On April 26th we did what both Bob Barker and Drew Carey ask us to do at the end of every episode of The Price is Right-Please spay and neuter your pets. Yes Betty went in to get her ovaries taken out of her body, otherwise known as being spayed.
She came through the surgery A-OK but things started going down hill. We were not issued an E-collar at the time and of course Betty being betty got obsessive about licking her stitches. than she got loose and ran about 1/16 of a mile about 3 days after the surgery and I believe the final straw was Saturday when we were away from home most of the day. She got out of control and destroyed a Johnny's Selected Seeds catalog (she does not know that we have an extra-Ha!), along with chewing on a calendar from 2 year ago and my camera bag (which she did very little damage too other than cosmetic). It was quite the display of anger and frustration. This activity (which I am sure involved running around and other banned activity) I believe popped all the interior stitches, holding the muscle walls together and a bright red wad of fatty tissue started to appear Sunday morning.
Oh no! This is not what you want to see along a suture line. this is something that needs to be dealt with ASAP. And since it was a Sunday we had to take her the Dayton Emergency Vet Clinic. that was an experience i do not want to repeat. that place is depressing as the only people who go there have a life of death situation and not everyone survives these situations. we were lucky, Betty got into surgery as soon as we got there and we got her back by 6pm in much better shape. And with an E-collar
But now we have to make sure she does not do this again which means keeping her quiet and still. She is still in bad enough shape that she does want to sleep a lot but she now feels a lot better and thinks she should be able to run where she wants and do other things that will pop out the stitches again, such as lick the sutures (which she cannot now that she is sporting the latest in E-collar fashion).
Now for the next 2 weeks we have to be with her to make sure she is not hurting herself. She does have separation anxiety which is made much worse by the strangeness and pain of the spay job and that translates into hyperactivity (i.e going ballistic) which can translate into popping out the sutures again. And that translate in a heap of trouble for her.
So this means I have to miss my Niece Carrie graduating from her Masters program at IU this coming Friday and probably I will have to skip market and make Eugene go alone so Betty has company and doesn't hurt herself again.
About the only half way good thing that happened through all this was the fact I had canceled a FSI pot lick dinner due to bad weather (which got really bad around 5pm through midnight-lots of rain and some wind-not conducive to an out door event). We were in no shape to hold a social event. hell, we weren't even home at 6pm when I told people to come over as we were in Dayton picking her up.
Hopefully things will get better from here on
2 comments:
And those emergency vets are like 3times the charge of your regular vet, aren't they? At least they are down here. We've had to do the emergency place twice due to bufo toads, which are the daggone poisonous things that can only be found in Florida and Texas. Bad thing is that dogs love to chase frogs and the toad's skin is covered with poison and releases from the glands when bitten and licked, and voila - dog hearts stop from the poison. Our middle dog, Justine, is addicted to the damn toads/frogs and twice has cost us at least $500 for catching them. Goes into seizures and all the vet can do is put her on i.v. fluids and monitor on an EKG overnight. I think they give her Ativan or something like it to slow her heart rate down, too. And they always ask us to pay $300 up front with an open credit card! Bah humbug!
Hopefully Betty can get through this without ripping out the stitches again. I know how hard it's got to be to keep her calm and not moving.
Hi Lucy,
Those emergency clinics ARE the one of the saddest places, aren't they? I have been that person sitting in the waiting room sobbing uncontrollably.
I hope Betty heals fast.
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