Weirdest injury you've seen an animal get

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Wow. Poor cat!

Do you know what type of steroid?

Corticosteroids, so prednisolone can do it. And I think progestins can too.

(there are other diseases and conditions that can too, but the lecture on steroids really scared the crap out of me. Steroids scare me for other reasons, and this just kind of pushed my anxiety off the edge. Highly doubt it was exogenous drug use in the one I witnessed though. If you want to read about it, look up feline acquired skin fragility syndrome)

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That is a sad story :(

We actually just did a 2 hour surgery on a female umbrella cockatoo who was egg bound in September. Owners declined removal at the time, just took home bayril and meloxicam. She came back in in tues with a distended abdomen and labored breathing. Yesterday we removed about a cup to a cup and a half of what looked like hard boiled egg and other nastiness. Shockingly the bird is doing okay!
I'm entirely impressed she survived! They are so sensitive and can die easily when they're egg bound. Some people just shouldn't own pets.
 
I dunno what happened in that case, but I felt so bad for the animal care tech who had noticed that the cat's face was dirty and got a warm moist towel to clean it off. The face came right off with it.

I couldn't imagine that. ._.;

I've worked the desk for a day, and although I didn't see anything abnormal patient wise(I was fortunate to be there on a day filled with check-ups), I had to explain to two 8th graders that dog pounds and people pounds were the same unit of weight. x/
 
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One of my own cats somehow got a hold of a needle...was hiding which is atypical of her. So I grabbed her and looked in her mouth, there was a lovely needle winking at me. Quick trip to the clinic, knock out and remove and she was fine.

Funny because I didn't sew anything at the time.
 
One of my own cats somehow got a hold of a needle...was hiding which is atypical of her. So I grabbed her and looked in her mouth, there was a lovely needle winking at me. Quick trip to the clinic, knock out and remove and she was fine.

Funny because I didn't sew anything at the time.

I had a case last year where a dog was having pain when chewing. On quick oral exam, I a saw a flash of metal around a pre-molar. we schedule to do a dental with removal of foreign body. Open the mouth and there is a 1-2 cm diameter spring coiled around this carnassial tooth. It was firmly wedged under the tooth. We couldn't find wire cutters so I used a pair of nail trimmers and managed to open it enough for it to spring out of the mouth. No damage whatsoever other than some mild irritation.
 
We had to sedate a dog to slip a bone off from around his lower jaw. One of those bones with the marrow in the middle that he got a little too enthusiastic about. Beagles...

One of those came into the clinic I was working at once. We were struggling to remove it and the dog was getting pretty annoyed and started trying to snap and bite some, but since the bone was holding his mouth open the attempts were rather pathetic :laugh:

In the middle of that something else came up I had to attend too, so I didn't witness it myself, I know they sedated the dog and were able to get the bone off, but if I remember right I think someone told me they ended up having to cut it.
 
Corticosteroids, so prednisolone can do it. And I think progestins can too.

(there are other diseases and conditions that can too, but the lecture on steroids really scared the crap out of me. Steroids scare me for other reasons, and this just kind of pushed my anxiety off the edge. Highly doubt it was exogenous drug use in the one I witnessed though. If you want to read about it, look up feline acquired skin fragility syndrome)

I saw a cat with this condition too. No history of steroid use, so we assumed it was another disease. (I think Cushing's in cats can do it?) This cat looked like the owner had tried to pick it up and it's skin just slipped off it's chest. The vet I was working with had to look it up because he had actually never seen a case of it before. This poor cat's skin would rip pretty much anywhere you touched it. :(
 
Note from the vet techs placed on my labmate's mouse cage: "One missing penis." We looked into it and it was just...missing. Hadn't been torn off in a fight (as the male mice will brawl sometimes), it just had a neat hole where the penis should have been that it was peeing out of. Very strange...

