Your Pet's Best Friend

A visit from the DDAC

My sister, Leah Mobley, is the director of the DDAC (Dunklin Day Activity Center for developmentally challenged adults).  Her dog, Toodles, had some skin tumors removed recently and came back for suture removal today.  She made the visit a field trip for the DDAC clients.  They met some dogs, walked some dogs, and helped with the removal of Toodles's stitches.  It was a change of routine for all of us.   The clinic is not usually quite so full of people.  [Although there is the occasional "Snow White" - one big person and seven little people - when the whole neighborhood appears with one beloved dog.]   It was just a regular day after that: back to our normal chaos.

More Prodigal Great Dane

If you saw the previous post, you may remember how skinny and awful Pepper looked.  After a few weeks of regular groceries, she is much improved.  The best news is that her attitude is even more improved.  She is trusting, friendly, cooperative and obedient, and very cheerful in her new home.  I predict that another month of good nutrition will have her looking even better.  I do love a happy ending.

More goat stuff.

Not so long ago, I posted on a case, noting that goats are not our specialty.  Danged if we don't have another broken-leggedy goat today.  This one is a little fresher, thank goodness, and I think has a pretty good prognosis for return to soundness.  She's a little kid, still growing, so that helps. Her bone-making machinery is still in high gear, so maybe the old dog-n-cat-repair guy can facilitate a good result.  Anyway, we have two months taken care of for our "Shannon and the Goats" calendar.

The prodigal Great Dane returns.

In December, Pepper was purchased from a kennel as a 2-year-old.  She wasn't a family pet, but she seemed friendly enough.  Her new family took her home and she was fine on the ride.  Then they opened the car door and she bolted away.  They couldn't get within six feet of her, and she disappeared.  For weeks, she seemed to have dropped off the face of the earth.  Then she reappeared and Animal Control received at least one call per week (sometimes several per day) about her.  She led a furtive and feral existence, sometimes coming up to be fed, but always wary of being caught.  "Nessie" might have been a better name, as she was so often sighted, but never corralled.

The Animal Control officers tried feeding her, and tried feeding her baits with tranquilizers. They tried darting her with the capture gun.  She sailed over six-foot fences with ease.  On Saturday they finally succeeded in bringing her back alive -- after only three months.  She looks pretty sad in the kennel here.  She looked pretty scary in the official truck with the control pole around her neck and a look in her eye that reminded you of the miner in "The Shooting of Dan McGrew".  "He looked like a man with a foot in the grave, and scarcely the strength of a louse..."

She doesn't look much better up close while she's still full of tranquilizer, covered with dirt and scars and fleas, mighty thin.  We put her up for the night with a big bowl of food and water.  I must confess that I had some concerns about handling her when she woke up.  I think that's what prompted my having a dream of purchasing two horses and a black leopard without any adequate place to put them.  That or the manicotti I had for super... I don't know.

This morning she's feeling much better, has a great appetite, and is not unfriendly, despite her long and difficult adventures.  In addition to another big bowl of Science Diet, I fed her some balls of canned food, most of which had a pill inside: some Capstar for the fleas, de-wormer, Rimadyl for pain, and some antibiotics for the hole in her leg and the ripped-off toenail. 

I don't know that we're exactly "friends" yet, but we're not enemies.  With any luck, she'll be going home tomorrow.

Sometimes you have to stay late.

This is one of those posts that could easily stray from the warm-fuzzy image we'd like to project.  Sometimes a patient is not in a life-threatening situation, yet you feel that his condition is something that just can't wait.  I'm not even going to define paraphimosis (much less post a picture), but that's what the puppy had.  When his owner noticed it early in the morning, he opened the pen to minister to him.  Unfortunately, the puppy ran past him and could not be found again and corralled until nearly five PM. 

That's why it was after five when they showed up at KVC without calling first for an appointment.  I had places to go, and people to see, and miles to go before I sleep, but I decided it just couldn't wait.  When you see the results of something delicate being dragged through the sand all day, it's a little difficult to think about the kid getting no relief for another 18 hours.  So we stayed late, did surgery, and fixed him up.  It messed up my schedule, but it made me feel a lot better, just thinking about him feeling better.

There's no business like snow business.

No snow all winter, beautiful weather last weekend, and global warming... and six inches of snow fell last night.  Actually, it started yesterday afternoon, and by five PM, it was really accumulating.  As the snow increased, the client traffic decreased.  The phones got quiet as people who don't know snow became immersed in it, some running out to play, and others getting ready to snuggle in for the night and hibernate.  That was my plan; I wasn't expecting any calls, which just goes to show how wrong you can be.

The first call was for the Lab puppy who had been let out to romp in the snow... in the un-fenced yard...and then in the street... and then under the car.  Lots of wound cleaning, and a little sewing, and a lot of pain medicine, and she'll be okay.

While I was finishing with her, the second case was seeping blood through the home-made bandage on his paw.  At home, these folks have that green metal edging around the flower beds.  When Max can see it, he just jumps over it, but he couldn't see it under the snow.  The cut wasn't big, but it was deep and severed a big blood vessel.  A little tying-off, a little sewing, pain medicine and a bandage, and he'll be okay.

Number three was a little Pomeranian whose back had gone out.  I guess he could have waited until the next morning, but I was already at the clinic and the owner was willing to brave the storm.  I'm glad we got started with his pain meds as soon as possible (though he had to wait for over 3 hours while the other guys got sewed up).

