This week has been full of interesting cases at Abbey Animal Hospital. We saw broken bones, fleas, diarrhea, and went chasing a very large staple in the stomach of a Dalmatian named Mia.
Mia, a beautiful, well natured, Dalmatian, belongs to good friends Susan and my fly-buddy Randy. They were getting ready to prepare a delicious meal on Saturday night. You know the kind that involves those fancy cuts of beef wrapped in bacon and secured with a large stainless steel staple. They had the grill all ready and the salad all made and had placed the steaks out on the counter ready to take out for cooking. Well, you guessed it… Mia had plans of her own and decided to get in on the delicious meal. She snatched that meat off the counter and gulped it down in 2 seconds flat (that's warp 10 in dog time). She did seem to be very pleased with herself. Randy said he couldn't believe what he witnessed, she looked him in the eye as it was going down and seemed to say "what a clever dog I am". We came over later and she seemed fine. Not painful, but pink and full of herself. We decided that we would see if she could pass the staple on her own over the next 24 hours. No such luck… Susan was worried so Sunday night we took radiographs and low and behold… there, right there in the area of the stomach was the beautiful silhouette of a perfectly formed staple. Yes, the kind that you use to hold the bacon onto that beautiful piece of meat. Randy said it was a form of karmal justice ( I know he was just kidding, he loves that dog)(but he did love that steak... and he was very hungry!).
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| Me and Mia ready for the endoscope! |
After much deliberation we decided that I should go in with the endoscope to see if we could fish out that pesky foreign body. One thing that concerned me was that Susan had been feeding Mia… a lot… to try and get her to pass the staple. Her stomach was full of food so the likelihood of me being able to see the staple was not great. I figured I wanted to go in there with the endoscope and get it out before it passed into the small intestines where it would be out of reach. It was a calculated gamble. Unfortunately I was right about not being able to find anything in a stomach full of food (we did find some hair and fishing line and a "ton" of U/D diet). Its not like a needle in a hay stack but more like a needle in the middle of a large pile of goo, very difficult to see through. So we got busy and tried to lavage the stomach and hopefully get the staple or at the very least flush out the stomach and go back in with the endoscope. Well it is easier said then done… after copious amounts of water flushed through a large bore gavage tube… no luck. Lots of food came out but no staple. Went back in with the endoscope and believe it or not there was still way too much food to find the staple… now, we are in a waiting mode. We woke Mia up after some meds for the stomach and we decided to see if she will pass it on her own by Thursday… if not, it looks like we will be going in! Susan called me on Monday to tell me that she seemed like her same old self. Stay tuned for the rest of the story. Mia doesn't seem to know she has a staple in her gut!
Well, its back to work, no new developments on the St. Croix Fix Project but lots of hopeful energy, please pray for our projects! Bye for now, Robin
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