The grossest thing I've seen is *terrible* owners who left their dog outside all the time and completely neglected him. He had an open wound that became maggot infested. :mad:
 
That is a sad story :(

We actually just did a 2 hour surgery on a female umbrella cockatoo who was egg bound in September. Owners declined removal at the time, just took home bayril and meloxicam. She came back in in tues with a distended abdomen and labored breathing. Yesterday we removed about a cup to a cup and a half of what looked like hard boiled egg and other nastiness. Shockingly the bird is doing okay!

How can someone decline removal of a bound egg? That's not exactly a problem that goes away on its own. If you get a pet bird that has even a remote chance of being female, you should just assume that it will have reproductive issues down the line, as it seems they inevitably always do. That reminds me of a bird with yolk coelomitis we attempted to do surgery on. She was sadly so weak at that point that she died within the first few minutes of anesthesia. On necropsy her entire abdomen was just filled with hard boiled egg like nastiness. Probably had been building up for years.

Have to say most of the unusual stuff we see in my hospital is of the disease variety, not injuries. Sadly a majority of the time birds with traumatic injuries are found dead. But we did once have a bird who was scalped, never figured out how. Amazingly it lived for a few days but ultimately died. Also once had an incident in which an african grey turned murderous and thought it would be fun to munch on a finch. Obviously that didn't end well.
 
A few weeks ago we had a super sick kitty (vomiting for about a week and not eating). Rads showed "bunchy" small intestines so they went in for an exploratory. She had a piece of string caught around her tongue that extended through her stomach and into the upper portion of her small intestine!

A few months ago we had a large dog come in with his neck ripped open and the trachea exposed. Blood everywhere. Took our doc 3 hours to put him back together but he lived! He had been attacked by 2 larger dogs.
 
Note from the vet techs placed on my labmate's mouse cage: "One missing penis." We looked into it and it was just...missing. Hadn't been torn off in a fight (as the male mice will brawl sometimes), it just had a neat hole where the penis should have been that it was peeing out of. Very strange...

The grossest thing I've seen is *terrible* owners who left their dog outside all the time and completely neglected him. He had an open wound that became maggot infested. :mad:
Isn't that so infuriating? We had someone come in as a walk-in (which we typically don't do) but the dog had a huge gap around it's neck that they just noticed that day. Turns out they NEVER removed his puppy collar and it was actually digging into his skin! We told them that it needed to be removed very soon, but we didn't see them again for almost a month and then it took a month after surgery before they came back to have the sutures removed. I was so mad at them that I couldn't talk to them.

Another guy that pissed me off to no end had a pit bull male dog that was skin and bones, like 40 lbs. He said the dog was always a bit thin but had lost a ton of weight in the PAST COUPLE DAYS. I couldn't look at him because there's no way a dog could lose that much weight that quickly when he's supposed to be 60 lbs or over. We drew some blood off the dog and found that his counts were all kinds of crazy so we had him bring the dog back in a couple weeks later to see how the dog was doing on the meds, and the dog had lost more weight. I was so upset that I almost cried. We never saw the guy again after that day.
 
How can someone decline removal of a bound egg? That's not exactly a problem that goes away on its own. If you get a pet bird that has even a remote chance of being female, you should just assume that it will have reproductive issues down the line, as it seems they inevitably always do.

I vaguely remember them when she originally presented. I believe it was a financial difficulty and they were given the choice of removal or euth. I think they were going to try to scrape up the money and we dispensed meds and then they just never came back... They did say that she had been "fine" up until about last week. As fine as she could have been anyway. Whats interesting is that this time around they were willing to do anything, money was no object. This bird was in really rough shape to begin with, as a lot of the birds we see are, especially 'toos. Chronic self mutilation, poor diet, etc. We see a lot of reproductive problems in female birds..egg bound, prolapsed, and unfortunately most people don't choose to treat them accordingly.

