|
|
|
|
|
A veterinary blog for pet lovers, vet voyeurs and the medically curious...
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
It happens. In fact, it happens a lot to some of my less discriminating patients. I’m talking about their often bizarre dietary habits. Technically referred to as pica, the eating of stuff not meant for dietary consumption (though...
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
VIRTUAL VET HOSPITAL
|
|
|
|
Got a sick pet? Visit our Virtual Vet Hospital and admit your own pets as patients in Dolittler's unique pet healthcare forum.
|
|
|
|
|
PODCASTS
|
|
|
New! Download our latest podcasts:
|
|
|
|
|
ARCHIVES
|
|
|
|
|
FAVORITE POSTS
|
|
|
|
|
RECOMMENDED
|
|
|
|
|
CAREERISTS
|
|
|
Did you always want to be a vet or vet technician? Thinking about it? Working on it? Need some Help?
|
|
|
|
|
|
 |
|
"The greatness of a nation can be judged by the way its animals are treated."
|
|
- Mohandas Gandhi
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
A couple of my "favorites"- the tine little poodle who had eaten so many landscaping rocks that when you squeezed it's stomach it sounded and felt like holding a bag of marbles!
Or the shih tzu that had to have multiple visits because of his love of tampons!
We've had pantyhose, large pairs of underwear, toys and like you nothing is suprising!
We had one client who had a dog who ate stuff so often that she knew the dosage of apomorphine that it would take to make him vomit! That dog ate everything. Taking him for a walk was a danger in itself! One day he found a comb! He was faster than lightening!
The scariest of them all was a patient that became known as The Pug Bank.
This particular Pug was an excellent patient under normal circumstances, but he took a liking to eating pennies. The last surgery he had that I remember left the owner .15 richer which was applied towards his owners bill. All kinds of bloodwork and other forms of testing was done as the the vets and owners were convinced he was lacking something in his diet, however, they never found anything.
After 3 scares of possible copper poisoning, the owners were instructed to keep tabs on their change at all times.
The x-rays of the Pug Bank were always a hit with the kids that got to tour the hospital, but they also had to endure lectures on what can happen to dogs that make a habit of eating pennies and what not to feed their own pets.
For the cat owners that were in the group, they were not spared a speaking to about the dangers of string, tinsel, yarn and dental floss with their cats as we had many cats lose part of their tongues due to these "harmless" toys becoming wrapped around them, hence cutting off the blood supply without the owners being aware ofwhat was happening until it was too late.
Unfortunately she never recovered from the surgery and died two weeks later. An autopsy showed there was so much damage and tiny tears and nicks all throughout her system that she had been poisoned by her own internal leakage (or at least that's the way I understood it). I still wonder if things would have turned out differently if I'd been more on the ball and gotten her in sooner.
I'm not bitter. Nope. Well, maybe.
I have a cat who is turning my hair gray with his voracious appetite for paper of all sorts, plastic bags, sponges, bubble wrap, a plastic comb, and I don't know what next... I can overlook him taking a chunk out of the page of a library book -- at least that's not harmful to his health; but he's already had to have a plastic toy surgically removed from his stomach, and a wad of bubble wrap caused an intestinal obstruction that fortunately passed with the help of some laxative. Complete catproofing of my apartment is proving so far unattainable.
Between the annoyance of him destroying things by chewing, him throwing up on the carpet, and me worrying about his health, I'm just about going crazy. So I'm sort of reassured to find that I'm not the only owner who has experienced something like this.
I can't say that and sound smug, though, because one of my current dogs, a greyhound, is a time bomb with regards to weird eating. He steals dirty diapers (from my almost-potty-trained daughter) if we don't get them locked away in time; he will also unpack entire bags and boxes to get at even one chocolate chip. In my wilder youth, a friend left some *ahem* brownies on the counter and this dog ate THOSE... he was ok, though it was a long scary night, and the resulting diarrhea ruined many, many towels and also a bedspread.
I have so many more horror stories but as a new reader/lurker I should probably not jump right in!! I've been really enjoying reading your posts so far, though, thank you :-)
More concerning though is . . . what's up with eating wood? Are they lacking something in their diet they are trying to make up for? And . .. if they are just ingesting sawdust, will that hurt them? (although I don't know what this wood has been treated with . . . )
Recently I went and dog-proofed my bedroom AGAIN, and that seems to work. She hasn't eaten anything in five days, knock on wood.
But I am thankful it's just socks and underwear with her. I won the Kleenex War by rigging a water-in-a-cup trap that spilled when Roxie tried to get at the Kleenex. The cup spilled, water got all over her, and she hasn't touched Kleenex since!
All three of my previous Standard Poodles ate stuff occasionally, but only one did it as a regular habit. Dweezil ate everything from hair scrunchies (the big late 1980's sort) to entire chocolate cakes (to accomplish that he went from the floor to the barstools, to the kitchen island, to the kitchen counter, to the top of the refrigerator. Yes, really.) but I think the wierdest thing he ever ate was a tube of my mother's lipstick.
Yes. The entire tube. The lipstick and the plastic case. I was out of the house by then, but Mom reported pink poop for a week and a healthy dose of being laughed at by her dog-owning friends when they saw the poop's color and demanded the story.