I worked steadily from 6:30 to 10:30 last night in the snow-storm (not OUT in it, thank goodness, like in the old days when I was doing cattle work in Pocahontas, Arkansas).  This morning, we have a bright, sun-shiny day, though the streets are a bit icy.  No clients, though.  Only two folks showed up.  My receptionist called to check on them and while only one actually asked, "Are you crazy?!", they pretty much all conveyed the same idea (in a more polite way). [And so what if she is? We want to know if you're going to show up for your appointment.]

Yeah, I figured that "snow business" would be "no business", but last night sure fooled me.

Goats are not our specialty

As I said, goats are not our specialty.  We rarely see one and don't pretend to any expertise in that department.  Many veterinarians don't care to see anything but the dogs and cats that they feel most comfortable with.  I mean, if you only see a goat once every five years, how good are you going to be in that department?  I don't turn people down flat (we looked at a mouse with skin problems yesterday), but I do try to send them to the doctor I think can help them the most.  Sometimes that's me, but sometimes it's not.

So... when these folks called 4 weeks ago, and said their goat had a bad leg, I recommended that they see a doctor who sees more livestock.  So they did that, but when it got worse they showed up back here instead.  Of course, at this point, the foot is unsalvageable.  I don't know what it looked like a month ago, but I'm pretty sure it didn't look anything like this.  That's an open fracture and the foot has gangrene.  I'm not giving you a close-up, and you should be glad we don't have "smell-O-vision". 

I wish that the folks had given the first doctor the opportunity to recheck the goat periodically.  I feel sure that he would have picked up on the situation before it got this bad.  Instead, we spent 2 hours on Saturday afternoon (one hour of it actually in surgery) amputating that mess.  Thank goodness for Veterinary Information Network.  The last information I had on goat anesthesia was dated 1992, and I was glad to have immediate access to more current information. 

Here's Shannon with our patient post-op.  Anesthesia went really well. Five minutes after this the goat was up walking on three legs again, minus the gangrene.  She's home with antibiotics and pain meds now.  I was going to show a picture of myself gazing down at the goat (the very picture of "the gentle doctor"), but I was having a bad hair day.

Helping other veterinarians

It's always nice to have a chance to give back.  Today was a good day for me in that regard.  One of my colleagues in a near-by town was the victim of a fire which totally destroyed his clinic.  He is practicing out of a house in which he has improvised a temporary clinic.  You never have enough insurance, and even if you did, you can't wave a check at something and fix it.  When lightning blasted my old X-ray machine, it took six weeks to get a new one installed.  He is without X-ray capacity right now and they brought one of their patients over to our place today.  Helping out was no problem;  I was just so glad that my own clinic wasn't burned down.

Another colleague had made an unusual diagnosis and begun treatment for his patient.  This is a 16-months old Weimaraner who began coughing up blood on Sunday.  Despite the young age of the dog, and it's alleged history of heartworm preventive medicine (and the people have only had the dog for four months -- before that we really don't know), the diagnosis was pulmonary arteriole rupture due to heartworms.  Even though the dog has quit coughing up blood (has quit coughing completely, in fact), and is feeling good (which he wasn't before), the owner just had a hard time believing the problem could be heartworm disease.  I don't blame her.  Even with NO heartworm preventive, we usually wouldn't see signs of disease before the dog was three to five years old.  So, she came to me seeking a second opinion.   We X-rayed the chest, and the signs were all there (not to mention the dog's great response to treatment). Unusual as the case was, I was able to restore the lady's confidence in her regular doctor.  That's a good thing.

The third service was more unusual.  This goes on my "list", along with riding to hounds, delivering a eulogy, playing the piano at a wedding, and so forth.  One of my veterinary school classmates was looking for something different on Valentine's day, and came up with the idea of a "singing valentine", and called me.  I haven't talked to the guy in five years, and today I delivered a singing valentine to his wife's cell-phone voice mail.  ["If I Could Be With You (One Hour Tonight)", in case you wondered].   At least his wife will know he tried.  I'd have to put this in the category of buying flowers that turn out to produce a violent allergic reaction in your sweetheart.  But he tried.

Bug-eyed Dog follow-up

I wrote about Bugsy's surgery in July.  He was in today for a check-up and the owner told me, "He is really seeing better.  He goes up and down the stairs now.  He was afraid to do that before."  Also, his eyes don't look painful anymore. Both are good things.  Yay.

Success story... sort of.

This is Coco.  She doesn't look very remarkable, but she is.  If you were reading here last August, you may remember when I wrote about performing my first pericardiocentesis.   Coco had developed a huge accumulation of fluid around her heart, and this was interfering with it's ability to keep her going.  I felt at the time (and still do) that  a tumor within the pericardial sac is producing the fluid.

At the time, I thought it remarkable that I had been successful in temporarily relieving her situation without damaging her in the process.  She actually did really well for about 10 weeks, when she began feeling as bad as before.  In October, we repeated the procedure.

And on February 4, we did it again.  Six months later, and she's feeling good again after her third experience with an ultra-sound guided needle next to her heart.  This is a small dog, and we got TWO of these babies full of fluid (7 ounces total) out of that sac surrounding her heart.

I still think she's living on borrowed time, but we're getting better terms than the sub-prime mortgage people.  So it's a success story... for now.