Giggling while using the gigli wire

After we closed on Saturday, I was sitting at my desk going through my stack of files. One of my clients called to say that his dog had got the bone she was chewing stuck in her mouth. I told him to come right over. I was picturing that the bone was caught in the hard palate. I hadn't pictured this. There was no way that the bone was coming off while she was awake.

So, under a general anesthetic she went. This way, I was able to use my gigli wire to get it off. The gigli wire is a surgical wire used to cut through bone smoothly. I was able to slide it through and start sawing. Her Dad, provided counter balance. It only took 10 seconds to saw through. I popped it off and woke her up. Another successful day at the office!

Years of Searching

Today was the day I found my paper!

COX, M.G., ANDERSON, D.M. and RYON, J. 1997. Comparative digestibility by wolves (Canis Iupus) and Coyotes (Canis Iatrans) fed feedstuffs of animal origin. Can. J. Anim. Sci. 77:560.

Doesn't it look official?!!? My first(long story) maiden name was Cox and I was thrilled when I got to work with the wolves and coyotes at the Canadian Wolf Research Centre in 1996-1997. This was during my final year at the Nova Scotia Agricultural College (now known as the Dalhousie Agricultural Campus) and everyone in their last year had to do a research project. I was told later that the project I worked on could have qualified for a Masters program!!! What I also didn't know was that this project was going to take me out of class so much. When my professors wanted to let me know that I needed to study for a test, they would come find me in the lab where I basically lived for about 4 months.

Over the years I have looked for this paper as I have many fond memories of working with the animals. It was bitterly cold that winter and yet I had fun getting to know the animals. This is also the only time in my life that I was actually interested in picking up the scat (poop). Mom always had to nag me to clean up after the dogs and my mutterings about how I felt about it were not exactly positive!

Here is one of my test subjects. He looked forward to me coming with the food everyday. One day, he actually nipped at my butt to get me to move faster towards the area where I would place his food. I don't think he got the reaction he was looking for cause I started laughing so hard. Here I was, alone in the 1 acre pen with a wolf trying to herd me.

If you are bored, go to this link and find page 20. There you will find the abstract. Woohoooooo!!! I am published.

Panda hugs

Another item on the bucket list checked off! I got to go to China. We had been told by our fantastic travel agents, Dave and Arlene, of Pace Setter Travel, that we would be able to see the Pandas. I never dreamed that I would ever get to hold a Panda. Absolutely thrilling to put it mildly.

You can imagine the surprise when the Panda was brought in. I had been under the impression that we would be holding a baby. The baby basically dwarfed me.

I was exposed to the most extraordinary example of positive reinforecment while I was there. Panda bears are not the friendliest animals on earth. However, the way they are handled at this facility, they are completely comfortable with humans. Who wouldn't be when you have the association of sitting on an excited person's lap while eating your favorite bamboo shoots, honey and apples?

Not more anal glands!

Anyone who thinks that being a veterinarian is a glamorous, fun job where you get to play with puppies and kittens all day is delusional! Fun, yes but after your first run in with an anal gland, no glamor! I seem to be having a run of patients needing help regarding their anal glands. With this in mind, I took a picture of one of my most recent sacculectomy cases to show off.

Let's go back to basics. Anal glands are the scent secreting glands located just inside the internal and external sphincter muscles of the rectum. There is one on either side of the anus between 3-4 o'clock and 8-9 o'clock. Normally, when the dog (or cat) defecates, the anal glands are self expressed. Problems occur for a number of reasons. Some of these include when the material becomes too thick to easily be expressed, the ducts leading from the glands to the anus become blocked, the area becomes inflammed leading to blockage of the ducts, the glands become infected or rupture of the gland. The list goes on.

When deciding to go forward with surgery, you have to weigh the pros and cons seriously. Pros: no more smelly glands that can become infected or ruptured (takes 7 - 9 weeks to heal and are much more likely to rupture again). Cons: fecal incontinence, infection, inflammation, dehiscence of the incisions. This is not a surgery to be taken lightly.

So when we have a case where we need to remove them, I want to avoid a particular complication at all costs. Fecal incontinence is no fun. The dog is just walking along, feces falls out and s/he has no idea it happened. I have only had one case where it occured and it resolved in two weeks.

