OD

Last night, I overdosed Hound on a sedative tablet. There was good reason for it, but that doesn’t stop me feeling more than slightly guilty about the entire episode.

We’d already had one big thunderstorm, and Hound had suffered a bit of a panic meltdown, but was coming back OK. Then about 9pm we had more thunder, and she just lost it all over again – running up and down the garden, not knowing what to do with herself.

It’s at these times that she does stupid things, get aggressive and protective, and just gets herself in trouble – particularly after two events on the same day – so I got out the bottle of ACP sedatives we got a while back for dealing with fireworks. I don’t like giving her sedatives, it’s not something that I feel is the right way to deal with the situation, but sometimes it’s still the best way to do it. Anyway, the bottle says “Give one tablet, 90 minutes before expected fireworks time”. She wasn’t that bad, so I opted to give her a half tab instead.

Only, um, it turns out that Herself usually gives her a quarter of a tablet. So I’d given her double the normal dose of sedative, and she’d already had her normal homeopathic pills which also help calm her down (although not in extreme cases like thunder and fireworks)

Long story short, fifteen minutes later she was curled up and asleep, even with thunder and lightning overhead. But the sedatives really take her out, and by the time we were going to bed, she couldn’t even walk straight. When it came to trying to walk her over to her cage, so we could do all the “locking up” stuff for the night (the normal routine) she got into the hallway and just collapsed, flopped out and wouldn’t move. All very “Oh, it’s just too much effort”. I’ve never seen her do that before, and to be honest it worried me – I had visions of having done her some serious harm by giving her too much of the ACP sedative.

We got her back into her basket, and did all the normal stuff, then went to bed. Again, this is something that we’ve never been able to do before – she always runs round and gets stupid, which is why she normally just goes into the cage ’til we’re done. This time, just spark out in her bed.

And basically, Hound stayed there all night. I don’t think the poor cow even moved. She certainly didn’t move when I got up this morning, even while I was eating toast in the same room. Again, needless to say this caused more concern – normally toast will motivate her to do most things.

She did get up to run out when I went up to let out the chickens though, so I’m a lot more relieved. After visions and thoughts of “Can she actually move? Have I somehow paralysed her? Or when she’s been tottering about last night, has she damaged something?” it was good to see her walking/running again.

Mind you, she’s still not completely over it (or wasn’t when I left the house) so she hasn’t had any of her normal homeopathic stuff today yet.

I’m glad she’s OK, and seems to have slept through the rest of the night (and another thunderstorm) OK, but all the same, you can be sure that in future I’ll remember that she only needs a quarter tablet. And yes, I do feel guilty about it, even though it was an honest mistake. Thank Christ I didn’t give her a full tablet, like the recommendation!