I just thank my stars my guy is a male :D
 
I vaguely remember them when she originally presented. I believe it was a financial difficulty and they were given the choice of removal or euth. I think they were going to try to scrape up the money and we dispensed meds and then they just never came back... They did say that she had been "fine" up until about last week. As fine as she could have been anyway. Whats interesting is that this time around they were willing to do anything, money was no object. This bird was in really rough shape to begin with, as a lot of the birds we see are, especially 'toos. Chronic self mutilation, poor diet, etc. We see a lot of reproductive problems in female birds..egg bound, prolapsed, and unfortunately most people don't choose to treat them accordingly.

I just thank my stars my guy is a male :D
Cockatoos are definitely fragile birds compared to other species. One of the doctors has one that is an obsessive feather plucker to the point of causing physical harm. She's a super sweet bird but has to wear an e-collar all the time because she has such horrible separation anxiety.
 
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Something that really infuriates me are the people who use their dogs as "bait" to hunt much larger animals. A big practice in Florida is wild boar hunting, where hunters use two types of dogs to hurt down these massive, not too mention extremely aggressive, wild boars (with tusks). The hunters use hound dogs to track down and bait the boars and then pitt-bull type dogs to set lose on the boars and finally bring them down. Only then will the hunter shoot the boars. It rips my heart open every time these hunters bring their injured dogs in.... Dogs with gaping holes from the boar's tusks, deflated lungs, punctuared eyes... You can't imagine how gruesome these mutilated dogs come in looking like :( It kills me inside. The other horrible part of this practice is the hunters keep the dogs underfed and underweight, so they will hunt and run faster. Witnessing the deaths and life-long injuries due to this "sport" is truly appaling to me :(
 
Cockatoos are definitely fragile birds compared to other species. One of the doctors has one that is an obsessive feather plucker to the point of causing physical harm. She's a super sweet bird but has to wear an e-collar all the time because she has such horrible separation anxiety.

Flight Quarters makes a FeatherProtector vest for self mutilators. I've never seen one in use but it seems like a good alternative to an e-collar.
 
Haha, that is one lucky dog! I can't imagine trying to sew close something I couldn't see at all and probably could barely feel through all that coagulated blood.
It was pretty incredible, definitely his favorite story to tell/ brag about. The vet told me this year when he was helping me with my app that he knew I would make it because that would have scared almost everyone from coming back. But, here I am five years later, and starting vet school in the fall!
 
Flight Quarters makes a FeatherProtector vest for self mutilators. I've never seen one in use but it seems like a good alternative to an e-collar.
I'll be sure to mention it to him. He may choose the e-collar because she's chewed through other stuff already, I'm not really sure. She forgives and forgets pretty easily though. I was the one holding her so he could trim her beak, and as soon as we were done she went back to chilling on my shoulder.
 
The magazine print-out of this has been hanging in our lounge at work for quite a while now.

"A 46-pound English bulldog swallowed a 9-inch screwdriver. Dog did very well after cranial laparotomy and gastrotomy. However, after he woke up, he promptly ate his intravenous injection port." :laugh:

Also, holy hell did you see those stones?!
 
I vaguely remember them when she originally presented. I believe it was a financial difficulty and they were given the choice of removal or euth. I think they were going to try to scrape up the money and we dispensed meds and then they just never came back... They did say that she had been "fine" up until about last week. As fine as she could have been anyway. Whats interesting is that this time around they were willing to do anything, money was no object. This bird was in really rough shape to begin with, as a lot of the birds we see are, especially 'toos. Chronic self mutilation, poor diet, etc. We see a lot of reproductive problems in female birds..egg bound, prolapsed, and unfortunately most people don't choose to treat them accordingly.

