Bring it, Monday, bring it.

Talk about another crazy day at the vet clinic. I know y'all are floored, aren't you? A crazy day at the vet's? Never!

Be that as it may, it was indeed, quite insane. Mostly for poor Dr. J, who was a bit frazzled by 9am. Our one surgery showed up at 8am, even though we don't typically do surgeries on Monday. While Dr. J did the dog spay, we had people calling and piling in faster than you could say "Bob's your uncle".

By 8:30 we had a hit by car coming in, an old horse with chronic founder, foxtails in ears, plus the normal array of vaccines. Later we added, a dog that fell off a deck, a St. Bernard with a supposed cherry eye, a dog with foxtails in its throat, plus the normal array of vaccines.

The dog that was hit by a car is doing okay, seems its hip was popped out of place. Dr. J got it back in and the dog is on limited everything for several weeks to heal. But it should heal just fine.

Oh and one gal who brought in three dogs for vaccines, sat patiently for Dr. J . . . never telling anyone that one of those dogs had a laceration about an inch wide on its side. Dr. J saw it when he got into the exam room, and of course, we needed to clean it up so it didn't get infected. But what all of us were curious about was why in the hell didn't she mention it when she made the appointment or when she checked in? If we had known ahead of time, we could have prepped for it. But no, no mention of it, and it was just one more dog we had to sedate and work on in the back. As far as I know, she didn't even mention it to the vet, he just noticed it first thing. Because who can ignore an inch wide gash on the side of a dog. Ohhh. The owner, that's who. The dog got cleaned up and sent home on antibiotics.

The old horse with chronic founder had to be euthanized. For the non-horse people reading this blog, founder (or laminitis) is a condition that affects the horse's feet, and causes lameness. It can be caused by several things, but most often we see it horses that are on feed that is far to rich for them for too long. It can also be caused by other medical issues such as colic (twisted gut), untreated infections, and even insulin resistance just to name a few. Anyway, the gal had her 5 kids with her and they were all pretty upset, especially her youngest. She'd rescued the horse from an abusive situation 17 years ago, and had given her a good, loving home. If it had just been founder that was the problem, it probably could have been treatable. But she had muscle separating from her spine and her discs were bulging. Dr. J took one look and knew founder was probably the least of the horse's problems.

As you can see, founder (or laminitis) is where the coffin bone (the pointy bone in the picture) rotates. A lot of people with foundered horses x-ray their horses hooves on a regular basis to monitor bone rotation.

The dogs with foxtails were treated and sent home with some ear medicines. For those of you who do not know what foxtails are, you're lucky. Out here in the west, foxtails are our enemies. They are a nasty weed that plague us and our animals every year. And not just dogs. Cattle and horses will get them in their eyes or can ingest them and can get abscesses in their mouths from these things if they eat hay that has a lot of foxtails in them. We see it mostly in dogs - in their ears most commonly, but also up their noses, down their throats, and in their paws.

A patch of the evil foxtail weed

 The evil foxtail barbs - this is what we pull from ears, noses, throats and paws. They are very irritating and painful.

The dog that fell off the deck is doing okay. He's an older dog so he old bones didn't like the fall very much. One of the techs and I carried him from the car to the exam room. He was later carried from the exam room to the back treatment room where they sedated him and treated him.

The St. Bernard with the supposed cherry eye turned out to have a nice-sized abscess on it's upper jaw, under the right eye. The abscess was pushing up on the eye, causing the inner eyelid to push out. I followed the tech to the back to offer assistance as everyone else was taken. As soon as she and I leaned over to pick the dog up, all 103 pounds of him laid out flat on the floor. Nice. We got him up on the table, put him under general anesthesia, and Dr. J came over to take a look. They took care of it and he was sent home later in the day with some pain meds and antibiotics.

The dog with a bunch of foxtails in its throat had a lot of them in there according to Dr. J. But he got them out, and sent the dog home with some anti-inflammatory meds and antibiotics.

Not to mention the people that walked in without appointments for random things. Luckily they were quick random things, but still . . . 

 We made it through the day, our sanity still intact. Well, what there was anyway.