Thread: All safe & sound

You can get post op coats which are pretty good but can also be a pain to get on if the animal is not obliging.I would love to have got pictures of some of the ideas owners do come up with though,with dogs we very often suggest a tshirt & even then it is surprising what walks through the door,very often the men will only take the animal out if it is wearing their favourite pop band shirt or the football club they support,one client had a hoody on theirs because the sore place was on the neck & with the hoody pulled up they could still put a collar round lightly to take it out,when we saw it weeks later it still had the hoody on,wouldn't go out without it.....

Originally Posted by jckkerrison

You can get post op coats which are pretty good but can also be a pain to get on if the animal is not obliging.I would love to have got pictures of some of the ideas owners do come up with though,with dogs we very often suggest a tshirt & even then it is surprising what walks through the door,very often the men will only take the animal out if it is wearing their favourite pop band shirt or the football club they support,one client had a hoody on theirs because the sore place was on the neck & with the hoody pulled up they could still put a collar round lightly to take it out,when we saw it weeks later it still had the hoody on,wouldn't go out without it.....

I love your vet stories!

Wish I had kept notes of all the funnies that have happened over the years & then could have wrote a book when I retired,it is the type of place that has lots of very sad times but then a little gem will lighten everything up,some things move to the back of your mind & come foreward like today when Debbie commented on coming up with something else,other things like the client sitting there without the animal & we asked "Have you forgotten something",thats always there,her face,we dined out on that for years & although that person has since had a stroke when she comes in she always says "Can you remember",one of the joys of working in a very small practice...

I always thought the bite not collar looked like a neck collar I had to wear when I had whiplash!! but less intrusive than a buster. I have seen the post op tops and many dressings which try to stop the licking. I was lucky in that Roxy did not bother with her wound when she was spayed I think it was more traumatic for me.

Out of intrerest Jackie do you favour pink vetwrap for butch dogs???

No,I normally go more for the psychedelic green for those type of dogs but one of our staff members is colour blind so it has been known....How to loose street cred in one go !

Had to take poor Gracie back to the vets again today as her rasping and coughing has still not let up. Her temperature was raised and they think she may have picked up a throat infection, possibly from the trachea tube. One anti-inflammatory injection and antibiotics to give her for the next week - fingers crossed she starts to make an improvement, poor mite :-(

It is known for animals to have the occasional cough after being tubed but I can't think of one that has suffered like poor Gracie is doing at the moment. Cats are a lot harder to tube than dogs & although I am sure there are now more modern ways out there we still do ours by using a spray to numb the back of the throat first before passing the tube down,I would say that if a too larger tube was tried first then that could have caused a problem or like Candes says if she inhaled some fluid,did they check her temperature before doing her ? If not could she have been like Debbie's boy & perhaps been brewing something & this is the outcome,I think it is awful when something goes wrong post op & sometimes it does but it is also good to have a reason....
Hope there is soon a positive posting about Gracie x

Thanks for all your concerned replies! Just a quick update. When we took her to the vet yesterday the vet did say that perhaps she could have had some sort of infection brewing before the op but she seemed absolutely fine in herself before we took her in - I would have postponed the op if she'd been acting a bit under the weather. As an update, she has seemed a lot brighter in herself both yesterday evening and today - the rasping cough is still there but it does seem to be a little less frequent so I'm hopeful that the anti-inflammatory jab and the first antibiotic given last night may have already started to kick in a little. Obviously my worry was that she may have incurred some damage or irritation to her trachea from the tube, or that there was some fluid hanging around somewhere but the vet seemed confident it was just an infection. She has already been eating a little more and was wrestling with her brother a few minutes ago (good in a way but had to put a stop to it as her op was only on Friday!)

I'll be keeping a very close eye on her in the next few days and if it persists then I will be back asking about a scope. Beginning to wish I'd not had it done now - poor little thing, it's a wonder she's still talking to me :o(

Thanks again for all your concern x

Umm, what's a scope? Sorry to be thick.....