Sedating the Dog...

Most of you know our baby, Wilson, is a yellow lab. To some him up, he is "special" in many ways. We have wondered if he has a little touch of OCD at times, because he does strange things...for instance: when we let him out the front door, if the mat is not perfectly straight with the door, he won't go out....and if there is something blocking him from touching the dining room carpet with his right front paw on the way out, he won't go either. Let's just pray if there is ever a fire in our house that the rug is straight and nothing is blocking the carpet...He also freaks out during rain/storms. So, we went to see our vet, Dr. Ashwander to see what could be done about this. He gave us some sedatives to give him, and told us that since Wilson was such an "active dog," (that is a nice way of saying NUTS coming from your vet) that we could give him 2. I am weird about pills, so we started off with one, and thank goodness. He was comatose 5 minutes into the night. He didn't want to get out of bed the next morning, and when he did get up, he was walking like a drunk....stiff legged and sideways. I felt so sorry for him, I took him to the river to play later on that day. (during the tornadoes mind you) I think he played me there a little at the end, because as soon as we got to the river, the drunk legs were gone and he was running around like crazy as usual. Oh well, it was nice to get out there anyway! So, the moral of this story...always start out with a low dose of sedatives....