I just thank my stars my guy is a male :D

Ugghhh reproductive problems are my biggest fear with my dove. I'm about 90% sure she's female (can't actually see the repro organs on x-rays, but based on the calcium depletion in her bones its likely she's got a history of egg laying). Even laying a normal egg honestly might kill her given her disability. So here's to hoping she never feels well enough to start producing eggs again :(

We definitely see a lot of repro problems in our hospital too, although probably not as much as in private practice. Our new vet who came to us from an avian/exotics internship at a large private clinic always vents about how frequently she'd see birds with repro problems that were the direct result of excessive cuddling on the part of the owners-- ie, scratching under the wings and other mating like behaviors. I'm probably guilty of that with my bird, but well, I honestly don't think she eats enough to be able to support egg production. She barely maintains her rather poor weight as it is.
 
"A 46-pound English bulldog swallowed a 9-inch screwdriver. Dog did very well after cranial laparotomy and gastrotomy. However, after he woke up, he promptly ate his intravenous injection port." :laugh:

Also, holy hell did you see those stones?!

I just spent about 20 minutes oohing and ahhing over those films.

Ugghhh reproductive problems are my biggest fear with my dove. I'm about 90% sure she's female (can't actually see the repro organs on x-rays, but based on the calcium depletion in her bones its likely she's got a history of egg laying). Even laying a normal egg honestly might kill her given her disability. So here's to hoping she never feels well enough to start producing eggs again :(

We definitely see a lot of repro problems in our hospital too, although probably not as much as in private practice. Our new vet who came to us from an avian/exotics internship at a large private clinic always vents about how frequently she'd see birds with repro problems that were the direct result of excessive cuddling on the part of the owners-- ie, scratching under the wings and other mating like behaviors. I'm probably guilty of that with my bird, but well, I honestly don't think she eats enough to be able to support egg production. She barely maintains her rather poor weight as it is.

That really stinks :( Of course you want her to be healthy but also not at the expense of having repro issues. That's a tough place to be in.

I did see a bird about a year ago who had prolapsed long before the owner decided to bring her in. He had bought the bird off of his girlfriend (???) who had gotten her from a man who used to give her inappropriate attention. She had managed to break the bird of that behavior, but when her boyfriend (who apparently happened to look like the old owner) got her, she started seeking sexual stimulation and he went along with it. When he brought the bird in she would assume the position whenever he started talking, it was that bad. Makes me sorry for all the birds out there with uneducated owners.
 
Ugghhh reproductive problems are my biggest fear with my dove. I'm about 90% sure she's female (can't actually see the repro organs on x-rays, but based on the calcium depletion in her bones its likely she's got a history of egg laying). Even laying a normal egg honestly might kill her given her disability. So here's to hoping she never feels well enough to start producing eggs again :(

We definitely see a lot of repro problems in our hospital too, although probably not as much as in private practice. Our new vet who came to us from an avian/exotics internship at a large private clinic always vents about how frequently she'd see birds with repro problems that were the direct result of excessive cuddling on the part of the owners-- ie, scratching under the wings and other mating like behaviors. I'm probably guilty of that with my bird, but well, I honestly don't think she eats enough to be able to support egg production. She barely maintains her rather poor weight as it is.
We've actually only had 2 birds come in that were egg bound in the clinic I work at, but we have a lot of URI cases. It may be because it's so dry here, but I swear every other avian appointment is for a possible URI and occasionally we'll have an injury or a repro issue.
 
We've actually only had 2 birds come in that were egg bound in the clinic I work at, but we have a lot of URI cases. It may be because it's so dry here, but I swear every other avian appointment is for a possible URI and occasionally we'll have an injury or a repro issue.

That's funny, as I can't think of a single case of an upper resp. infection I've seen in the past year! We get a TON of pneumonia though, pretty much all aspergillosis. But it's pretty humid and probably a bit moldy here, so that's where that comes from. It's crazy how different things can be!
 
"A 46-pound English bulldog swallowed a 9-inch screwdriver. Dog did very well after cranial laparotomy and gastrotomy. However, after he woke up, he promptly ate his intravenous injection port." :laugh:

Also, holy hell did you see those stones?!

