LAUGH ALERT! TRUE EVENT! Chip being Chip.
What Happens When Your Mini Schnauzer Eats a Jar of Moisturizer?
Chip was one of our rescues, so we didn’t know anything about him. When we brought him home we quickly learned that he LOVED to lick any sort of cream or ointment off of our skin.
Bruce always applied the Equate brand of hand cream that comes in a squat wide mouth plastic tub. Chip would practically chase Bruce through the house to try to lick the cream off from Bruce ‘s hands. It was always pretty funny.
I get a cell call from Bruce around 1am when I was gambling at a casino. He was in a panic.
He applied the cream to his hands and placed the jar on the bedside table. But, he merely placed the top of the jar on without screwing it down. He went downstairs to watch TV. Both Chip and Ted meander around the house regularly. On this night Bruce realized he hadn’t seen the pups for more than an hour. Hmmm.
He comes upstairs and walks into the room without turning on the light. A shout follows. He had just stepped on the upside down moisturizer top. Ouch! He turns on the light. Chip is on the bed, his entire face and beard are slick and shiny. Teddy is missing. The jar of cream is not on the table. Bruce peeps under the bed and discovers Teddy and the moisturizer jar under the bed.
OMG! The jar had been 3/4 full. It was now empty. Teddy isn’t much for licking cream off of anyone, so Bruce rightly guessed that Chip knocked the jar off of the table. When the top fell off and his drug of choice was available to him, he set to licking the entire contents of the jar. At some point it rolled under the bed where Teddy was hanging out. Chip was too big to get under there, so Teddy finished off the jar. GREAT said no one ever.
He phones me in a panic. Pancreatitis is the one thing on his mind. I had never even heard of a dog eating a jar of moisturizer. I come home and survey the damage. Teddy’s face isn’t too shiny or greasy. Chip, on the other hand looked like a wet seal.
We called the emergency vet for help. Did you know that this isn’t poisonous? Thank you, God. Then, the vet’s advice. Walk the dog for about a half an hour and hope he poops. This night was in late December; it was quite cold. On the walk, Chip squats as though to poop all throughout the walk. Bruce checks every spot where the pup stopped to poo. No poo. WTF. They come back home.
A second walk is called for. Out they go. Inside Chip’s body the cream melted. Of course, we didn’t know what it would do to the dog. As they walked, for the second time, every place Chip squatted on the first walk was a congealed pile of moisturizer. Ohhh, now what? Will the kid just leak cream from his butt forever?
The vet said to confine the dog in a room without carpet. Bathroom it is. He gets in the tub and scratches the enamel nonstop. Not a good place to keep him.
We open a cot, put it outside and put raggedy blankets on it. He jumps up on it and snugs down. Andddd every few minutes he jumps off and squats to poo in the yard. At least he isn’t doing it in the house.
In southern Nevada Astro Turf is recommended instead of grass. The drought and all. When we wake up and go outside, there are mounds of congealed moisturizer and grease stains all over the turf. What fun! Not.
No long term damage to the dog and the story has been one of our favorite Chip memories. Ted hadn’t eaten much, if any, so he had no problems.
The moisturizer was simply glycerin and water with NO fragrance. Not poisonous. Phew!
This was the culprit