Welcome to May/June's Case of the Month! Because of how busy things have become, we're going to have to reduce our cases to every other month for a little while. This month we look at a cat with an uncommon result of a cat fight.

I CAN'T BELIEVE I ATE...PART II

HISTORY

Hoover was a young dog (about 4 years) who had a history of getting into the garbage and eating things. A couple of years ago she'd eaten the contents of an entire trash can, and had to have surgery to remove everything. The owners noticed her gorging herself on grass a few days earlier, and she hadn't eaten in about 36 hours. They were (rightfullly) concerned that she'd gotten into trash again.

PHYSICAL FINDINGS

On examination, Hoover seemed pretty normal. She was alert, not uncomfortable, and did not have a fever; however, she wasn't bouncing off the walls, which for Hoover meant she didn't feel well. We took x-rays to see what she might have gotten into.

X-RAY RESULTS

See anything strange? If you'd looked at some of our other x-rays for comparison, you'd see something just behind the rib cage that doesn't belong there. Here's a close-up:

This is a piece of metal. Knowing that she had something in there that didn't belong, we took her to surgery.

TREATMENT

We checked some bloodwork beforehand and verified that nothing was out of line from her not eating for a day and a half. Since you can't eat right away after surgery involving the stomach, we started an I.V. line.

Before we started surgery, we passed an endoscope to see if we could remove everything that way. However, when we got to the esophagus, all we saw was clumps of grass, and could not get past the grass into the stomach.

Here's what we found:

Hoover spent about 48 hours in the hospital, then went home and recovered well.

DISCUSSION

Some dogs have a habit of eating things they shouldn't! We've seen dogs eat whole carcasses, watches, batteries, coins, and trash of all kinds. Some of these are relatively benign, and wouldn't cause any problems, while others can have life-threatening consequences including toxicity, obstruction, and g.i. perforation. There aren't any definitive symptoms, either, but they include: persistent vomiting, diarrhea, inappetance, and weight loss.

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