of what was about to happen to him. And he didn’t care as well, just as long as they didn’t put that fucking thermometer up his bum again.
I pulled myself together before the vet returned, gave Max a hug, and we left the vet’s on our way back home, one dog less than when we’d came.
Altogether, Max spent three days in hospital. He was officially diagnosed as having a ‘tummy bug’. The whole thought of colitis or IBS was perposterous to my cat-loving vet. I was relieved. Max is a lot better now. He’s almost back onto his wholesome and healthy diet of the extortinatly expensive type, and he is watched like a hawk for anything he decides topick up in the garden. I am also eternally greatful to my boyfriend’s Mom who now hunts everynight for those evil fucking slugs, and next time it rains, I think I’ll help her out a little bit.
Also, if you’re new to this blog and have come across this post by Googling ‘Big fat shih tzu porno sex thermometer up the bum yummy snails and France sux’ and you actually have a shih tzu, I recommend checking out this website which has invaluble information about the breed on a fantastic forum filled with other crazily obsessed shih tzu owners who hate snails.
