Bladder Stone In Dog?

It's amazing how dogs and cats shared some similarities with us human. Apart from the daily do's like eating, drinking and sleeping, they also have some similar diseases, or disease conditions, so to speak. Recently, we had a dog with bladder stone. The owner was quite surprised to know that dogs can have bladder stones. In the mind of the public, you'll never thought of this to be happened in a dog. Well, yes, it happened. Like they say, SHIT happens.

We had quite a number of urolithiasis (bladder stone) cases in a year. Most dogs were from the pedigree breed. Breed predisposed you might asks? Well, we're not sure but one thing for sure is that, food does have a role in urolithiasis.

O.K. back to this case. The dog's name was Lily. It's a 2 year old female Shih Tzu, weighing around 5.4kg. Lily's owner noticed blood stain in her urine. She was also getting a bit irritated each time she wanted to release the urine due to pain. Her urination was also becoming more frequent than usual. Sometimes owner may ask a funny question regarding bladder stone. The million dollar question is : "Can my dog gets bladder stone from ingesting stones?". Well, I leave that to you guys.

Anyway, upon physical examination, Lily was fine, except for the blood in the urine. Sometimes, if the bladder stone was big enough, we could actually palpate the stone if the bladder was not filled with urine. But, in Lily's case, she was quite fat and palpation of the stone was not possible.

Later, x-ray was done and surely enough, a stone was visible in the x-ray film. I'm sorry I couldn't post the x-ray here at the moment as I did not take a photo on the x-ray.

So, Lily's owner had decided to have her operated to remove the bladder stone.

Figure 1 : Lily's half fulled bladder with 2 stay sutures in placed.

Figure 2 : The bladder stone being removed from Lily's bladder.

Figure 3 : The urolith, which was removed from Lily's bladder, was later identified as struvite ( a type of urinary stone in dogs and cats ).

There, you have it. The story of Lily the Shih Tzu. Although the stone has been removed, there's always a chance of recurrence if the owner do not take care of Lily's diet and lifestyle.

Funny Cow Video

Found this funny cow on Youtube. Enjoy.



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EMoEAfDJ8Iw

Dog bite dog.

About 3 months ago, an owner came to me with her dog (Snoopy) wrapping up in her arms. Tears started to flow down her cheek while she related the incident that happened the night before. Snoopy was always kept inside her house while the other fellow, Max, a local breed, was kept outside. Somehow, on that night, Snoopy managed to slip through the glass door and when into Max territory. Now, Max was not a friendly neighborhood dog that you'll find licking your feet or wagging his tail at some strangers. Snoopy did not realised that he was about to put his feet in somebody else territory. At that time, Max was munching away his favourite dishes and that made the situation more tense. At an instance, the owner heard a loud noise coming from Snoopy asking for help. The attack was over in just a few seconds, and the only thing the owner saw was blood splatterd everywhere on the floor.

The owner panicked and tried to calm down. Snoopy was obviously hurt and scared. He immediately when under the car to hide. After several attempts, finally, the owner managed to get Snoopy out of its hiding. Further check up revealed Snoopy's right eye were popping out but the bleeding has stopped.

It was around 10:30p.m. and most vet clinics have closed for the day. The owner did not have any vet's contact number so she thought to consult the vet the next morning.

This was how Snoopy looked like when he was presented to me, of course after the hair surrounding the right eye had been shaved. Obviously, the right eye was popping out and it is caused normally by a large force created within the orbit, such as hit by car or bog bite or being kicked from the side. We managed to do a quick physical examination on Snoopy and found a few bite wounds surrounding the neck. Other than that, no other abnormalities were found on the external body.

Then, a thorough check on the right eye revealed that the eye has been damaged and because it happened the night before, a few hours have gone (which was crucial) and the corneal has became dried and damaged. It was difficult to save the cornea and the muscles surrounding the eye ball also has been torned. We have discussed with the owner about the prognosis of the right eye and the best option (we had 2 options) at that time was to remove the eye.

And, so we did removed the right eye. The surgery took about an hour and it was a successful one. Apart from that, we also put Snoopy on intravenous drips, antibiotic, anti-inflammatory drugs and good nutrition.

Snnopy stayed with us for 3 days. He is a healthy and happy one eyed dog now.

The moral of this episode? Don't mix your dog if they are not happy with each other and please send your dog to the vets as soon as possible if you encounter such a case in the future. Who knows, the vet might be able to save the popped out eye instead of removing it although sometimes, the dog can't see with the eye.

WELCOME!

Hi there. Welcome to my new blog. This blog is still a virgin, so I guess there are lots of work to be done soon. Anyway, this is the first time I'm blogging. So, please bear with me as I'm not so acquainted with blogging.

The main reason for me to have this blog is to share with the world my experience in treating sick pet animals, mainly cats and dogs, and the story behind their illness. I hope, through this blog, visitors could understand that there is a need for us to help these animals the best way we possibly could because they are defenseless when facing diseases of natural or manmade. They could not speak our language and the only way for them to communicate when they are ill is through body language. Ever wonder why your dog couldn't bark for a few days and he is not interested in his favourite lamb flavored pellets anymore? Is he sick? Or, he just missed his little brother that had been separated a few days ago because you thought your auntie might need a companion at home? Or, little Max had swallowed a piece of your son's toy car's wheel 2 days ago? There are so many possibilities of why Max has lost his appetite today. Can you tell the real cause of its inappetence in just a glance?

Now, that's when the vets play their parts. Your friendly neighborhood vet will first have to ask you the reasons for your visit, the history behind all these hoo haa that happened for the past few days. It's not that simple though, but sometimes all you need is just a little bit of common sense, and your senses. Experience is very important, too.

I hope that all of you could enjoy reading my blog and here we go!

Thanks for visiting.

Dr. Kenny