Your Pet's Best Friend

French Bulldog Breeding

Once upon a time, I wrote a post on weird-looking dogs.  One of the most unsound breeds is the English Bulldog.   Because of their extreme conformation, the males are rarely able to breed the females with natural service. Their chests are too big and their hindquarters are too small, and they just cannot assume the position. Almost all English Bulldogs are conceived through artificial insemination.

Then, you have the problem of delivery.  Just like the males, the females have small hindquarters, which means a tiny birth canal.   The puppies, like their parents, have some really big heads.  Big head plus small birth canal equals puppies who cannot get outside when the time comes.  Virtually all English Bulldogs are delivered by Caesarian section (meaning, you open the dog with exploratory surgery, open the uterus to remove the puppies, and sew everything back up again).

The problem is that you have to decide when to do this.  If you wait too late, the puppies don't make it.  They've lost their connection to mommy, and they didn't get outside to start breathing.  Not good.

If you start too early, they may be premature and unable to survive, or the mother may not have any milk to feed them.  Then you've got to come up with colostrum or extract serum to give the puppies their early immunity from disease, not to mention bottle-feeding them until the dam's milk comes in. That doesn't sound like fun, and it isn't.

This means that you have to track your breeding dates very carefully.  Unfortunately, the breeding date could be a few days ahead of the actual conception date, so you still have problems.  If you monitor the bitch's hormone levels during her cycle, you can get a handle on when she ovulates, which lets you pinpoint that conception date.  You can also use the Whelpwise system in late pregnancy to determine if it is "time".

French Bulldogs (like Lolly here) have that fat little bulldog head, but their conformation is not so extreme as the English Bulldog (and they are a lot smaller,too).  They generally breed with natural service, and some of them are able to free whelp (have their babies without assistance).  Many, though (like Lolly here), do require C-sections to deliver the pups.  She looks a little woozy here, because she's still recovering from anesthesia in this picture.  That little touch of color is the Vetrap tape on her I.V. catheter.

In her case we didn't know the conception date, and her owners (while they are generally very conscientious) did not invest in the Whelpwise system.  The day that we delivered these guys, they weren't sure that she was actually in labor yet.  She just barely had any milk (which could happen 2 days before whelping or 2 hours before whelping, or not at all).  It was a Saturday morning, and I was thinking, "Well, great.  I'll have to check her every few hours all weekend."  As it happened, her cervix was already dilated completely and I could feel the top of a puppy head.  Time for surgery... right now.

And here they are, at 6 weeks old (this week), getting their first immunizations, and looking for homes.  If the folks will just send me the link, I'll post it so you can check out which ones are still available

Fan-Belt Kitty, Day 36

Here's Alley back for another check-up, 36 days after getting caught in the fan-belt.  She looks pretty good overall, though she hasn't grown her hair back, obviously.

You may recall when we started this case that I noted it's hard to tell whether traumatized skin will survive or not.  An area can look pretty decent, yet have its circulation irreparably damaged. Days later, it becomes apparent that you are going to lose it.  That's what we saw at day 9.

There were a couple of other areas that developed a hard crust, but didn't slough off at that time.  There was a spot on the outside of her right thigh, and her remaining tail had a pretty large area, as well.  When I've seen these in the past, the crust has eventually sloughed, leaving a new, pink skin underneath (rather than the yucky giant hole that we saw on day 9).

That's what the patch on the side of the thigh did, but the tail was a different story.  Alley's owner hadn't really noticed a problem, but on the way to the clinic, the tip of the tail came off.  Well, the skin on the tip of the tail, anyway.  The remaining tail has pink skin on it, but the tip does look a little raw.  It remains to be seen how this will finally heal, and whether it will grow hair or not.  Scar tissue has no hair follicles, so we might be up for one more surgery to get the tail into a nice non-painful (and more cosmetically appealing) situation. 

This has got to be one of the funkiest things I have ever seen. I think that eventually this will just be a bad memory for Alley as she goes into her new, more sheltered, and bob-tailed life.

Spayed female dog still having "heat cycles"?!

That could be a tabloid headline, though I guess it's pretty tame compared to "Elvis sighted in laundromat!" or "Politician actually admits lying!".  The point is that it's weird -- dogs who have been spayed have no uterus and no ovaries, so how could they still be having estrus cycles and coming "in heat"?

Once upon a time, about 28 years ago, I spayed a Scottish Terrier.  She continued to have heat cycles, and I was mystified (not to mention mortified).  That is NOT supposed to happen.

Now, I have to tell you: when you're performing an ovario-hysterectomy on a dog, sometimes it's pretty hard to pull the ovaries up out of the abdominal cavity.  If you're not careful, you might cut things a little close and leave some ovary in there.  When you've cut things off, you need to inspect what you removed and be sure the whole ovary is there (plus a little extra tissue, just to make you feel good about getting  100%). 

