A Bloody Mess

These were truly days of bloody messes. Actually, I hardly ever get blood on my scrubs, except for both of these past two days:

Toothless. When dogs get dentals, "dental cleanings", done, they sometimes have to have teeth pulled, like people do. Usually the teeth only bleed for a short while, but this poor dog had his teeth bleeding for a while... I walked by his kennel and looked in, and there was a lot of blood. I couldn't see it all because of the grates on the bottom of the cage, but when the nurse walked by, she exclaimed in surprise. Apparently it had been three or four hours since his extractions, and enough blood was present that she sent for me to hold him while she looked into his mouth. There was a lot of blood, and a lot of blood clots. It was gross and messy, and she and the doctor determined that he was still bleeding. So, poor dog, they had to put him under anesthesia again and sew up the toothless hole. It wasn't the doctor-who-did-the-dental's fault, but they say this may have to be done for all big dogs, because they bleed more readily, apparently. They didn't charge the people, thankfully, for the second one, since it was not their fault.

Dusty. No, it's not a dog named Dusty... our clinic was messy and it was slow, so I cleaned it. I usde a wet rag to dust the furry/dusty lost counters, and discovered that fur will come back no matter what--it's probably like ants or cockroaches. You can't get rid of it. How's that for an interesting tidbit?

Hit'n'Run... not the car, though. Brinksley the dog came in after being lost for a week, and hit by a car in the last part of it. The owners or someone found him, and brought him in. He wasn't terribly thin, but we gave him SQ (under-the-skin) fluids anyway to regain lost fluids from dehydration. He didn't look very bad for being hit by a car, he just had some minor scrapes and cuts on his back feet. We soaked them and fixed them up. He was so cute... a medium-size dog with a stubby tail that wagged in joy when we talked to him... what a sweetie!

Labradoodle Delights. Labradors will eat almost anything. This labradoodle was no exception! She came in when I was not paying attention, at a slow time of the evening. The doctor was holding the leash and attempting to type some notes in, so I offered to hold the dog. I was already pretty tired from a long day, so I just sat on the ground and held the leash. She was shy, yet quite a spaz. At times she'd wag her tail, or try to run, or simply jerk around in random directions. But, she calmed down. I didn't know what she was there for, but later I found out that she had eaten some of the albuterol inhaler--which is a steroid, by the way. She was an older puppy... much too young for steroids! Apparetly it wasn't much of an emergency, and we had to wait for the client's paperwork to get approved before we started to work on her. We then had to draw blood, during which she refused to hold still, so we put a catheter into the vein on her front leg. It stayed there with a cap in it to prevent bacteria going in and blood coming out. We also did an ECG, to see how her heart was doing, and it was very fast-- 200-230 beats per minutes. It's normally in the 100s. Then we had to give the Toxiban (liquid charcoal) to absorb the poison in her digestive system. Now, that's always a "fun" project... since the dogs love to make a black mess out of themselves and you. This dog was no exception. She ended up nearly coating my entire arm with charcoal, and added a bunch of blood to it when she decided to pop the cap off of her catheter. Then we had to change the entire tape holding her catheter in, because it was terribly red and blood-soaked. Poor girl, though, she was such a mess... then we finally gaev her an e-collar and sent her off to bed in a kennel... she was pooped by then! This should be her lesson not to eat random things again.