Your Pet's Best Friend

Eclampsia revisited

I just recently posted on eclampsia.  I bet I hadn't seen a case in six months, maybe a year.  Tonight I had the third case in two weeks, and all of them pretty good sized dogs. This kid is supposed to be a Chihuahua, but she weighed fifteen pounds.  Of course, maybe five pounds of that was a killer set of jugs. At least she had the decency (luck) to have her crisis during office hours.

This is Minnie, tonight's star attraction.  She looks like she's mostly Dachshund, but fortunately she has longer legs, so it was easier to start her I.V.

Minnie is sporting a big rack, as well.  She was eating mostly table food, and mostly meat, at that.  Meat: it's high in phosphorus (which pulls calcium) and zero in calcium.  I'm not saying she would have avoided this problem by eating a good puppy food, but she might have.   

The real question is, how do I avoid this problem?  I've got stuff I need to do at home... like sleep.

Eclampsia, aka "Milk Fever", aka Post-partum hypocalcemia

The phone rang at 3:00AM.  This is never good: I am not pretty and I need my beauty sleep. "Do you make house-calls?"  It turns out the guy got up to use the bathroom and found his dog stiff and twitching uncontrollably. "Is this a female dog?" Yes.  "Has she had puppies recently?" Two weeks ago. "What kind of dog is it?" Part Rat-terrier and part Feist [I thought those were two different names for the same breed. In fact, I still think that.]  She needs an intravenous calcium injection, and I'm going to work... at three o'clock in the morning.  I'll be discombobulated for days.

So here she is.  You can't see her rigidity, her shaking, her fever. 

What you can see are the hardest-working glands in show-business.  This gal is running a do-it-yourself dairy, but she failed to read that little disclaimer about "professional driver, closed course, do not attempt".   She didn't see the asterisk: "Results not typical".

This dog is actually not the typical eclampsia sufferer.  While I have seen Beagles and even larger dogs with the condition, the typical patient is a very small dog like a Chihuahua.  She's milking heavily.  While it might occur even before birth, or at any time during nursing, seven to fourteen days after birth is pretty typical.  The bitch cannot cope with the demands of putting so much calcium in the mammary pipelines, and her blood calcium levels get low.  When this happens, the nerve-muscle electrical function gets screwy, resulting in uncontrollable muscle contractions.  This, like shivering, causes a rise in temperature (though to much higher, even dangerous levels, as high as 107 degrees).  Convulsions result and the combination of seizures and high temperature will prove fatal if not treated.

The longer this goes on, the more difficult it is to treat.  In early stages, one can almost always achieve a rapid reversal of signs by giving a slow intravenous injection of calcium gluconate.  It is miraculous to see the dog return to normal.  In more advanced and severe cases, intravenous fluids may be needed to support and cool the patient, and anti-convulsant sedatives may be needed for the seizures, but most can be saved.

We used to think these dogs didn't have enough calcium in their diets (which certainly wouldn't help anything).  Breeders used to give the bitches calcium supplements.  This turns out to be of little help.  It is a good idea to feed a high-quality puppy food during the last half of pregnancy and nursing.  This provides the extra protein, calories, vitamins and minerals needed for gestation and nursing.  However, there are plenty of dogs who have crummy diets and they don't get eclampsia.  The dogs that get it just can't handle the metabolic stress of nursing, and it doesn't seem to matter what you feed them. 

Since being "milked out" is what stimulates more milk production, you have to quit milking the dog.  In other words, the puppies get moved from the mama to the bottle -- no more nursing.  Since this condition appears to stem from a flaw in mama's metabolism, she needs to get out of the mommy business.  If she has another litter, you can count on another emergency call.

This is really my least favorite emergency, as I can't be self-righteous about it.  It's not due to neglect or bad judgment.  It's not like letting the dog run loose, or feeding it garbage, or forgetting that you left rat-poison behind the couch.  It is a true emergency, in that it just emerges, springing out like Athena from the head of Zeus.  Not only that, if I don't go treat it, the dog will die.  It really can't wait.  The only thing the owner could really do to prepare would be to get informed about the problem when the dog gets pregnant, and keep some Calsorb on hand (a rapidly absorbed oral calcium supplement) for emergency treatment at home.  Speaking of getting informed, here's a link to a great article on birthing puppies from Veterinary Partner.

Ovarian surprise.

We tend to think of a "spay" as a routine operation.  It's usually routine for me, as I've done hundreds of them -- I know what I will do first, what I'll do second, etc.  For the patient, it's a once-in-a-lifetime major operation -- a complete hysterectomy, removing the entire uterus and ovaries.

Sometimes it's not as routine for me as I thought it would be.  This little kitty seemed just fine on physical examination, and her owners had noticed nothing out of the ordinary.  She had a little suprise in store for me, though.

The ovary on the left is normal, about 5mm by 10mm.  I had to enlarge my incision to remove the second ovary, since this cyst had enlarged it to 15mm by 20mm.  I don't think we'll have any complications as a result of this abnormality.  I'm glad we got it out of there, though.

Cats are really good at getting pregnant.

This is Lucy.  You can easily see that she is a calico cat, so you know that she must be female (since it's genetically sex-linked: all calico cats are girls).  What you can't see is that she's only about one year old (she showed up at the owner's home as a kitten one year ago).  If you looked at her teeth, you might be able to guess that, though.  You also can't see that she's an "outside cat" from this picture, but the folks are happy to tell you that (from the number of fleas she's carrying you might have suspected it ).

Now that you know she is one year old, lives outside, and is a pretty girl, can you guess whether she is pregnant or not?  Her owner acted shocked when I told her the joyful news.  "How could that happen?!"  Actually, a more appropriate question would be how could it NOT have happened?

Cats are seasonally poly-estrous.   They are not like dogs.  A female dog has reproductive cycles (estrous cycles, "heat" cycles) that last around 3 to 4 weeks, and most of them cycle twice per year, at no particular time.   Cats shut down the kitten-maker in the late fall and winter, when the food supply is less certain for them (in nature, anyway).  With spring, they begin to cycle constantly.  They are "in heat" (sexually receptive and fertile) for four days, out for eight, in for four, out for eight, in for four, etcetera.  This continues until the cat gets pregnant, or next winter, whichever comes first.

A cat in heat tends to act a little crazy, yowling and assuming odd postures and behaviors.  I have made more than one night call for a "dying cat" who proved to simply be in a lusty mood.

Cats are induced ovulators, which means that the ovaries don't release the eggs until mating takes place.  This means that when cats are trying to make babies, they don't "miss the day" of ovulation.  When it comes to getting pregnant, they are reliable little machines.

After nine weeks of gestation, here come the kittens, and aren't they cute? Now she nurses them.  You'd think she'd be too busy doing this to get pregnant again, but you'd be wrong.  It's quite common for the queen (the momma) to be two weeks pregnant by the time the first litter are weaned.

Cats in Lucy's situation usually crank out two litters per season, and three is not uncommon.   That's why it would have been kindly old Doc Mobley who was shocked had the cat NOT been pregnant.  If you don't want  new kittens around the homestead, you had better hurry up and schedule some surgery for those nubile young cats.