Your Pet's Best Friend

Custom Artwork from the past

Once upon a time, there was a very talented young artist named Em Naughton.  Em had a lot more talent than she did money for veterinary services, and so we worked out a deal.  She did these for me more than 30 years ago, but they're still good.

At that time, I was trying to get a brass quintet going.  We had all five instruments (two trumpets, French horn, tuba, and me), but could never get more than four of them to rehearsal at the same time.  I was playing the trombone part on my baritone horn (which is much like a euphonium, which is much like a horn that wants to grow up to be a tuba, but sounds like a trombone, range-wise).  I might have been able to recruit a trombone player, but then I wouldn't have gotten to play.  And it was MY idea.

Brass quintets sometimes have cool names; sometimes the ensemble is very cool, but the name is pretty vanilla: St. Louis Brass Quintet, Canadian Brass.  Since we had such a hard time getting together and my instrument was a little non-standard, I coined the name Irregular Brass (nothing to do with digestion, thank you).

Em did this logo for me, and I put it on a T-shirt, which I still sometimes wear to Municipal Band rehearsal in the summer time.

I have always been a big fan of the Indiana Jones movies (at least the 1st and 3rd) and "Temple of Doom" hadn't been out long when I asked Em to do this one for me.  While I hadn't forgotten about it, it had been in storage for a very long time.  I once used it as "opening credits" for a video about the clinic that I sent to a management consultant.  Other than that, it's been in a closet. Now it's out in the open, or at least it's in my office for my own enjoyment.

How much do I enjoy it?

This much.

Butch the Lion at the Hayti Zoo

Hayti had a zoo? Improbable as that seems today, it really did. When I was a kid, I loved nothing better than going to a zoo. I was always fascinated by animals and loved seeing them. It didn’t occur to me then what their life in a cage must be like, and my enjoyment was unalloyed. It seemed to me that every town should have a zoo, so it seemed to me that Hayti was on the right track and Kennett was behind the times.

A trip to the Hayti zoo was a treat, even though it couldn’t compare to the Memphis zoo. Still, you could see some monkeys, some deer, raccoons, and you could smell the skunk, though you couldn’t see him. There was a black bear named Susie. A sign on her cage said “Susie eats Wonder Bread”. My dad said the bakery probably donated the stale bread they couldn’t sell.

And there was Butch the lion. That’s how it all started, I’m told, but my knowledge of the beginning is all second hand -- before my time. My story comes at the end.

What I’ve heard is that a man acquired the lion as a cub and kept it as a pet. He used to carry it around with him in his truck. When it got too big for him to keep, the good people of Hayti somehow got the idea for a zoo. In 1958 Butch became the property of the City of Hayti. I was told that the original owner would visit him and wrestle with him. I also heard that Dr. Moore, the veterinarian, had his shirt ripped off by Butch.

Folks say you could hear him roaring all over town, and from Butch the lion the town of Hayti grew a zoo.

Fast forward to September of 1979. It was my second year out of veterinary school, and I had moved home after my first year spent in Pocahontas, Arkansas. I got a call from the city of Hayti asking if I would take a look at Butch, as he wasn’t doing well.

In those days, we had the idea that a veterinarian ought to be ready and willing to look at any living creature under man’s dominion. Referral to a specialist wasn’t a ready option in our rural area, so “stepping out of your comfort zone” was part of the territory on a regular basis. And we’re talking about working on a lion – how cool is that? Of course I would take a look at Butch.

When I arrived at the park in Hayti, I met Vee Holland. Vee had been the city employee who cared for the zoo until he retired. He continued to take care of the zoo without pay in his retirement. The city wasn’t exactly flush with cash, and they weren’t investing in the zoo. In fact, they city council had proposed closing it a few years earlier. This was politically unpopular. I’m not sure if there were mobs with torches and wooden pitchforks, but I heard they hung the mayor in effigy. At any rate, the city government backed down in a hurry from the “save our lion” folks. Despite budget woes and the impracticality of maintaining the zoo, getting rid of Butch was political suicide. Ignoring his health was getting unhealthy, too.

One investment that they had made was to put a chain link fence around the building to separate Butch from his admirers. Butch lived in a concrete block building that could be heated in winter, and had a fan for summer. There was a repurposed jail cell on the front where he could get fresh air and be admired. When I had visited as a kid, you could stand at the cage bars and stick your hand right inside, had you been so foolish. I knew a girl who got spattered with lion urine as she was admiring Butch. Spectators were safe from that now.

