An Owl of a Day

I may have one of the least boring jobs you could possibly imagine. This week we received a call regarding an owl that was caught on a barbed wire fence. My tech student, Lindsay, has worked with wildlife at the Calgary Wildlife Rehabilitation Centre so she went to get it. In order to bring it in, the wire had to be cut on either side of the owl.

This was a very lucky owl. Generally when they get caught in barbed wire they will often twist so much that they will also cut tendons and ligaments. The wire was only caught in the skin of one of the wings. The area was cleaned, pain medication given and fluids injected under the skin.

After everything we did, it was still not a happy camper. Whenever we checked on it, hissing was heard from inside the carrier. Hopefully it will be happier at the rehab centre.

Medications have needs too

Recently I saw one of my patients because he was suffering from a relapse. This cat has an ulcer on his upper lip called an indolent ulcer. Basically, he started having an allergic reaction to something (unknown at this time) and it caused his body to attack the tissue of his upper lip. Over the past year we have been able to control the ulcer with periodic antibiotics and oral steroids.

You can imagine my surprise when I entered the room to find the ulcer had eaten away approximately 3-5mm of tissue from the upper lip. At the first sign of a flare up, his owner grabs the medication to prevent this sort of thing from occurring. His owner couldn’t understand why the medication wasn’t working this time.

Luckily, his owner brought the medication with her. The antibiotic that helped in the past was out of its foil packaging. There are certain medications that must be vacuum packed and protected from light in order to keep them stable. Unfortunately, once they’ve been exposed for 24 hours, they are unusable. In this instance, humidity in the air breaks the medication down so it will not work and potentially be unsafe.

We will be doing a recheck in the next week to see how he is responding to the new medication. I’ll keep you posted.

It is NOT spite!!

Here is a conversation I have many days of the week.

Me: So, Rover is here for his annual physical and vaccinations. Do you have any concerns about him?
Owner: He’s a really great dog but he hates it when we leave him alone in the evening.
Me: Why do you say that?
Owner: He always picks one of the kid’s beds to urinate (or some rendition of that word!) on to spite us.
Me: Have you considered that most cases of inappropriate urination are caused by a medical condition?

We then continue the chat while I do a physical exam. In most cases I recommend a urinalysis. However, there was one case where I didn’t bother doing a urinalysis and went straight to a radiograph because I could actually feel the stones in the bladder. We postponed the vaccines and scheduled surgery for the next morning. The bladder literally “popped” out of the incision for me to fish out seven stones. One of the coolest bladder surgeries I have ever done!

Doing the best we can with nutrition

AA
One of the most confusing yet important topics I discuss on a daily basis is nutrition. Clients get such an influx of information from friends, family, the internet, books and so on. All they want to do is to pick the best possible food for their beloved pet.

So many people rely on the labels and try to compare ingredients. This is so frustrating for them since there are so few regulations. Any pet food company can label ingredients however they want. For example, one company’s definition of by-product will be vastly different from another’s.

One of my favorite pieces of advice to owners is to look for “AAFCO clinical feeding trial” printed on the bag. If they can’t find it, contact the company to find out what kind of feeding trials have been performed. There are a few companies that have run the proper trials but haven’t advertised it on the bag.

All that is involved in a clinical feeding trial is sending a portion of the food to a laboratory. Then ALL the feces from the dogs/cats being fed that food in a six week period is sent to the lab so the digestibility can be definitively determined. As an undergraduate student I did a digestibility study using wolves and coyotes and I can attest to the fact that it is only inhumane to the human involved.

By knowing that a diet is properly balanced (not only for protein, fat and carbohydrates, but vitamins and minerals as well) it allows us to make the choices for our pets that are in their best interest.

School/Group Tours

Something that I really enjoy doing is school or group tours at the hospital. We periodically schedule these tours and we generally start with a viewing of the surgery room through the staff room observation window. If the groups aren't too big I may even take them right into the surgery suite. After that we go back to the treatment room where we all gather round to do show and tell.

What I have found that gets the most fun reactions from both kids and parents/teachers alike are the worms. Grossed-out fascination is visible all around when I show the samples of tapeworms and roundworms I have collected over the years.

Roundworms are a zoonotic disease (people can become infected) and one study has shown that 17% of children have antibodies to this parasite, meaning that they have been exposed to the worm at some point in their lives. The Centre for Disease Control (CDC) recommends we deworm our pets approximately four times yearly. This significantly decreases the risk to our children and immuno-compromised human family members.

The tour continues with obedience and trick demonstrations with my dogs and the rescue cat, Jasper. Needless to say, after the tour everyone is more than eager to wash their hands – always a good habit to get into after any interactions with pets.

If you are interested in having a tour of our clinic, please feel free to contact us.

Eva's input in dental surgery

When I invest in certain “toys” for my hospital, I tend to name them. Eva is my digital dental radiograph machine. I can have a radiograph (x-ray) within seconds and determine whether the tooth (or teeth) can be salvaged or need to be removed.

Many people assume that animals will always show pain and stop eating when they have a sore mouth. If only that were so. I am always amazed how “normal” they act even when there are slab fractures of the teeth, loose teeth or even abscesses of the tooth root. What gives me satisfaction are the phone calls from owners who are amazed because their dog or cat is acting happier once the dental surgery has been performed.

Bud is one of my more recent cases. Over the years, he has had a few dental procedures. During his biannual senior exam, I found that he had progressed to stage 2 out of 4 dental disease. This means he has moderate tartar and gingivitis. His family and I decided it would be a good idea to schedule bloodwork, then a thorough cleaning and polishing.

It turned out to be an excellent day to have Eva around. While one of my AHTs was charting and probing his teeth, she found a pocket around one of the teeth of the lower jaw. I decided to take a radiograph. It turned out that two teeth needed to be extracted. There was both bone loss and abscesses at the tooth roots. Without Eva, I would not have known how extensive the dental disease actually was in the mouth.

According to his owners, he was back to better than his normal self in just a few days. Bud also wanted to play fetch again, which they hadn't realized he'd stopped playing a number of months ago.

It has to be a full moon…

A couple brought their dog in because her stomach was getting larger. As I did my physical exam, I asked certain questions, such as “Is she spayed?” (No), “When was her last heat cycle?” (Two months ago), “Was she around any intact males while unsupervised?” (Yes). As you can probably guess, the top differential (aka “possible cause”) would be pregnancy. This was confirmed when I palpated her abdomen and felt puppies moving. Upon further discussion with her owners, we decided our plan of action would be to do a radiograph (x-ray) to see how many puppies she would be having and get them information on how to deliver a litter of puppies. The owners left her with us so they could run some errands.

The radiograph was both cute (little babies) and a bit alarming – one of the puppies was already in the pelvic canal! We then took her temperature, which was 37.5’C. Normal is 38.5’C. This is important, because after a pregnant female’s temperature drops one degree, we generally have puppies within 12 to 24 hours. As my staff was setting up an area for her, in case she started to whelp, the first strong contraction came. During the next hour, out came five perfect little healthy puppies. In my line of work, we usually see the cases with problems, not the naturally occurring miracle, so we were all a little excited.

Now, you need to imagine yourself as the owners. You have just been told your dog is pregnant; you go do errands and then return to the hospital to look at a radiograph that will tell you how many puppies to expect. Instead, you enter the clinic, and are greeted with “ “Congratulations, you are the proud grandparents of five puppies, here they are!” Your vet isn’t pointing at a radiograph, she is pointing to your dog with puppies suckling from her. To this day, I wish I had a picture of the looks on their faces when we gave them the news.

This is a compilation of a few cases and I have been thrilled with the miracle of each one.