One of my tools is coloured wax. Who knew that Crayola crayons would have so many uses! It can be a bloody surgery and having a contrasting colour really helps. During the surgery prep I infuse both the glands with the colored wax. This allows me to make my incision just that much further away from the anus; thereby decreasing the chance I will tick the nerves to the sphincters off.

Back to the picture. I made an incision over the gland so you could see how thick it was from the chronic infections. At the bottom of the picture you can see the duct. Since I didn't place a ruler by the gland, it is difficult to have perspective on the actual size. Small, but large enough to be a pain in the......well, you get the idea!

Dental surprise!

One of my patients, Tazo, was having a hard time chewing her food so she was brought in for an exam. Her 108 (really big upper molar had some gum recession and purulent (abcess material) along the gum line. We scheduled her for surgery.

Well, today was the day. We took a radiograph to see what was going on with the bone around the tooth and to see if there were any tooth root abcesses. I was not expecting to see this picture. The entire back root was gone, as was the bone from infection. It also usually takes anywhere from 20-40 minutes to remove this tooth but it only took half the time. The biggest problem was getting enough gum tissue to cover the sockets once I got all the "debris" out of them.

Here is the after picture with the area sutured close. No more wiggly, painful tooth! Plus, her breath doesn't clear a room out now.

I saw red!

This week, we got a call that an emergency was coming in and they were just a few minutes out. Dog versus horse. That is about as heart warming as reading a Dean Koontz book.

In came Soda with blood coming from the right nostril and the right eye trying to leave its socket. The picture kind of tells the story for me.

Everything was bloody. The anterior chamber (area of eye in front of pupil was full of blood, the sclera (white of the eye) was bulging and the entire eye was being pushed out by the hematoma that was likely bleeding behind the eye itself. The swollen eyelids were basically holding the eye in place.

I was so proud of my staff. We got things happening pretty quickly. Stephanie drove to Troy's clinic to get non-absorbable suture (I only had absorbable), Kelly, PJ, Claire and Caitie got her pre-meded and under a general anesthetic while Jac and Belle rearranged my schedule so we could do the procedure.

The procedure is pretty neat when you don't think about what would happen if you accidently poked the eye with the needle............You basically use the eyelids as the bandage. The eyes stay lubricated and by suturing the eyelids closed, it stops the bleeding. To make sure the eyelids don't rip (well, if you don't like gross stuff, you should have stopped reading sooner!) I used small pieces of IV tubing as anchors. We will remove the sutures in 2 weeks and see what is happening. There is a chance she may be blind in that eye but as long as she is comfortable, that is the most important thing!

Adrenaline rush

There are a number of emergencies that can cause an adrenaline rush in a veterinarian. A hit by car, cat straining to urinate, seizures and a GDV (gastric dilation and volvulus) aka bloat.

A young Golden Retriever, named Harry, wasn't acting like himself. He was fine when he'd been fed around 6am but at 9am he just wasn't himself. He was retching, vomiting and eating grass hastily (98% of dogs eat grass just because they like the taste of it, just ask all four of my dogs).

I was relieved when I felt Harry's abdomen. His stomach was quite large but it wasn't hard like a basketball. His intestines were also pretty gassy feeling. I was also happy the history included vomiting up grass. Classically, GDV dogs try to vomit but nothing can come up. Off we went to take a radiograph.

What I did not want to see was a twisted stomach. If you look closely at this picture you will see the typical look of GDV. It looks like Popeye, the sailor, is flexing his biceps. When this is what you see, you either fly into surgery or perform humane euthanasia. Once the blood supply has been cut off from the twist of the stomach on itself, you have a very limited period of time before the stomach starts to die.

You can imagine how happy I was to see that the stomach was just significantly enlarged. There is another radiograph showing the gas extended right back to the rectum. We put a stomach tube down his throat to remove some of the gas and then admitted him for observation. We needed to make sure that if his stomach started to torse that we deal with it immediately.

He was taken on regular walks (helped to air out the treatment room as his gas was a nasty smell of success)! His folks also came to walk him a few times as well. By the end of the day, he was starting to act like his goofy normal self! The radiograph taken prior to him going home made us all so happy. The stomach was normal in size and only the large colon was gas filled. Yay Harry!!!!