Today was a relatively slow day at the hospital. The morning was filled with simple blood draws and check-ups. The afternoon was when it got interesting. Today, Adrienne and I were able to watch yet another surgery, but it wasn’t like any of the other ones we had seen. Today, the veterinary surgeons were faced with the task of removing an object from the stomach of a very naughty puppy who had scavenged in the trash a day before. As a result, the puppy had been vomiting and needed surgery. The surgeons told us that the ultrasound only showed that the object was round and they had no idea what it was. That’s when the vet techs starting making guesses of what it was saying that it could be either a ball or a small fruit pit. We watched as the surgeon cut open the dog and started searching the colon/large intestine for a round object. She finally found it very obviously lodged in the middle of this organ. Once she found it, the vet techs immediately stated that it could possibly be a squeaker from a toy. When the surgeon cut open the intestine, she proved the vet techs right. The puppy had swallowed a squeaker! Once she removed it, she sewed the opening she made and she also sewed the stomach of the puppy to the body wall to keep it from flipping (a common occurrence in larger dogs). I wasn’t able to see the puppy after he came out of her sleep, but I bet he felt a lot better without trash stuck in his stomach.
(Not the dog that received surgery)