Practice News
Beware of those Barbecue thieves!!Monday 19th June, 2006
Summer is well and truly upon us now and with all this lovely sun, most of us can’t wait to get outside and fire up the barbecues. Most dogs generally seem to enjoy this time of year too, as many of them are partial to a cheeky sausage or burger here and there!
However, if dogs could talk, I suspect that Winnie, the Old English Sheepdog would send out a firm warning to her waggy-tailed friends; just to be careful what they eat!
Winnie came into the hospital last summer as her owner Tammy was concerned that she just wasn’t herself. As an 8 month-old puppy, she was normally a bouncy bright eyed bundle with her nose into everything, especially where food was concerned. Winnie had been very uninterested in her food for a couple of days and had also started to vomit. When examined she seemed sore in her abdomen, so Xrays were taken to try and determine whether, in true Winnie form, she had been eating things she shouldn’t! No obvious stones or foreign bodies could be seen, or a build up of gas, which is a common sign of an intestinal obstruction. Her owner was still concerned that Winnie may have eaten something so we gave her a barium meal. This is a food containing barium dye, and by taking a series of xrays we could watch it moving through Winnie’s intestine. This can sometimes reveal a foreign body that plain radiographs cannot pickup. However, after a number of xrays, we managed to track the barium all the way through, with no evidence of an obstruction.
Still there was no obvious reason as to why Winnie felt so poorly, or why she was so sore. It was decided at this point, to operate on Winnie, to try and get to the bottom of the mystery. Shortly after we began to operate on Winnie we found the cause of the problem. A kebab stick!! She had managed to eat not only the meat, but the entire stick, and this had managed to get all the way through her stomach before perforating part of her small intestine!! Because it was just a thin stick, it hadn’t completely obstructed her intestines, which was why the barium meal had managed to pass all the way through! But it certainly did explain why she felt so poorly!!
The damaged part of her intestines were surgically removed, along with not only the kebab stick, but a number of pieces of plastic and a piece of twig too!!
A couple of hours later Winnie was recovering from her operation, and after a few days was allowed to go home from the hospital, under strict instructions to well and truly stay away from those barbecues!!
Fortunately for Winnie she recovered well, but over the years we have removed a number of bizarre objects from dogs during the summer; from lollipop sticks to corn on the cob husks, and even the odd wine bottle cork!! So have a lovely summer, but make sure you keep an eye on those naughty barbecue thieves!!
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