[yorkietalkjilly]

You saved her life! Plain and simple. Thank God you were home, she wasn't in another room alone in her crate and you knew what to do and did it. Your poor baby, I know she was scared to death - just being without air for a few seconds is so frightening. Now you've got to find out how to keep that from happening again. I hope the vet can get behind her condition and find some treatment to keep this from ever happening again.

The only other time I saw a dog as frantic as you described was when my tiny Jilly had gotten her collar up under her lower jaw and another time when she was choking to death. I always tell the story to help others if they should find themselves confronting a similar situation.

Late one evening in bed, I noticed Jilly thrashing wildly, going in circles with her head down and choking on what I found was a knotted end of a tiny rawhide chew bone stuck in her throat(she'd tried to swallow the whole end she'd chewed off) and that's exactly how she acted - wild and frantic as if she couldn't get air. When I grabbed her up, I could hear her straining to get air past the knot at her throat swelled around it. And I also partially breathed for her as I called the vet with one hand, found they were still in after 10:00 pm with another emergency(a miracle in itself!), got my robe on and drove her to the vet using one hand to drive and the other arm to hold her up and give her breaths all the way, praying at the top of my lungs for my girl. She went limp and I still breathed for her.

That drive to the vet took an eternity in my mind but once I lay her on the vet exam table, she was awake, breathing a bit raggedly on her own again. The vet said that the swelling in her throat had obviously subsided some due to partial digestion from her saliva and from the adrenaline in her system from the near-death experience helping some of the swelling go down and the knot passed on down. He observed her overnight and she came home fine the next day. It was the scariest time I've ever had with a dog. No more rawhide chews for Jilly!