An unusual patient turned up at a vet clinic in the Galapagos Islands last month.
“A volunteer came in with a weird face, saying that there was a blue puppy outside,” Zoe Hawthorne-Loizeaux, social media manager of Darwin Animal Doctors, wrote on Facebook. “The vets didn’t really know what she meant … a puppy with a blue tongue? Blue eyes? A new kind of dog maybe? So they all went out to actually see in front of them a puppy … painted blue.”
To their surprise, the owner hadn’t brought the husky named Taylor, into the clinic because of the blue paint, instead, she’d brought her in because she wasn’t feeling well for days now. The vet team immediately recognized theses symptoms had to do with the paint.
“Taylor was apparently playing with a bag of blue paint mix before her owner found her completely blue and throwing up paint,” Tod Emko, president of Darwin Animal Doctors, told The Dodo. “Thus, even though the pup’s name was Taylor, the clinic bestowed [on] her the nickname Smurf.”
The vet team was very worried about the dog’s health despite her comical appearance. “Smurf came to us two days after the blue paint incident, which was a bit concerning because she had been throwing up blue paint for those two days,” Emko shared. “No one is sure what kind of paint it was, but as you can imagine, it’s never good to eat paint.”
So the vet gave the 5-month old pup medication to help her get better and requested the owner to wash her many times.
“Smurf’s human family washed her several times with dog shampoo,” Emko continued. “However, although it’s most people’s instinct to scrub off the paint, we advised the owner not to — only to wash her gently and give her as many showers as it would take to get it all off, until she looks like a husky again.”
Taylor returned to the clinic after a few days for a follow up check-up and the vet team were impressed by her quick recovery.
“She passed her physical exam with flying blue colors, the staff all started taking pictures of the miracle baby,” Emko shared.
