The day before Thanksgiving, Jake had his distemper shot and for the rest of the day he didn't eat. That didn't come as a surprise; I know that dogs often don't feel well the day they get shots and just decided to keep an eye on him the next day. What I didn't take into account was that while it might be normal for a dog not to eat for a day after getting his shots, a dog who tips the scales at 5 pounds even can't handle it.By the time he hadn't eaten much for a couple of days--which I've seen dogs only slightly larger do several times over the years--he was lethargic, hard to wake up from sleep and kept going and hiding behind the couch. He'd rouse himself to go outside and come when he was called and such, but didn't seem very interested and, if nothing else was being asked of him, he slept.
I thought he was sick from his shots and took him back to the vet, only to discover that he was actually suffering from low blood sugar and essentially starving himself to death.
Apparently, after just over a day of not eating, he was feeling sick enough that he didn't want to or didn't think he could eat. He'd lost 6/10 of a pound, which doesn't sound like much but was more than 10% of his body weight. Even the vet freaked out a little when he saw the change in his weight over just a few days.
After loading him up with Nutrical and high-calorie prescription soft food and pretty much anything he showed the slightest interest in for a few days, he's back to his normal (read: highly energetic) self, but it could easily have gone the other way. It turned out that while I thought he was just sleeping off his shots, he was actually too weak to eat. And it happened in just over 24 hours.
Obviously, the dog wasn't really trying to commit suicide, but he was just lying around waiting to die, and if my daughter and I weren't both a shade on the overprotective side, we could easily have waited too long to seek help.
Apparently, if your dog weighs five pounds, it needs to eat every day whether it wants to or not.
