Jon & Kate Plus 8 - Trip to the Vet

Trip to the Vet
The Gosselin family's two dogs, Shoka and Nala, love to chew on anything they can get their paws on, including the kids' toys. So when Nala gets sick, the family is not surpised when they discover the cause.

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I am already sad for this dog and I haven't even seen the episode yet.

Kate says they've been in the house for 3 months and it's nice to have so much space, but when all the kids congregate in the kitchen, it can get loud. Oh, you mean when they are hungry and want some food? Or when they want to see their mom?

Joel wanders into the kitchen and tells Kate he can't find one of his toys. He thinks he left it at the old house. Kate insists that he didn't leave it at the old house and to go downstairs and look for it. He is clearly getting super upset that he can't find this particular toy. And Kate just has no mercy for him. She tells him that he's getting "obsessivish" whatever that means. And doesn't even attempt to help him find the toy.

Since they've moved into the new house, the kids have new rules. Apparently they were getting up too early for their parents, so Kate told them if the sun doesn't come threw a certain window, they cannot get up. But what happens when it's a cloudy day?

In addition to the new house, Jon tells everyone that they got 2 new dogs. We cut to footage of Joel bugging one of them who growls at him. Joel gets defensive and says that he's not doing anything. Oh, I am afraid for both these kids and the dogs. Neither one of them know the boundaries. Which is scary because those are strong dogs and once the dogs get bigger, one of them could seriously injure the kids.

Kate has decided that they are no longer her dogs. Which is funny because she insisted on picking them out and carrying them to the car. But now that they are in her home, aren't fuzzy and cute little furballs, and require work, she's washed her hands of them. She's sick of cleaning up after them, getting the kids to keep their toys away from them, letting them in and out, and keeping them away from her. Apparently one time Shoka ran on the treadmill with Kate and lost. I'm scared to think of what happened when she says she won and he lost. Especially because she says it with a super nasty look on her face. Which, by the way, is orange. Not brown not white not tan, but orange.

Kate is sure to issue a disclaimer to her dislike of the dogs. When they are old and fat and just lay around, she says she's sure she'll like them. I wonder if she thinks that about kids, too? Now that the kids are older and not as baby adorable, she doens't seem to like them as much.

Joel, Collin, and Alexis are downstairs playing with the dogs and Nala decides to pee on the floor. Joel scolds her for going potty on the floor. Alexis tries to clean it up by spraying something on it and then putting a paper towel on it. Oh, I hope someone is there to help them. Because that's going to (a) stink and (b) not be cleaned up as well as it should be.

It's now lunch time and the kids have congregated into the dining room. Kate tells them to wait a minute, she's going to work on laundry. She says that she loves her new laundry room, it's right off the kitchen (um, so was the other one) and it's not quite big enough (it's larger than the old one). When we get into the laundry room and see these brand new washers and dryers. It looks like there is a lot of space in there but she has baskets of laundry all over the floor. This puzzles me because at the old house, that never happened. There wasn't ever laundry on the floor. I'm surprised she's okay with this now. But she announces that she wants to make an addition to the laundry room, so I'm wonder if we'll see *that* in a new episode.

The kids are getting unruly out in the kitchen waiting for dinner. Leah's upset because she has to go to the bathroom and can't seem to get in there. Hannah's mad because Aaden's touching her. Kate tells Leah to get over it and heads back to the kitchen to feed everyone lunch. When she's getting it ready, she tells the kids to go sit down in their chairs. These are actually their baby high chairs still, and I think it's probably okay if the kids sat in regular chairs at this point. They also put bibs on. I think at this point, they probably are old enough to eat neatly without bibs.

Alexis gets upset that Mady has gotten some granola on her cereal and she can't have any. Mady says it's because she's older. I don't think granola will hurt anyone. And I don't know why she can't just give them all a little bit. It certainly isn't bad for them.

Kate sends the 6 little kids up to naptime (aren't they a little old for this?) and asks Cara to sweep the floor. Cara doesn't seem into it, so Kate tells her to take the dogs out or else they can just give them back. Isn't that nice. Threatening to send the back all the time. Super duper parenting job.

When Kate leaves on a business trip, Nala was vomiting and not looking right. And when Kate returned a few days later, Nala was looking thinner and listless. Now, why wouldn't Jon have noticed this and done something about it? So they took her to the vet and they found that Nala had swallowed one of the kids' little brown ponies.

Poor Nala needed surgery right away and kept the family in the loop through the entire weekend. Kate jetted off on another trip, so it was Jon's responsibility to pick up the dog. On the morning of the pick pick up, Joel explains that there was a toy in Nala's belly and now she's better. But during his explanation, Shoka has cornered Collin and started jumping on him. It was scary to see him be so aggressive towards Collin.

During lunch, Jon explains to the kids that Nala was in the vet because someone left a toy out. Hannah immediately gets upset and says that she didn't leave her horses out and doesn't know where they are. Jon kind of laughs and says they're in Nala's belly. Hannah gets the attitude and retorts that she only ate 1. Oh, I coulda smacked her for that snide little comment.

After school, Jon and all 8 kids (after he realized that he left Alexis in the car...yikes) headed into the vet's office to pick of Nala. The vet's office hurried the family into the conference room, more than likely to give the other patrons some peace and quiet. The Vet came in and explained to the kids that Nala ate a toy and pulled out a baggie that he'd kept it in. The kids quickly pointed out that it was Hannah's toy and she got upset. Kate chimed in that she felt guilty and that they always blame Hannah. I beg to differ...if it was someone else's toy, Kate would have gotten upset and yelled. But since it was Hannah, she didn't get upset. Annoying.

The vet gave the family a few rules on Nala's care and told them to keep her calm for a few weeks. She's not supposed to be jumping and running all over. They all agreed and Nala was happy to be reunited with the kids. Everyone excited to get Nala home and Mady kind of freaks out that she's not allowed to walk Nala to the car.

When everyone gets home, Jon gets the dog out of the car and sets her free. He tells the kids not to chase her and reunites Shoka with Nala. The dogs seemed happy to be back together and Jon promptly let them romp around outside. Of course, this is exactly the behavior that the vet told them to avoid, but Jon clearly listened for about 5 seconds.

While the dogs were hanging outside, Jon picked up the pooper scooper and we get to see him cleaning up the yard. Gross. I don't now that I'm entertained by watching Jon pick up dog poop. Oh, all the time they spend talking about poop.

So my commentary on this episode...there is no way that the vet let them take this dog home without some sort of cone on her head or bandage on her cut. So I think they probably "staged" the pick up or else the vet held on to the dog for the recovery period. Because there's no way that dog should have been allowed to run around like that. And if the above is not the case, they are awful pet owners.

SassySarah's Review: This is the foreshadowing of a disaster. One thumb down.