Butch was supposed to be about 22 years old (which I learned was pretty old for a lion in any zoo, even a big metropolitan zoo). He was very thin, and lethargic. There were some skin tumors on his face. Vee told me that he wouldn’t eat anything but beef kidneys. He offered Butch other things, but he had no interest in anything else. There was a packing house in Wardell at that time and Vee drove there himself to get them. They supplied the kidneys at no charge, which was a win for the city, but hardly a balanced diet for Butch.

As you might guess, we hadn’t spent any time on lion medicine in veterinary school. Fortunately, I had two good resources. As a student, I had spent two months with Dr. R.E. Hertzog, who cared for the animals in the Kansas City Swope Park Zoo. The veterinarian in residence at the Memphis Zoo was Dr. Mike Douglas, a native of Senath, and he was always happy to help me when I had an exotic animal question. They helped me put together a plan of treatment.

I was surprised that I couldn’t just present the treatment plan and estimated cost. I did that, but then they had to have a special city council meeting to approve it. After the earlier brouhaha, nobody wanted to be the point man on a decision affecting Butch. As Benjamin Franklin said, “We must all hang together, or we shall surely hang separately.” Nobody wanted to be hung, not even in effigy.

Vee was really glad to be doing something for Butch. He was very attached to him. He cared for all the animals (which was Butch, Susie and two monkeys now), but Butch was special.

 

 

 

 

Butch would drink out of a garden hose for him, and Vee would reach through the bars to pet him. Vee encouraged me to pet Butch, but I let discretion be the better part of valor.

 

 

We started treatment with anti-inflammatories for his arthritis, nutritional supplements to balance his diet, and anabolic steroids to stimulate appetite and weight gain. When it was time to give him injections, I used a syringe on the end of a pole.

Butch responded to treatment. His appetite and condition improved and I felt pretty good about myself as a lion doctor. Everybody was happy. It was a short-lived success, though.

I didn’t hear anything for a couple of months, and assumed that “no news is good news”. That was not correct. The next call came in December. Butch “wasn’t doing well”. An understatement, if there ever was one.

When I arrived, Butch was prostrate. He hadn’t been able to rise for a couple of days, much less eat anything. This was the first time I had actually entered the cage with him. He was much thinner than the first time I saw him. Too much time lying down on the concrete had put his skin in bad shape even before he got down and out. Now he was lying in his own filth. Vee was doing his best to keep things clean, but it was an untenable situation. It was obvious that it was time to euthanize him and end his suffering. Obvious to me, that is.

I couldn’t just go ahead and do it. First I had to write a letter detailing my findings so that the city council could have a special meeting and vote on what action to take. At least they called a special meeting for that night so that Butch only had to suffer one more day.

The next day, I returned and entered the cage for the second and last time. Butch glanced at me, but didn’t move. I didn’t think he could move at all, but I found out differently. Although he couldn’t rise, he could raise his tail. His paintbrush of a tail swooped up and struck me full in the face, covering face and eyeglasses with stale lion urine and dirt. I couldn’t see a thing until I washed up in his water bowl.

I was able to give him the injections and complete the euthanasia without further mishap. A post-mortem examination revealed a large tumor in his liver. I took it back to the office to measure and weigh it. It weighed three pounds. Hard to say how long it had been growing, but it was almost certainly the cause of his decline months earlier. The rest of his remains were buried in front of his cage.

 

A week or so later, there was a little story in the Memphis Commercial Appeal newspaper noting Butch’s passing. Some of the details were garbled, but that’s nothing new in the newspaper business. The next day, I got a telephone call from a man named Bert Dickey. He identified himself as the original owner of Butch (though I had never heard his name from anyone in Hayti). According to Bert, the city was supposed to return Butch to him if they ever got rid of him, and he wanted to know what happened. I gave him the story, and then he wanted to take possession of the remains. Apparently, he wanted a trophy to display. I tried to explain the miserable condition of Butch’s hide, and that it would have been nothing desirable even if it hadn’t been buried and decomposing already. Then he wanted to know if I had taken his teeth for a souvenir (a man with no knowledge of animal dentistry – you cannot imagine how hard that would be). I referred him to the city council and heard no more from him.

Yeah, Hayti had a zoo – it started with a lion named Butch.

