As a continuation of our last post.  Here is the Jake story from last week.

It was just about 8:30pm, we went out back and the boys roamed around the back yard (bee’s sleep at night, just a FYI). As per usual, Jake had to be lasso’d in because he is constantly in hunt mode.  Let me explain our backyard to you.  There is grass and a few trees, surrounded by a high wood fence.  I am not very fast but I could run from one end to the other end in about 4 seconds.  Jake’s hunting is usually focused on what is beyond the fence.

I got him in and we went upstairs.  Jake was suddenly having breathing issues.  He would breath in normally, but his exhale, his every exhale, was a cough.  This was not reverse sneezing, something he happens to do very loudly and several times a week.  This was something-blocking-his-throat-type-cough, like he was trying to work it out.  I waited one hour.  He was breathing in fine, so I was not thinking he was lacking oxygen.  But with every cough I noticed there was a lot of ‘mouth and nasal juice’.  That is the technical term I used at the emergency vet when we arrived at 10pm.

Let me fast forward to the conclusion of this evening.  Jake had something in the back of his throat, almost tickling him to make him cough.  A few leaves came up, some grass and then some white matter.  It took a minute to figure out what the white matter was.

Feathers.

It was like a cartoon, he was coughing up feathers.  I got him home and the next morning went out to the back yard to conduct CSI JAKE where I found more, not digested, white feathers and other things that my eyes can unfortunately not take back.  The best I can figure is that a bird, a small bird based on the feather size, fell dead into our yard (bees, birds…does Amityville Horror ring a bell?!!).  Then Jake ate it.  I kept expecting him to poop out a bird foot, which for the record, never happened.

No Audubon Society memberships for Jake!  On the flip side I got to see Jake’s chest x-ray and a French Bulldog’s chest is pretty friggen remarkable on the inside! Boom, the x-ray negates the nasal juice!