Is The Third Time a Charm?

Last Thanksgiving, Gabby, a big Labrador Retriever, discovered a Bonanza. Her owner had poured some cooking oil from the Turkey into a graveled area and to Abby, swallowing a little gravel was a small price to pay for all that turkey flavored oil. We monitored the progress of the gravel with X-Rays for a few days and she managed to pass it all, with a little help from a few enemas.

Toby is a little Shi-Tzu. I wrote about him a year and a half ago when he too found a bonanza. During a family outdoor get-together someone had spilled a chocolate milkshake into the graveled walkway. When Toby found it, he instantly realized all he had to do to get the chocolate milkshake was eat the gravel with it. He wasn't as lucky as Gabby and we had to do surgery on him to remove the huge mass of gravel from his stomach.

Toby recovered from the surgery with no apparent problems, but sometime later began to have some strange symptoms. Out of the clear blue sky, once or twice a day he will yelp and bend his little head around towards his belly. In spite of our best efforts, we have not been able to find out exactly what the problem is. X-rays and ultrasound exams have been normal, and Toby doesn't seem to mind when I squeeze and probe around with hand, feeling and squishing his belly and it's contents. He shows no sign of pain when we push on his spine and bend it this way and that. He just smiles pleasantly back at us.

I think he might have adhesions from the surgery. Manipulating the intestines and other things in the abdomen, cutting tissue and suturing it back together, all unavoidably cause inflammation, and during the healing process, things sometimes stick together that aren't supposed to stick together, forming an "adhesion." Normal play and other physical activity can then pull and tug at those adhesions, and that can be quite painful. They are a common problem after abdominal surgery in humans and though adhesions often form in dogs, they rarely seem to be painful. If this is what is making Toby yelp, I think it will get better with time. Doing more surgery to fix the adhesions would probably only make it worse by causing more adhesions.

Abby is another Shi-Tzu. Last spring she fell victim to one of those "breed related" problems. Shi-Tzus have short noses and big bulging eyes. One of those bulging eyes popped out of the socket. This can be caused by trauma, or severe physical exertion, in any dog. In Shi-Tzus, it sometimes seems to happen spontaneously. Dr. David Ard, at Southway Animal Clinic, was on call that night. He sedated Abby and pushed the eye back in place. Later, Dr. Amy Cumberland did a little surgery on Abby's eyelids to "tighten them up" a little, and hopefully keep it from happening again.

Toby, (Remember Toby, the other Shi-Tzu?) also had an eye pop out. I replaced it, but Toby wasn't as lucky as Abby. There was too much damage to his eye, and a few weeks ago we had to remove it surgically. Toby, like one-eyed humans, may not have quite as good depth perception but he should do fine with only one eye.

They say bad luck comes in threes. I sure hope the post-surgical adhesions, or whatever it is that makes him yelp, will count as the third and last bad thing and that Toby will emerge from under that cloud of bad luck.