On Sunday night/Monday morning, Perry the dog woke me up at about 3:30 and proceeded to barf about six or seven times. He refused to drink any water, even when I offered him fresh water out of a person cup. Finally he went outside to the bathroom, came back in, and drank some water. I didn’t sleep very well the rest of the night and called the vet the next day (Monday).

In between cleaning up the dog vomit in the middle of the night, I did some research to see if I could find a common denominator across dog health websites that would explain his symptoms. I’m not going to get overly descriptive here, but let’s just say that the symptoms he was displaying were pretty peculiar. There was one word that kept popping up, so when they were able to get him into the vet today, I asked them about a pancreatitis test.

The vet called this afternoon and told me he was positive for pancreatitis. They gave him a shot to help with the nausea and some fluids to rehydrate him, then gave me a prescription for a special food that he may have to eat for the rest of his life. This prescription food is expensive. Wow. But when we got home and I gave him a little, he really liked it, so that’s awesome because he hasn’t been eating much of his food for quite a while.

He is sleeping soundly right next to me tonight, thank goodness. I could tell he hasn’t been feeling well for the past few nights because, aside from the barfing, he has been licking and smacking his lips, which is a pretty clear sign of nausea. He’s not allowed to have treats (he can have one greenie a day; I bargained for that). He needs to eat small, low fat meals and no people food or getting into the garbage. That will be tough because finding abandoned people food and getting into the garbage are two of his favorite activities. He likes to eat random things outside too: snow, icicles, grass, whatever else he finds. I’m pretty sure his scrounging, scavenging habits are what got him into this whole mess, since a bad diet and trash can cause inflammation in the pancreas.

Anyway, if anyone has any experience with pup pancreatitis, let me know what helps. I feel so sad for the poor pupper. At least he seems comfortable for the time being.