Hello lovelies!
Rushan, aka fourpawsandasyringe, is a second year vet tech student in Singapore. They, and many of their classmates, wish to use this diploma as a pathway into vet school. However they are finding it difficult to stay motivated, SO this is where you come in!
I’m sure many of you have had this issue in the past and found your own way of overcoming it (or at least attempted to haha), right? Well, Rushan is in the process of filming and interviewing vets and vet students to do just that. It would be great if you could lend a hand and film yourself answering the questions found under the cut :D
Please contact them for further information and also to obtain their email to send your video to.
Thank you so much!
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Cooper, a 3 year old munchkin cat, was brought in after vomiting a 20cm long ribbon, 13 elastic hair ties, and pieces of tape. The first image is one of the initial radiographs taken which showed several foreign bodies present in Cooper’s stomach. He showed no signs of distress or pain when his abdomen was palpated.
The vet administered 3 mL of a hairball laxative to help pass the hair ties through the intestines. After an hour, another set of radiographs showed that it was unsuccessful. Cooper soon vomited 3 hair ties, long pieces of string, a hairball, and some confetti. However, the foreign body was still lodged in the pylorus. The remaining hair ties and pieces of ribbon were removed during exploratory surgery.
Compartmentalization
A little something I found on Facebook:
I’m still at work.
The last appointment left about 10 minutes ago.
My co-worker left 2 minutes ago.
I’m waiting for a discharge to come and get their cat so I can go home.
As I’m sitting here in the uber-quiet clinic, a single word keeps coming to mind: Compartmentalization.
It’s what I do.
I suppose it’s what we all do when we work in this line of work.
As much as I hate that I can just push things down and move on, it’s a necessary part of the job. Without it, I honestly don’t think we…I don’t think I could do what I do.
I got a phone call first thing this morning from a guy who has a 1 year old black lab mix named Max. He isn’t a regular client of ours, but he tried calling his own clinic and they’re too booked to see him, so he called us next. I asked what was going on with his dog, he tells me “He’s gravely ill. Seizures. Drooling.”
“Bring him in.”
The guy shows up 25 minutes early for the appointment he had scheduled with me. Comes in, fills out paperwork, tells me the dog had started drooling at midnight, and by 3AM was having a seizure every 15 minutes that were lasting 1-2 minutes each time. I tell him to bring the dog in.
He was so mellow. So unbothered, or unemotional, I didn’t think that the dog was going to be as bad as it sounded.
I was wrong.
He comes in carrying this limp, drooling, tongue-hanging-out dog who is barely out of his puppyhood. We see him coming. My co-worker says, “Jesus Lisa….” and she runs to greet them at the door. I run to find the vet. By the time the vet meets us, the dog is in another seizure. Into the treatment area we all go..a grotesque parade of pain and frantic activity. The vet holds the dog down…my co-worker gets a temp…106.9….I pop an 18g catheter into the forelimb.
The vet is honest…”At this point, his brain is fried. Even if we can get the seizures stopped, he’s not going to be okay.”
The owner tells us to euthanize him.
We do.
His suffering is over before my 12cc syringe is empty.
His owner is upset in the way that tough guys are upset…shifting weight from foot to foot, trying not to meet our eyes…
“What do you think happened doc?”
Possible causes are discussed…epilepsy…ingestion of a toxin..trauma….head injury….the truth is we’ll never know.
I pat Max and stroke his fur as his owner goes to pay his bill. He comes back and carries his dog to the truck to take home and bury.
Before I even have time to finish cleaning up the treatment area, I hear my co-worker holler for someone to give her a hand. She’s got a standard poodle and border collie puppy who need some snuggles…and vaccines….
…so the day continues…and we keep doing what we do…taking care of the ones we can help, while silently grieving for the ones we can’t.
Compartmentalization
Here we have a 13 year old Cavalier King Charles Spaniel, named Patch. He attempted to snatch a chicken kebab at a BBQ, but somehow managed to swallow a 15cm skewer instead. Although the blunt end was swallowed first, he suffered punture wounds to this oesophagus, shoulder, and rib cage. He recovered quite well, 80 stitches later, and his owner, Rosemary, made sure to throw out the skewer… just in case.
It was the second time this dog had been hit by a car, sadly he didn’t make it. His family also lost another dog in the same incident, unfortunately he was later put to sleep due to really bad breakages in his pelvis and both hind legs.