Resorptive Lesions in Cat Teeth - FORLs

We used to call these FORLs - Feline Odontoclastic Resorptive Lesions.  The dental specialists decided to drop "feline" because they started finding them in dogs, too.  Odontoclastic referred to cells that work at reabsorbing the roots of baby teeth so that the permanent teeth can come in. Since we now realize that we don't actually understand the mechanism, that term has been dropped out.

Now it's just "tooth resorption" or "resorptive lesions".  It looks like a cavity that people get when they don't care for their teeth, the kind of tooth decay that's called "caries" in human dentistry.  It looks like it, but it's not.  If you drill them out and fill them, they just keep dissolving away.  You can't fix them.

Another difference is that they often occur on the root below the gum-line, so you can't see them by just looking into the cat's mouth, even if the cat is really cooperative.  Alas, most cats are not all that cooperative about letting you hold their mouths wide open while you poke around in there.  But even if they did, you frequently cannot see them.

We often discover them while cleaning the teeth.  They may have been hidden by tartar.  Sometimes as you clean below the gum-line, the tooth starts to bleed - NOT normal.  And we find them when we take the dental X-rays.

This is Toby, who is a great cat, with one of the most beautiful coats I have ever seen.  His owner noticed that he wasn't eating as well as usual, and she thought his mouth seemed sensitive.

Talk about sensitive, his OWNER is sensitive, sensitive to her cat's needs, that is.  I've had patients whose mouths were horrible and the owner was pretty much unaware that anything was bothering the pet.  Toby's mouth looked okay except for a little bit of redness around the gum-line where there was just a little bit of tartar visible on the teeth.

Our technician, Anna, cleaned his teeth, and still didn't see much, but when she took the X-rays, it was a different story.

Here is the reason that Toby was uncomfortable. Look at that hole in the tooth.  It was pretty much concealed by tartar and the gums.  The tooth used to have two roots, and one is pretty much dissolved away.  The tooth just to the right (behind it in the mouth) is normal.

 

 

 

He had some discomfort following the extraction, even with pain medicine, but by the next day, he was a happy guy again, eating very well.  His owner was kind enough to send me a picture of him at chow-time, and nothing is holding him back now.

The most amazing orthopedic surgery, and the most amazing cookies

Several months ago, Oliver broke his left front leg, both bones, and right above his wrist.  With  both bones broken, a splint or cast was unlikely to give good results, so we felt he needed orthopedic surgery.  The problem was, the lower fragments were so small, there wasn't much to grab onto.   The other problem was that Oliver is tiny -- he doesn't weigh four pounds. 

Dr. Tomlinson at the University of Missouri put this external fixation apparatus on Oliver.  What you cannot tell from this picture is just how delicate this surgery had to be.  Those pins are just a little big larger diameter than the lead in a mechanical pencil. They are way smaller than a #2 pencil lead.  The side bars (custom made of acrylic) are about the same diameter as a soda straw.  Which means his bones are smaller than that, and not much stronger.  This was an amazing piece of surgery.

Of course, that's just the first step, as important as it was.  Then came several months of nursing care, weekly bandage changes and keeping this little firecracker from re-breaking the whole mess.  Oliver's folks were the greatest and he finally got all the pins out last week.  The bone is still fragile, but has healed together well.  You can see the holes in the bone where the pins were going through it.  That one little pin will stay in.

This would never have healed without Dr. Tomlinson's skill, but it also would never have healed without the owner's commitment to his post-operative care.  It was no small task to care for this guy over the ensuing months.  Dr. Tomlinson was the carpenter, but they were the gardeners.  It takes gardening to get things to heal.

They surprised us this morning with a plate of thank-you cookies.  Now, I'm a sucker for a cookie: I never met a chocolate chip cookie I didn't like.  This, however, is a whole new level of cookie.

Look at these things.  If you look closely, you'll see that the scrub-top cookie even has KVC "embroidered" on the pocket. 

 

 

And who has their logo on a cookie?  We do, that's who.

 

Like father, like son... sort of

This could be about Father’s Day or my birthday or science or all three.   That' s my Dad on the left, and that good-looking, fair-haired boy at Mom's shoulder is me, back in 1962.  Somewhere (somewhen?) down the line I skewed a lot more toward Dad.  In the second photo, you see him a few years earlier.  He rode his horse to work after what passed for a blizzard in Kennett.  He probably could have gotten the car out, but rode the horse for fun. His law office was just north of the Ely Walker shirt factory there on the right.  Love for horses was a big part of our lives.

