Sick Izzy

When we got home from vacation Izzy was very sick.
The last day there (Friday) we thought she was just tired.
She didn't want to swim anymore and that alone is odd when there is water for her to see.
She kept going to the car when we took her for a walk like she wanted to get in and go home. She was also very lethargic.
But we kept saying to one another she is almost 10 so she's not as energetic as when she was younger. A lot like me.

We arrived home on a Friday. Saturday morning at 1:30AM she was vomiting. She did again later on Saturday. We began with only small amounts of rice and boiled chicken to see if she could hold that down. 
She looked so miserable. I wish she could talk and tell me what was hurting her.

I called the vet. We made arrangements to bring her in on Sunday morning unless she got worse then go to the ER.
We went to the vets on Sunday. Our normal vet was not working, but a vet that was did examine her. She took her blood. They gave her a liquid for hydration since she has been vomiting and put a drug in that liquid to stop nausea and vomiting.

This liquid they give her gives her a hump on her shoulders like she's a camel. Too bad they can't do that for Halloween. 😏

While we waited for her blood work to come back to us we noticed her perking up ever so slightly. That made us assume she was not nauseous anymore.

The blood work came back and the vet came to share with us the news.
The last time she had blood work her liver enzymes were 38 I believe she said.  Right now they were 1,810. 
So we began the questions of what she has ingested. Nothing was out of the ordinary as far as food I kept telling her. Yes, she was drinking far more water than normal. We went through all the questions.
Finally, I asked if algae could do this.

I told the doctor about an area that we have never seen or that we have ever gone to. No one was there, it was farmland area. It was incredibly quiet so we pulled our boat into a cove and anchored. We got our chairs and sat a spell and watched Izzy swim about. Then I noticed a large amount of algae on one side. I kept making Izzy come back towards us. Rick kept poo-pooing me as he likes to do.I'm a worry wart he'd say.

After 30 minutes the algae was moving towards us and I told Rick we should leave. Again he poo-pooed me. I began to fold my chair and grab my things and put them on the boat. I told him he could stay but I didn't think the algae was good for Izzy or for human swimming and we were leaving. 

He came along and we went back to the main lake. 
The doctor's first question was are you sure it was farmland. 
We said yes, for certain. Then she knew what happened. Apparently, this blue-green algae is from chemicals in fertilizers. This is toxic to dogs and I imagine humans as well.

She was concerned about Izzy. She was hoping the liver numbers would go back down but said if they don't she will have liver damage. Great. I about killed my fur baby.

She told us we had 2 choices, wait a few weeks and do another round of blood tests to see if the numbers go down or if she is not feeling better in 2 days then go to the internal medicine veterinary clinic.

We waited 2 days and she wasn't throwing up but not better. 
The Vet called to check up on her and after all my questions she asked what I wanted to do.
I said I would prefer to go the internal medicine route to be sure we didn't give her liver damage. Better to know sooner than later.

We did just that. They shaved her belly and did a scan. All was well. They took blood and her live numbers went down to 794. That is more than half so we were thrilled. The internal medicine Vet asked me all the questions again. 
This time I waited for him to tell me it was algae. I did not offer it and I knew it was not on the records I brought. 

He asked if we had taken her to any bodies of water near farmland. 
He thought it was from blue-green algae. And he went on to explain what this algae was and did to dogs and humans. I then told him what we had done. He said if we had let her stay in that water any longer this could have been far worse. 

We still have to have her blood work looked at in another few weeks to make certain it is going down and there are no lasting effects. But right now she appears to be back to normal. We are thrilled to say the least and thankful once again for pet insurance!

If this algae from fertilizer does this to a dog, then what does this fertilizer do regarding our food?
Is Montasano going to kill us all?