Labrador Retriever Eats Ibuprofen

When Embrace Claims Adjuster, Alissa T., noticed that her tidy kitchen counter was awry and found her daughter's ibuprofen bottle under the couch, she had a sinking feeling that her puppy was behind it.

Alissa gave us the scoop on Stormtrooper's naughty misadventure:

"When we decided to adopt a Labrador Retriever puppy, we knew he would be naughty -- all Labs are naughty. Working at Embrace and having years of experience in a veterinary office beforehand taught me to get insurance right away, so that's exactly what I did. Thankfully, he cleared the orthopedic exam and was deemed a healthy pet from the start. Yay!

A few months later my daughter got sick, so I gave her some ibuprofen and put the bottle far back against my kitchen counter for easy access at her later dose. We went out to run some errands and returned a few hours later to find a mess. My coffee pods were scattered, there was flour everywhere, and canisters were knocked around. It wasn't until about 45 minutes after returning home that I found a chewed-up children's ibuprofen bottle tucked under our couch.

Since I am a Registered Veterinary Technician, I didn't panic right away. I tried to remember how many pills were in there and I induced vomiting. We have two dogs and, just to play it safe, I induced vomiting in my other dog, Ewok, as well. They both threw up, but no pills were to be found. I called Poison Control and told them my best estimate for the number of pills swallowed, and they said that he would likely be fine but to keep an eye on him. I was feeling some relief until later that night when Stormtrooper vomited about four times and it had blood in it.

I tried to feed him a bland diet, but he refused food -- that's when I knew there was something wrong. This dog normally eats ANYTHING (children's ibuprofen included) but wouldn't eat canned food. I immediately took him to where I used to work as an RVT and explained what happened. We decided that he likely ingested more pills than I initially thought, and the vet wanted to keep him overnight for monitoring. He suggested a few rounds of bloodwork to make sure that everything was okay, and an X-ray to see if Storm had any of the ibuprofen bottle stuck in his tummy. The estimate for this hospital stay was $1,700! But I knew that Embrace would cover his emergency costs, so I told them to do what they needed to.

He stayed overnight and when I picked him up the next day, he was back to his normal bad-boy self. Knowing that everything was covered for him helped A LOT. I got my invoice, snapped a picture of it with my phone, and sent it to claims. Since he had already had a medical history review done, it only took about four days to process and the money was in my account two days later. It was great!

Stormtrooper WILL likely be hospitalized again. Since this incident, he has eaten raisins, sugar-free gum, and adult Advil -- all of which I caught early enough so that I could induce vomiting. But one of these days I won't be so lucky and he will need to go back to the ER, but I have Embrace to help. "