When I was a little boy, I decided that from birth to thirty was young, thirty to sixty was middle aged, and above sixty was old.  My father had his first heart attack at 59, second at 63 very close to four years later.  His third and fatal attack was about six months later, a couple of weeks after his 64^th birthday.  I was twenty-nine then, and sixty-four seemed terribly old (much as it did when I first heard the Beatles singing about that advanced age).

Now I am sixty-four myself.  I thought that my lifestyle would be proof against the heart disease my father suffered, but not so.  I inherited his myopia, balding pate, knobby knees (“like a sack full of doorknobs”, as my mother said), tendency toward hernia, and coronary artery disease.  There were many good things that I got from Dad, but the body stuff could have been better.

Chances are I’m going to outlive him by several years, but I had to cheat to do it.  After his first heart attack, he was advised to have bypass surgery, but he refused it.  The thought of having his chest split open like an oyster was too much for him, since they wouldn’t guarantee him longer life or immunity from another heart attack.  I can’t help wondering how both our lives would have been different had he had access to today’s technology.

Twice now (about four years apart, like Dad) I’ve experienced chest pains and other harbingers of an impending heart attack. Both times a cardiac catheterization and dye study found dangerous (possibly deadly) blockages that were readily treated with a stent.  This was my third cath, and I experienced no anxiety about it.  Sort of, “Oh well, if I’ve got another blockage, I’ll get another stent.”  Something along the order of getting my oil changed or tires rotated… well, maybe more like a new fuel pump.  Just an hour’s drive to Jonesboro, relaxing in a nice room, and home again, home again, jiggety-jig.  The things we take for granted… it's incredible.

This is truly a miraculous technology.  Without it, you could superimpose my timeline on Dad’s.  The difference being that I’ve had three overnight stays in the hospital and right back to work.  He had two periods of recuperation that took months, and then the fatal attack.

There is always the potential for something to go wrong with the procedure, even fatally wrong.  I have been fortunate to have mine go smoothly and have great results that allow me to continue working and enjoying life.  Both are important to me.  Like my father at sixty-four, I still have unfinished business to attend to.

I am very thankful for the good things my father gave me, and for this technology that has let me dodge the bullets that took his life at such a young age (as I now think, being of the same young age). 

I see good friends stricken by cancer and betrayed by their bodies, imprisoned in useless vessels until they can pass on to the next adventure.  Their plight had already made me resolve to be sure that each day I learn something, help someone, enjoy the natural world around me, and make some music.  But for the medical miracle of this technology, I wouldn’t have had many days to live up to that.  I would say that I am doubly grateful for the resolve and for the reprieve, but I don’t think double is strong enough.  I am immeasurably grateful.

Don’t wait to see death on the face of a friend, or in the mirror. Love your family, love your friends, love life.

 

The Story of Jude, KHD's Famous Gunshot-wound Case

This is one of those crazy things.  We’ve seen lots of dogs with severe wounds that needed help, lots of nasty messes.  Officer Petix has posted pictures of a lot of damaged animals.  What is it that makes a particular case “speak” to people?  Why does this guy generate 300,000 shares and an outpouring of support for the work of the Kennett Humane Department ?  I must admit I do not know.  He is a terrific dog, so friendly and happy and cooperative, and he really needed the help, but how can you know that from a picture of his nasty wounds?  Anyway, here is his story.  He was KHD case number 2222, and now he’s “Jude”.

Folks saw him out in the country and called Officer Petix to ask for help.  His wounds were big, ugly, grossly contaminated and infected.  Despite this, he seemed pretty alert and strong. She collected him and brought him to Kennett Veterinary Clinic.  On the way she retrieved this copper bullet jacket from the open wound.

 

You could see two thin, linear and superficial wounds that I would call “bullet creases”.  (I’d call them that because I’ve spent many an hour watching old Westerns.)  Then there was a quarter-size wound that I think was the original bullet entry, though I suspect it was a lot smaller when it started (like about 5mm, same as the base of the bullet jacket).   Just ahead of that was the first hand-sized open wound over the chest wall.  These two are connected by a big pocket under the skin. And finally, over the right shoulder, another hand-sized mess.  That was kind of weird – it looked like one entry wound and two exit wounds, which even with “new math” doesn’t add up.

 

 

We anesthetized him and began by filling the wounds with sterile gel, then shaving the skin around them, and here Anna is scrubbing the skin.  Then I spent about 30 minutes flushing with dilute antiseptic and wiping with sterile gauze until the wounds looked like part of the dog instead of something the dog drug in, ate and threw up.

