Meet Coco

21 Feb 2017

Meet Coco, an (almost) two year old French Bulldog. Coco had to visit our clinic because she had been vomiting after consuming a lily petal. Eating these causes a mild toxic insult to dogs and can be very painful for your pup. Initially, we gave Coco some bland food and medication to stop her vomiting. This improved her condition primarily, but once the medication finished she begun to vomit again. We then decided to run some tests on her to investigate further. Her blood tests came back fine and she had no signs of pancreatitis. Finally, we took some x-rays and discovered Coco had swallowed a safety pin.

Coco needed surgery immediately, to have the safety pin removed from her stomach. Without surgery, she would almost certainly die from eating this. It could have caused a hole in her stomach, which would have then resulted from an infection in her abdomen.
Coco had surgery on the same day as the x-rays were taken, and we successfully retrieved the safety pin. She has recovered well from surgery, and a week later was back to her bright, happy, normal self. When we talked further with her owner, she told us that after Coco came in initially she was hunting around, licking the carpet and furniture.

Luckily for Coco, we found the safety pin before it had caused any other damage to her gastrointestinal tract. It could have been a lot worse for her. Dogs are naturally scavengers, and do tend to eat unusual things sometimes. It is important to make sure that they don’t have access to rubbish, small metal objects, pieces of strings and dirty laundry (the stronger smelling the better to a dog!). All of these things can cause an obstruction – a blockage in their gastrointestinal tract, which stops food moving through. If this does happen then the dogs need emergency surgery to remove the blockage. It is one situation where prevention is much better than cure!