If you leave some ovary in the dog, they will continue to cycle regularly, coming in heat every six months. They won't get pregnant, since you've removed the uterus, but they still come in heat, they are still at greater risk for breast cancer, and could even have "female trouble" developing pyometra in the stump of the uterus.

Sometimes, you cut things pretty close, but in the case of the above Scottish Terrier, I recalled vividly that there had been no problems at all.  It was not a "close call".  So, I called the reproductive specialists to ask what I needed to do.  Now you could run hormone assays to see if there is functional ovarian tissue left, but if the dog is coming in heat every six months, you can be pretty sure there is functional ovarian tissue.

Here's the problem: it could be a piece of ovarian tissue the size of a pin-head.  The specialist told me that I could even have implanted some ovarian cells on the body wall by rubbing the ovary against it on the way out.  "Jeez, how am I going to find that?!" He told me to wait until she was sure enough in heat (flaming) and do an exploratory.  Look for a little tiny red thing that looks like ovary. It could be anywhere -- the proverbial needle in a  haystack.

So, what happened, you may ask?  The owners asked, "Can she get pregnant?" and when they found she could not, they refused to allow the exploratory (even at my expense).  They decided to just live with it, and the dog lived a long and happy life, despite cycling every six months.  So, I'll never know if I could have found what I needed to.

This is Tinkerbell.  She was spayed at six months old, and at seven years old has had heat cycles every six months.  And really, lately she hasn't been feeling all that great.  Several years ago, I told her owner what it would take to look for the little tiny piece of ovary and she decided not to do it.  Lately, though it had started to bother both Tinkerbell and her mom more and more, so she said, "We'll do it the next time she comes in heat."

I must say that I had some misgivings.  I had told Mom that I wasn't sure I'd be able to find what we were looking for, even with the dog in heat.  It could be so tiny.  And it could be anywhere in there... I thought.

What I had not counted upon was that whoever did her surgery did an incredibly lousy job... unbelievable, really.  This picture shows a piece of ovary on the right, removed from the usual ovary location.  On the left, also attached to a usual ovary location, we have an entire ovary, which you can't see because it's behind that big thing that looks like a Vienna Sausage.  The "thing" is a section of uterus that is full of pus, sort of a pocket-sized pyometra. It was bigger than her kidney or her colon, and when I first looked at it, I couldn't imagine what it was.  It just didn't occur to me that a surgeon could have left that much uterus in place. 

So, while it was hard to believe, it wasn't all that hard to find.  I sent the tissue off to the pathologist, thinking it must be a tumor or something, but it wasn't.  "Ovary and uterus, filled with pus".  The good news is that Tinkerbell feels better than she has in a long time.

Fan-Belt Kitty, Day 21

Alley still has a few "issues" as they say, but she is stuck back together.  She's eating well, gaining weight, and feeling pretty good.  For a long time she did NOT feel pretty good.  Her whole body took a beating, not just her skin.  We know she must have been thoroughly bruised inside and out, even though we didn't open her body cavity to look at things.  Just as it took time for external tissue to die and slough off, it took time for bruised tissue internally to heal.

Here's a close-up of her suture line.  When her hair grows back, the scar will hardly be noticeable. Of course, her tail is a lot shorter than it used to be, but she can live with that.  It's really great to have a committed owner who is  willing and able to give the patient the care she needs.

Fan-Belt Kitty, Day 11

Alley came back in so that we could recheck things and remove the surgical drains.  It's looking good here. Very minimal swelling and drainage.  I'm getting really optimistic. 

Fan-Belt Kitty Follow-up, Day 9

I'm way behind on updating the Blog.  Too many long days and late nights.   After 3 weeks,  Alley had mostly  recovered from her ordeal under the hood.  I thought you might find the follow-up interesting.

As you may recall (if you followed the above link), Alley was caught in the fan-belt and the friction crushed and cooked her skin, as well as tearing it.  So, nine days after the initial injury and repair, we find that some of the skin we carefully sewed together has lost its circulation and died. You say you can't see it very well?  Well, it's time for my close-up, Mr. DeMille.

So, time for another attempt at repair.  This time we hope to do better, as everything that was going to die should be dead by now.  There is still contaminated infected tissue, but this time we will sew up living skin instead of questionable skin.  Also, with any luck, the hole won't be so big -- the skin that lived will have stuck down to the underlying tissue (we hope).   You can see where things are pulling apart here. The dark stuff is dead skin and the "light stuff " is a hole where things are pulling apart.

Here's the dead stuff I peeled off, and here's the hole I have left.

Things didn't pull apart nearly so much as the first time, and the tissue looks pretty healthy (although still pretty gross and disgusting).

So, we trimmed back to live tissue, put surgical drains in again, and put a nice bandage on.  She's still taking pain medicine and antibiotics.  (To be continued)