The cleaning revealed a broken rib with a long-contaminated devitalized area on one exposed end.  We also found that the tissue was not what normally underlies the skin, but granulation tissue (the body’s “fill in the gap” temporary stuff) and a lot of scar tissue.  These wounds looked to be a couple of weeks old.

Despite the huge openings, I was able to undermine the skin, and close the wounds. I took off as much funky rib tissue as I felt comfortable with.  I wasn’t anxious to open a hole into his chest and let in all the yuck.

Unfortunately, closing this mess leaves big pockets underneath the skin, pockets that are full of germs, and lined with tissue that is oozing fluid constantly.  That would be a pretty good place to grow a heck of an infection (if he didn’t have one already, which he did). 

We started Jude on two different antibiotics to get the infection under control, but if the pocket had stayed full of fluid, the medicine would never have gotten into the middle of it. That’s why you put drainage tubes in the wound.  This lets the fluid get out.  Bandaging puts the parts back against their normal underlying support, and wicks the drainage away from the body.  What you hope is that the pocket will seal down everywhere except where the drainage tubes lie.  Then, in a few days you remove the tubes and things get all well… you hope.

The next step was chest X-rays.  Considering how old the wounds were, I didn’t feel it likely that his chest had free fluid, free air, collapsed lungs or anything similar.  He seemed to be doing too well. If he hadn’t, we’d have X-rayed him first.  As I had hoped, there was no problem there, aside from the broken rib.  The X-rays are not as good as I would like, but we had the critical information, and decided not to stress him by repeated attempts to get “perfect” pictures.

The interesting thing on the X-rays is the pattern of lead “tracks”. You can see these as little bright white spots on the X-ray pictures.  When the rifle bullet entered the flank at a superficial angle, it struck the rib. The rib broke, and the bullet shattered.  This left tiny fragments of lead in the wound, which you can see on the X-ray.  There are lead tracks in both large wounds, yet the wound over the shoulder has no apparent entry wound, and there is no connection between it and the flank wounds, and no lead tracks between them. 

This makes me think that when the bullet shattered against the rib, a piece flew forward and “zipped open” the shoulder.  Then then motion of the front leg caused the wound to spread out, and dirt and germs did the rest. 

It looks like somebody was shooting at him to run him off, and the bullet took him from behind.  When I first saw this mess, I wouldn’t have guessed we were dealing with a single bullet, but that’s what I think happened.

One of the films showed a .22 caliber pellet lodged in the tissue, but that wound was old and long healed.  The body just walls off that lead and it rarely creates a problem.  Again, I’ve watched a lot of old Westerns, but I resisted the temptation to call for a hot knife and a bottle of whiskey to dig it out.

From here, it was a question of good nursing care.  Jude was on I.V. fluids for a day, but rapidly began eating and drinking on his own, and we were able to switch from I.V. to oral antibiotics and pain medicines.  Daily bandage changes were a must, as the large amounts of fluid got them pretty well soaked in 24 hours.

The dog was infested with hookworms and tapeworms, but surprisingly had a negative blood test for heartworms (“negative” equals “good”  in this case).

Jude got stronger every day, and friendlier every day. You couldn’t help liking the guy.  Despite everything he had been through (and was still going through), he was always eager to greet you, wagging his tail, dying for you to pet him… which we did… a lot.  

 

After seven days, we removed the drains.  They usually come out in 3 to 5 days, but this was not a usual situation. Though there was still considerable drainage, it was much reduced, and the drains themselves are foreign objects that cannot be left in indefinitely.  He was getting pretty tired of the bandages and starting to chew them, so we added a T-shirt to his regimen.  I didn’t have any around the clinic, and I hated to drive home just for that, so I took off my undershirt (it was VERY clean), and used that.  Much was made of me giving him “the shirt off my back”.

When Jude’s pictures hit the internet via the Kennett Humane Department Facebook page, there were many calls and emails asking about him and making financial contributions for his treatment.  In addition, several different rescue organizations offered to take him and complete his rehabilitation once he was stable enough to travel.  The Great Plains Pointer Rescue from Nebraska seemed like the best fit, and on Friday, twelve days after we met him, one of their volunteers was here bright and early to get him. 

Best wishes to him on the next phase of his adventure.  Somewhere, somebody is going to have one great friend.

"Mr. Bill" Westbrook, gentleman of the dance.

