HAMLET […] we fat all creatures else to fat us, and we fat ourselves for maggots. Your fat king and your lean beggar is but variable service, two dishes, but to one table; that’s the end.

CLAUDIUS Alas, alas.

HAMLET A man may fish with the worm that hath eat of a king, and eat of the fish that hath fed of that worm.

CLAUDIUS What dost thou mean by this?

HAMLET Nothing but to show you how a king may go a progress through the guts of a beggar.

Hamlet, Prince of Denmark

While it wasn’t a king that made it through the guts of my little beggar, it might have been a relic from someone’s formal dinner.

I have been mulling a post about food, wondering if I’m raising my first food-obsessed Lab, who can inhale her meals faster than I can go to the bathroom unsupervised (a rare treat these days). This isn’t exactly the post I had been thinking about.

On Thursday during a walk, Cedar bolted over to the neighbor’s house and gave me one of her periodic, “NO WAY”s when I tried to recall her. I didn’t have my contacts in, so this was all a bit vague, but I saw her do a now-you-see-it-now-you-don’t with what looked like a dirty sock. By the time I corralled her, I had convinced myself that I had made up her sleight-of-mouth.

Forward to Thursday night wake-up to a whining Cedar… diarrhea in her pen, followed by a long frustrating and unsuccessful attempt to poo, followed by a later vomit wakeup, followed by most of the day Friday with no passing, and a bit of listlessness.

We have a multi-layered vet crisis in Juneau. One layer is that we don’t have enough vets and staff to have night or weekend triage. (Another layer is that we have awful people like this, in a position of power, to refuse service to those whose values don’t align with theirs.) Cedar has a super nice vet, with an absolutely unhelpful phone answerer. 

Me: When would this become an emergency?
Seeming-12-year-old: Well, if it gets really bad.
Me: Yeah....okay. 
S-12: Do you want me to Google it?
Me: Ah... no. What can I do if it gets "really bad" over the weekend? 
S-12: You can call Southeast Veterinary Animal Hospital (owned by one of the knuckleheads from the link above).
Me: I thought they weren't taking anyone not a patient. 
S-12: Oh, yeah, you're right. I probably shouldn't tell anyone that, huh?

So I knew I’d be on my own for the weekend and I was stressed. I wasn’t entirely sure I wouldn’t be fishing with Cedar-worms in the near future.

After a long morning of many walks, exercise, lots of fluids, soft watery food, some organic pumpkin, and a sort of panicked call to a vet school grad friend, I decided to go for a ski, feeling a bit self-indulgent but needing a break.

Upon return, I opened the front door and knew we had…um…a change of status.

I present to you one formerly formal dinner napkin that somehow made it through my beggar’s guts. Perfectly bile-dyed, and quite fully scented, it gave ample clues to its course out of Cedar and into her pen.

Tempted as I am to accept my fate along the lines of “dumb Lab,” I will concede, as my vet-school-grad-friend pointed out, that she did not re-eat it.

Good dog?