Dweezil was called the goat in dog's clothing because he never ever had issues. He always just passed it through, usually without even diarrhea or straining. I used to devoutly believe that if he decided to eat a Sherman Tank, it would just pass right through without him turning a hair.
Dogs . . .
We all felt sure we'd at last begun the process of getting on the road to true health-- until later that night when she passed the rest of the portion of cotton nightgown she'd eaten almost a week earlier. Oh. No wonder! Well, surely that was it. Right?
Wrong.
Last night, she passed almost an entire sock.
Neither of these things were seen on the Xrays. And I have no idea how or where she managed to eat the sock. I am beginning to suspect she's learned to open drawers.
Tonight the dogsitter forgot to put everything out of her reach and I came home to yet another half-chewed sock. The dog had been alone for two hours. But the dogsitter had also forgotten to give her anything exciting to play with. (And this time it was a brand new sock -- that I'd bought to replace some of the others that she'd eaten. Ah, the irony.)
One of these days, all the variables will eventually be identified and neutralized and Roxie won't eat anything else because she won't be able to get to anything, she'll have exciting toys, and nobody will forget to put stuff out of her reach. But until then . . .
*sigh*
and Babe:
Isn't it nice that a manufacturer will cover the cost of an obstruction or ingestion via ASPCA's poison control? Coincidentally, today I had a pet who ate one tiny alzheimer's pill and no charge was applied--the company covered it. I love big pharma when they're smart enough to be responsible.
We also had a little fluffly mutt last summer how came in vomitting, not eating, etc. His rads were normal, his owner didn't think he had gotten anything, and his bloods only showed what would be expected for the vomiting/anorexia. Finally one night when the practice owner was doing her 11 pm walk through (he'd been hospitalized for 3 or 4 days at this point) she took another look at him. Another vet had been treating him, but she keeps her hand in everything. So she x-rayed his neck and mouth, and low and behold he'd swallowed a needle and it had gotten stuck. Mom was very happy to have him back, she thought he was approaching the pearly gates!
I'm happy my golden sticks to childerns books. In limted quanties.
My wonderful vet agreed to see Violet right away because in February 2007 I called him with a similar complaint about Violet Rose--
--she had been vomiting occasionally over a period of 2 weeks--she was eating fine, drinking fine, and going potty outside (although her #2's were a bit runny). What I noticed about her most of all (& neither my husband nor 11yearold son thought was of concern when I pointed this out to them) was that she seemed to be losing weight--I could feel her backbone & her fur seemed sparse & not shiny looking. I worried, and wondered until one night after once again asking my family for their thoughts my son said, well she does seem a little bit bony--weigh her. I knew how much she & her mommy dog (my other Shih Tzu Lily) weighed from their last vet check & they both had weighed 12lbs. So i weighed Lily again & she was still 12lbs. When I weighed Violet she was nearly a pound & 1/2 lighter.
My vet agreed to see her the next morning (again he's wonderful) when I called. I had to travel that day for work so he told me to bring her in right away & leave her & he'd check her out & give me a call. Well, no sooner did I get on the turnpike my cell rang--Dr. XRAYED her & she had what appeared to be a nickel or a quarter in her belly--that needed to be surgically removed.
I was thrilled later that day to learn that Violet Rose came through the surgery, and it was not a quarter, or a nickel, but a dime & a penny--Violet was being poisoned to death by the copper from the penny breaking down in her belly. Also, the coins had irritated the lining of her belly so bad he described it as looking like taking a blow torch to the inside of your mouth. My baby slowly recovered at the vets (3days) and then at home. My vet said that a couple of more days & she would've died from copper toxicity. (My husband & son then agreed that we should always listen to mom's gut about stuff related to the dog's) I agreed to allow Dr. to spay her while she was under as he feared trying to have a litter after the surgery would prove too risky for her. ($$1415.00)
Needless to say my home was swept low to high for any items that could prove curious to Shih Tzus. I've repeated daily to my son & husband (and myself) to be conscious of their pockets when they sit on the sofa/chair as coins can fall out that way--(i even most recently told my son to empty his pockets prior to seating himself anywhere at home) and I designated 3 coin bottles--(empty pockets--coins go in bottle)==all sorts of little things I've payed ultra-vigilant attention to since then....
Which brings us to this morning...I've been worrying, and I think so has my husband... He kind of grumbled when I told him that I was taking Vi to the Vet to be checked--well DR. agreed to see her right away based on his knowledge of her past history....so he XRAYED her & found another coin in her belly (and a curious metal something or other yet to be Id'd i her rectum)....My Vet (again, I cannot say how very wonderful this man is..) made arrangements with other DRS & within an hour he took her in for surgery...
I got the call at 130pm that she's out of surgery--it was a DIME this time (1986 version). The lining of her belly was not TOO bad (I asked in comparison to last times--he said not AS bad as that), but said to call in an hour to see if she's "out of the woods." THey have to get her into recovery & wake her up...
I'm most likely financially ruined, but if my furbaby is alive & well I'll figure something out.
I'm going to call to check on her...It heled to get this all out in writing out of my head. Thanx :)