For some time now, I’ve been thinking about a series of blog entries that would profile people who have really enriched my life.  While I have been very fortunate to enjoy the support and friendship of many people, there are some who stand out as giving me something I couldn’t (or didn’t) find anywhere else.

This past weekend, CASA of Dunklin County had a “Dancing with the Stars” fund-raiser.  My brother Matt told me, “I’m supposed to get you to do something.”  Since I’ve been a CASA volunteer and used to tap-dance, I felt honor-bound to get to work.

A week to work out a routine, another week to practice, and there I was.  If I’d had more time, I’d have either been better, or crippled.  I’m not sure which.  Next time I’m picking a tempo I can stay with instead of a song that’s just a bit too fast.  I know one thing:  if not for “Mr. Bill” Westbrook, I’d have just been in the audience like everyone else.

When I was a kid, I’d see Gene Kelley or Fred Astaire dancing in the old movies, and think, “Wouldn’t that be great to be able to dance when you felt like it?”  So, in 1980, when I saw an ad in the paper advertising dance lessons for children three and up, I thought, “That’s ME!” 

Mr. Bill Westbrook (and his wife "Miss Bess") had been teaching children to dance since I don’t know when.  My sister had taken lessons as a child.  He hadn’t been teaching in the area for a while.   From his home in West Memphis, he traveled to Paragould, Arkansas regularly, and now he was putting Kennett back on the circuit.

When I presented myself at the sign-up, he gently said that I could not take lessons with the small children, but if I could get five adults, he would do an adult class.  I got nine.

My wife and I and several other folks took lessons from Mr. Bill over the next seven years.  We even danced in the recitals, had our own routine after the little kids (not to mention some young ladies who could REALLY dance).  Libby danced through both pregnancies. 

 

 

I didn’t have much aptitude, but made up for it by working hard and looking at analytically.  I’m not like my young friend, Grace Andrews, from whom the tap steps flow like water from a faucet.  Once I thought I was getting pretty good, so I put on a Fred Astaire movie, and found he was dancing TWICE as fast as I was.  I could hardly walk at that tempo, much less dance it.  I definitely learned enough to have fun, though.

 

We participated in “The World’s Longest Chorus Line”, miles of dancers on Riverside Drive in Memphis, tapping to “Mississippi Mud”.  Mr. Bill put it together, and got Rufus Thomas (inventor of the funky chicken) to be “premier danseur”.  As class members, we were team leaders, with cool pink shirts, instead of black ones.  Some technicality kept it out of the Guinness Book of Records, but it was a really fun way to spend a Saturday.

Mr. Bill also taught us ballroom dancing.  We had lessons in the basement of the First Christian Church.  He was apprehensive about dancing in a church, but the pastor and his wife were in the class, so it had to be all right.

When Blair was old enough to walk, she had a few lessons (and a costume).  He really did teach kids to dance instead of just “bounce that hip”.  You would never see an 8-year old doing some kind of cootch dance, or made up like a prostitute.

In all the time that I was privileged to be in his company, I never knew him to lose patience or utter a harsh word.  Dozens of little girls and moms and costumes at a recital, wardrobe malfunctions, technical problems… he never lost his cool.  He was truly a gentle man.

He was no spring chicken when I met him (maybe even older than I am now).  When he suffered a heart attack and no longer felt up to the travel each week, it was a great loss to us. If he were teaching now, there would be stuff all over the internet.  I treasure all the memories of what he taught me and the pleasure of his company.  He was a great gentleman.

Fasting for 12 hours before anesthesia

We always tell folks to take away the pet's food the night before any procedure that will require anesthetic:  surgery, dental cleanings or extractions, whatever.  If the patient will be unconscious in the hospital, we want an empty stomach.  If you take away any food twelve hours before the procedure, that usually gets us an empty stomach by the time we need it.

Why do we need an empty stomach for anesthesia?  It's because of two things.  The first is that anesthetic drugs, some pain-killing drugs, and just the process of being put under all have the potential to cause some nausea.  If you have some nausea and your stomach is empty, you have some nausea.  If you have some nausea and your stomach is full of food, you will probably vomit.

Vomiting just before surgery or right afterward is not so great (compared to those times when vomiting IS great?) because you might choke on the vomit.  That's the second thing: your swallowing reflexes are not up to par while you're under the influence of the anesthetics.  Something could go down the wrong pipe and choke you.  That is really not good.  If it didn't kill you, you could get a bad pneumonia as result.

