Peanuts

Be responsible enough for your pets. As owners, you should be responsible enough to know your pets and keep them protected and safe. In some instances though, accidents happen yet, it will still be the owner’s responsibility for their pet to receive veterinary care and treatment.

This case was presented a few weeks ago. This Dachshund, Peanuts was brought in the clinic at about 12 midnight due to hacking. The owners only observed it the same night of presentation. Her appetite was normal and without problems in defecation and in urination. She was active and responsive at presentation. The caretaker told us that she did not succeed in trying to prevent the Peanuts from eating something earlier. She said she was unable to identify the object.

I requested for radiograph to check for the trachea and chest, and here’s what we saw…

Notice the Radio-opaque material at the area of the hyoid apparatus of Peanuts.

We tried to open up Peanut’s mouth to see if we will be able to see the object and retrieve it without the need for sedation, but we were out of luck. Next Stop: Sedation. But I do not sedate a pet without a bloodtest. You can never be too sure if they have a concurrent kidney or liver disease and with such problem may cause further complications such as death.

Peanuts’ blood profile was normal though and we proceeded to sedate her.

With the aid of a laryngoscope and my trusty technician, we performed the examination in the surgery room and tried to locate the foreign object. I hoped that Peanuts did not accidentally swallowed the object while waiting for the blood test results and during induction or else, it will be a major disaster… Luckily after a few minute of probing, I finally saw a silver material embedded at the ventral area of the larynx. It was a sewing needle!

The needle after retrieving it from Peanuts.

Peanuts during the recovery period

Whoah! Was Peanuts trying to stitch something up?

The caretaker was apparently sewing earlier and lost the needle after using it, and here comes Peanuts…

Everything went well until the owners declined to pay the total amount of the check up! Wow! Talk about responsibility…