Last month, our dogs Meeko and Mae had a little adventure while we were gone and broke into one of the kitchen cabinets. They ended up eating about four pounds of dark chocolate.

Mae obviously ingested more of it, and she was puking and had stressed breathing. We took her to the emergency hospital that night. Meeko was initially acting fine. By the next morning though, he was also sick and taken to the hospital. Both dogs ended up on specialized monitoring equipment because their heart beat was both out of rhythm and erratic, both were given multiple medications to help pass the chocolate without damage, and Mae was showing signs of liver damage. Meeko came home after one night, and Mae after three nights. They both were on follow up medications for the next two weeks. Meeko, given that he’s an old man, really was having a hard time the first days home. It took him multiple days to get up the stairs and a week to be able to make it on a walk again. While Mae was always in good spirit, her blood work was a mess and she was on medication at multiple times a day to bring everything back to normal.

A month later, they are both thankfully doing well and have been cleared with no lasting symptoms. I am so incredibly grateful that both dogs are okay, and we are so thankful to the many vets and nurses that cared for our dogs.

When all was said and done it was about $14,000 to save them both. This year has been a bit tough. We had about $10,000 in unexpected home repairs that has knocked down our savings. Given this incident taking place, we chose to cancel our planned vacation this month and use the refund to help towards some of those costs. We’re rearranging a few other things to save money. But this was a very large unexpected expense, and we are at the point that we could use some help.