‘Eggless’ chick laid by hen in Sri Lanka
A Sri Lanka hen has given birth to a chick without an egg, in a new twist on the age-old question of whether the chicken or the egg came first.
Instead of passing out of the hen’s body and being incubated outside, the egg was incubated in the hen for 21 days and then hatched inside the hen.
The chick is fully formed and healthy, although the mother has died.
The government veterinary officer in the area said he had never seen anything like it before.
PR Yapa, the chief veterinary officer of Welimada, where it took place, examined the hen’s carcass.
He found that the fertilised egg had developed within the hen’s reproductive system, but stayed inside the hen’s body until it hatched.
A post-mortem conducted on the hen’s body concluded that it died of internal wounds.
The BBC’s Charles Haviland in Colombo says that the story has made headlines in Sri Lanka, with the Sri Lankan Daily Mirror’s concluding: “The chicken came first; not the egg.”
Burned puppies beat the odds
Two puppies badly burned in an accidental fire in early February have beaten the odds and soon will be well enough to leave the specialist veterinary facility that’s been caring for them in Thousand Oaks.
Veterinarian Bonnie Werner of the Pet Emergency Clinic and Specialty Hospital on North Moorpark Road said the staff is planning a puppy release party for April 23.
“It will be really wonderful to see them both go to a real home and a real family,” she said. “We’ve learned just how amazing dogs can be, and they’ve exceeded our expectations in every way.
“We worried about how much pain they were in and whether this was the right decision for them, and now we know it was absolutely the right thing to do.”
Natalia, a black-and-white pit bull terrier mix, and Phoenix, a brown Dachshund mix, suffered third-degree burns over more than half of their tiny bodies in the blaze in Kern County. They were so severely injured, it wasn’t known whether they would survive.
Zach Skow of the Tehachapi-based rescue group Marley’s Mutts came to the aid of the puppies and on Feb. 13, nine days after the fire, he brought them to Thousand Oaks because the Pet Emergency Clinic has a hyperbaric chamber that can be beneficial in the burn healing process.
The clinic has been treating the dogs for free with the help of one of the world’s leading burn experts, Dr. Richard A. Grossman.
Grossman, who founded the Grossman Burn Centers and is based at West Hills Hospital, volunteered his expertise after hearing of the puppies’ plight.
He and his team carried out several procedures on the dogs, including the pioneering use of bovine dermis to cover the wounds, since skin grafts using the puppies’ own skin weren’t possible.
Grossman has visited once or twice a week to check on their progress and bring special supplies.
“It’s awesome. He’s a really cool man, and we’ve learned a lot for sure,” said veterinary technician Chelsea Cummings.
Now 4 months old, Natalia and Phoenix, nicknamed Natty and Phe Phe by the staff, are happy, playful and ready for the next phase in their already eventful lives.
Both dogs have large scars where burns have healed. Natalia still has a small wound at the base of her back that has yet to fully close. The scar tissue makes her skin so tight right now that she cannot fully straighten her growing long back legs and will need more procedures to release the scar tissue.
Werner said the outpouring of support from the community has been tremendous.
“We’ve had people ask to adopt them, but there’s a very long line,” Werner said.
Skow visited the puppies at the clinic on Thursday, and said, “Everybody’s clamoring to be a part of their future.”
As a result of his new friendship with Grossman, Skow has been visiting the burn center at West Hills Hospital, showing patients photographs and videos of the puppies and sharing their story.
He said the plan is to make sure the puppies stay in the area and serve as therapy dogs visiting burn patients at the hospital.
“Their story is miraculous from beginning to end,” he said. “The sky’s the limit as far as what they’ll be able to put back into society.”
Skow said he hopes the public will come out and celebrate on April 23.
“It’s such a community effort, and there’s been so much love and appreciation. We just want to get as many people here as possible,” Skow said.
More party will be forthcoming in the next week or so.
Photo gallery, Video.
A 4 month old French bulldog ate a baseboard, including the nail shown in this radiograph. The dog recovered but had a history of eating various household objects, which were usually passed in bowel movements.
These strong foreign bodies were removed from a 10 month old umbrella cockatoo. The string on the left was passed in faeces the wadded string on the right was endoscopically removed from the proventriculus.
(The black bar in the right corner is 2cm long)
