Milo's First Illness

Thursday morning we woke up to a very unpleasant surprise. I had heard Milo whimpering when I was moving around upstairs to get Jack's sandwich made for school. When I went down, it turned out that Milo had extreme diarrhea and made a big mess. It took awhile to get that mess cleaned up. But on the bright side, it got me in cleaning mode. After I cleaned everything up, including him, and mopped the floor down in the family room, where his kennel is kept, I decided to keep going and mopped the hallway, bathroom and part of the laundry room. Then I moved upstairs and vacuumed all of the hard floors before mopping them as well. I even washed all of the bathroom rugs and the kitchen/dining room rugs. It's amazing how much better they look after getting cleaned, almost like new. 

We were hoping Milo got it out of his system and that it would be a 24 hour thing, but the very next morning, I woke to another mess. Curtis had checked around 5am and didn't smell anything so he took off to work, but by the time I got up at 6am I could smell it in my room. I thought I was smelling things, but then I realized after discovering his mess again that it was going through the return air throughout the house and that's how I could smell it. Disgusting! Both days we had to open the door to the garage from the family room and point a box fan toward it to get the smell going outside. I won't disgust you with the details about cleaning up but I did have to take his crate outside both days to spray with cleaner and then water it down and let it dry. After the 2nd morning, I decided to just throw his bed away because he got more on it than the first day and we were going to get him a new bed anyway because he outgrew it. After that, we had him sleep outside until he is over this, moving his crate to the garage. Of course, I had to give him a bath both days and he still doesn't like baths. I kept him outside a lot during the day also. Poor pup didn't like that.

I had called the vet's office on Friday and they said to keep an eye on it and as long as he doesn't get worse, lethargic, and not wanting to eat then we wouldn't need to schedule anything yet. Whitney had also told me to give him a mixture of white rice, water and dog food to help with digestion. The vet's office said to keep feeding him that way so he has energy. By Saturday, I had also read that boiled chicken was good to give him, so I stopped giving him dog food and just gave him the rice, chicken and water mixture. I kept the water from when I boiled the chicken to use to add to his food, so it was like a chicken broth. He loved that and pretty much acted normal all weekend, so that was a good sign. Monday and Tuesday, things were looking normal again and last night we moved him back inside. We also bought him a new bed, which we had let him lay on during the day until he got better. Now it's in the crate where we wanted it.

Checking out his new bed.

This one definitely fits him.

We're so glad he's feeling better and that we didn't need to take him to the vet. We just wonder how in the world he got sick. It was just the diarrhea and nothing else.