Dapple Dachshund Eats Plastic

Background

Named after the character from Game of Thrones, 6-year-old Tyrion is small but mighty. So when he started acting strange, his pet parent, Sarah C., took action. She shares Tyrion's story.

"I'm not quite sure how to describe Tyrion aside from 'the friendliest dog alive.' He smiles! So, when he wasn't quite acting his quirky self one morning, we knew something was off.

Throughout the day he showed us we were right. He was stretching funny, being extremely dramatic when we pet his belly, and a little lower key than normal overall.

We called our emergency vet hospital 40 minutes away, as our primary vet office is closed on Sundays, and they told us to take the trek to have him seen.

We got to the ER, spoke to multiple doctors about his symptoms, left him there for a few hours to be examined and monitored, and got a phone call every pet owner dreads... a foreign body.

Being Sunday, the endoscopy tech was not scheduled to work, so we then had two options -- rush Tyrion straight into surgery to remove the foreign object, or transfer him to another hospital almost two hours away where they could possibly remove the object without invasive surgery because their endoscopy staff works round the clock. We took the drive. We were Tyrion's personal ambulance as we transferred him with an IV in tow.

He spent a night at this second hospital so he could be evaluated properly and scoped when it was his turn to be seen, all the while I am seeing dollar signs with every procedure done.

In the end, Tyrion was able to pass the foreign body on his own (later discovered to be a piece of plastic), but ultimately this foreign body led us to discover that his ALT levels in his liver were elevated.

Throughout all of this, we carried our Embrace Pet Insurance claim forms in our car consoles so that we wouldn't have to back-track to give the proper person our form days later.

Embrace not only covered Tyrion's multiple hospital visits that day and the overnight stay, but his bloodwork and liver enzyme tests too -- he now gets these regularly. I no longer have to worry about getting my two crazy Dachshunds the best care due to financials because knowing I have Embrace to quickly and easily reimburse me puts my mind at ease."