Archive for April, 2011

I found this great behavior website from a conference I went to. Please check it out the videos are an amazing training tool for puppies and dogs with “issues” from barking at people who come to the house to lunging at dogs on walks. The site is http://abrionline.org/ . Please check it out

Max is a happy energetic 15 year old Silky Terrier who never gets in trouble that is until now. A few months ago Max’s stomach started to give him problems. He would have episodes of  drooling, vomiting , not eating well and loose stools. He had gone on emergency to another hospital and had blood work and X-Rays which did not reveal much. After trying anti-nausea pills and antibiotics. He started to feel better but it seemed as if the effects were only temporary. This continued for about a month. It was finally decided that we should pursue an abdominal ultrasound. The internist determined that Max had a foreign body in his small intestines that was causing his problem. When I spoke to the owner about the situation, she was baffled because Max was not a chewer. He had never had issues with chewing or swallowing things he shouldn’t….until now. It is not an easy decision to take a 15 year old dog to surgery. You see Max had a stroke about  a year ago he was doing better now. The other problem was Max’s signs had persisted for so long was it possible that he had  a foreign body for 2-3 months or did he eat the foreign body because of another disease and we are finding it now. After much deliberation we took him to surgery. Max recovered without incidence and we found a half of a rubber ball in his small intestines that appeared to be causing a partial obstruction. From the look of things this was not recent.

In pictures Max post surgery, a picture of the surgical site , the foreign body a piece of a rubber ball