Today we visited Marley at the vet and boy was she one sick puppy!  She showed a little spunk when she first saw us but she quickly became extremely lethargic.  She had a heplock in her right paw, her ears were covered in charcoal and of course the dreaded urinary catheter.  She tried repeatedly to rip out the iv and catheter while we were in the visiting room which was very hard to watch.  The vet met with us and basically reiterated what we had heard last night and informed us that her blood we be redrawn at 6pm and this would determine if she were in renal failure.  So we waited all day for the news and the wait was worth it.  This evenings bloodwork revealed that all her levels were NORMAl.  Yeah!  She is still having a toxic reaction to the raisins but at least at this point all the IV drips and fluids have kept her kidneys from failing.  They will retest her again tomorrow to determine if she can be safely discharged.  She’ll have to return to the vet on Tuesday for more tests and if she passes those the vet can safely say that she is out of the woods.  Thank you all for your prayers and support.  It’s been rough! 

We are requesting prayers for our beloved Marley who was admitted to the puppy ICU early this morning(~12:30am).  On Valentine’s day Marley ingested two boxes of raisins while we were out for dinner (apparently she was upset we didn’t invite her?).  We didn’t think anything of it at the time as Marley is prone to ingesting many varieties of food.  Yesterday evening however she began vomiting and shaking requiring a trip to the emergency vet (Marley prefers to get sick during nights and weekends only).  The vet consulted with poison control and after running a series of blood tests it was determined that she was have a toxic reaction to the raisins.  Poison control recommend 48 hours of IV fluids as well as the insertion of a urinary catheter in order to monitor her urinary output.  The vet was pretty stern about Marley needing to remain in the ICU for the next 48 hours and stated quite clearly “I can’t say that she is going to survive” (her entire affect during this revelation did not go over very well w/me and being the truthful person that I am told her as much which consequently didn’t go over very well with her).  Anyways- the reason for her “seriousness” is that raisins have been known to cause acute renal failure in dogs which in many cases has been fatal.  The vets are treating her very aggressively because the effects of raisin toxicity present somewhat slowly (b/c the kidneys can compensate for a while even in a toxic state).  At this point, we know for sure that she is toxic but we do not know if she is in acute renal failure.  She will have bloodwork redrawn at noon today and hopefully her BUN and Creatine levels will be within normal limites (her BUN level was elevated upon admission but her creatine was fine).  They will be repeating the bloodwork every 12 hours until the 48 hours has passed so we won’t know for sure if she has avoided renal failure until early Sunday morning (and it can creep up at anytime from now until then).  We sort of feel that the treatment recommendations are a bit overkill but we certainly can’t take the chance of bringing her home right now w/o treatment.  We did learn this morning that she is eating well and not vomiting so we hope that it s good sign.  As many of you know, Marley is the hearbeat of our family.  It broke my heart to leave her at the vet and since Rob couldn’t be there with me it was extremely difficult to drive home (an p.s the entire staff at the clinic most certainly thinks I am completely looney tunes).  In any event....we haven’t slept much and probably won’t again tonight given the fact we won’t know for sure about her prognosis until early Sunday.  Please keep Marley (and us) in your prayers.  The thought of her leaving us just makes our stomach turn.  And then there’s the vet bill…