So, that's why we ask you to fast the patient for 12 hours before anesthesia will take place.

Of course, with a dog, we always proceed as though the patient has a stomach full of food. This is because sometimes people forget that he ate.  Sometimes he finds something when he goes outside to potty, and he eats whatever he finds.  He might do that anyway, but since he skipped breakfast, he's hungry and pretty likely to eat something.  We once had a patient vomit a plateful of spaghetti.  "I didn't give him that", said his owners, and I believed them.  However, the evidence that he had eaten it could not be denied. So, we always treat the patient as though he has a full stomach (while hoping that he doesn't, and usually he doesn't).

 

Then there's Amos, here.  Amos supposedly hadn't eaten anything since the night before.  Fortunately, he didn't vomit until he was wide awake, so no danger of him choking on the stuff. He was looking good after surgery, recovering well.  Then I went back to check on him again.  He was wide awake, and had puked.  Well, what a mess!

                                                                                                                           Wait a minute.  What's that blue thing in the vomit?

 

 

 

Is it a rubber duckie?

Nope, a rubber pacifier.  He had swallowed it whole. 

 

That might be why last night's supper was still in his stomach, along with the pacifier (which he had been seen to play with the night before).  Lucky for Amos that he was scheduled for surgery the day after he ate it, and luckier still that he vomited it up whole.  Such things often make their way into the intestine, and cuase a blockage requiring major exploratory surgery.

So, that's why we always proceed as though the patient has a full stomach, even when he's not supposed to.  Sometimes he does.

 

Shedding - It's normal for your pet

My daughter sends me a nice email from Zambia today:

Is there anything we can do to control Spud's shedding. He seems to shed year round and an awful lot. My husband thinks it's more than any other dog he's ever known. I've asked him to describe it: "Extravagant quantities, insane quantities, how is he not bald by now? "

 

Any advice? 

 

I thought about saying, "Good luck with that", but that isn't too helpful.  Unfortunately, I'm not able to be too helpful even with a lengthy explanation (which I'm good at: ask me what time it is, and I'll tell you how to build a clock)

 

Slick-haired dogs shed more than longer-haired dogs.  If there are no bald spots, no sore places, and you cannot pull out clumps of hair, it is probably his natural shedding.

 

Hair follicles go through cycles of growth and rest.  The hair grows as long as it is going to get, then the cycle goes into a resting phase.  When it begins a new growth cycle, the newly growing hair pops out the old, dead one.  The longer the hair growth cycle, the less frequently you see shed hairs.

 

People shed in a similar manner.  This is why (though you are not balding, as I am), you find hair in your hair-brush, and hair on the drain when you wash your hair.  If you did not cut your hair, it would probably grow down nearly waist-length.  This is a long growth cycle (though not as long as singer Crystal Gayle, whose hair grows down to her knees, which most people cannot do).  This is why you don't shed hairs as often as Spud, whose hairs are about 1 centimeter long.  His growth cycle is quite short, re-starting frequently. Of course, he has a lot more hair follicles, so there is more frequent shedding from a lot more places.

 

It is, alas, normal.  I used to sell a product called "Lo-Shed".  You rubbed it into the dog's skin all over on a regular basis, and it slowed down the hair-follicle activity.  It did make a noticeable difference on some of the small, slick-haired dogs, but was a great bother, and not very practical.

 

There are patent medicine companies selling various nutritional supplements, but I do not know of any evidence that they are efficacious.

 

Unlike the shedding of the downy, winter undercoat (lanugo hair), which is seasonal, shedding of the normal guard hairs is generally a year-round affair.

 

Try to think of all the little white hairs as a type of organic, natural form of glitter.  Thus it becomes a fashion accessory, rather than an annoyance.

Book Review: "Thanks For Picking Up My Poop"

Who has not lived in fear of how they will be able to waste time when their internet is down?  Sure, you probably have a deck of cards in your emergency supplies (or junk drawer) so that you will be able to play solitaire, but man does not live by solitaire alone.  What about your compulsive need to look at cute animal pictures with heartwarming/funny captions?  How will you get your fix when your devices cannot connect?

Just add this little book to your emergency supplies (next to the deck of cards).  It doesn't take up much room, and has gobs of the pictures and captions you need.  I'm not sure why the title focuses onthe scatological.  Your dog is probably more thankful for a lot of other things.  For more info, check out the author's blog.