Haha, that one is my favorite.


How about this dog that eats rocks? Interesting radiograph!
 
The magazine print-out of this has been hanging in our lounge at work for quite a while now.

I like the snake who ate the stone egg. Sounds like something my snake would do. She's not the brightest bulb in the box when it comes to eating (9 times out of 10 she eats her mice backwards...)

My dog may or may not have eaten several cupcake wrappers the other day (it's possible he stashed them somewhere as of yet unknown). Fortunately they're just paper, so shouldn't cause any problems, however they were all coated in chocolate cake remanants :rolleyes: He also loves to eat the pigeon seed that the bird throws on the floor. Again, thankfully, it's just a bit of extra fiber...
 
1. Cat with arrow through her shoulder. It was intense. She made it though!


2. I think it came up to three times in ONE week last summer we did ex-laps on three different patients (at least one was a cat) and they each had a peach/nectarine pit lodged in their intestines :eek:


3. This kid once brought in his dog who presented with inexplicable bleeding from his tongue, which had been going on for several hours. We couldn't get the darn pit/lab mix to sit still, so we decided to knock him out. WELL, the pre-anesthetic caused him to vomit up BUSHELS of red/bloody fluid. It was ridiculous. I've seen bloated German Shepherds with more stuff in their stomachs. What's even more interesting is what we found: a couple of shards/fragments of what looked like BBs lodged in the underside of his tongue. The kid had no idea how they got there; we guessed that since they live out in the country, the dog might have somehow been in the path of said BBs after they ricocheted off of something? Who knows.

Obligatory photo (NOTE, we caught *most* of the fluid with a friggin bucket):
http://distilleryimage6.s3.amazonaws.com/0d789de8321011e28e3c22000a1f9d44_7.jpg

EDIT:
4. Wasn't *that* weird, but worth telling: A family of three (including a young boy of 5-6) brought in their jack russel for what they thought to be a "growing laceration" on the front of the dog's neck. It took about 2 seconds with the clippers and one whiff of the dog before the doc and I turned around for a pair of gloves... We found a rubber band (*cringe*) around this guy's neck. It must have been there for at least a week because it had burrowed quite a bit and the wound was starting to fester.
Needless to say, the parents were appalled. And the look on that poor kid's face when mom gasped his name... Parents, keep a close eye on them kids n' pets!
 
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I'm amazed the horse people have chimed in yet. Those beasts are always finding new and creative ways to hurt themselves.

I worked at a broken down horse breeding farm for a couple years as a kid, saw all kinds of awful things. These are the ones that stand out:

The people kept all their studs and stud colts in a row of small pipe corral pens. They stuck a weanling colt next to a stud. He laid down to sleep, got his head under the rails and the stud stamped the crap out of his face. Destroyed it. But after about a year, there was only a tiny scar above one eye.

Once during feeding, a couple mares in the barn who didn't like each other were fighting over their divider. One of them turned around to double barrel the wall and ended up getting her entire hind end hung up in the feeder. She was there for hours while they tried to figure out how to safely get her down. Ended up lifting her down with a bunch of people. Sliced her haunch wide open, it was awful.

A stud stuck his foot throw the cheap plywood wall of his stall, right where a 6" screw was sticking up. Gouged a massive hole in his heel, took years to heal since the place was filthy.

Once a yearling filly stuck her head through the pipe corral rails. The owner didn't want her to rub her mane out, so she clapped in the filly's face to scare her back. The filly jerked back so hard, she broke her next. She struggled for hours with her face in the dirt, trying to get up, until the vet came and put her down.

These are just a few of the stories.
 
Skin fragility syndrome in cats is most commonly associated with Cushing's disease. I've seen a Cushingoid cat being scruffed that struggled and the skin just completely ripped. Thankfully, anti-inflammatory doses of exogenous steroids aren't terribly dangerous for cats. I have a kitty with feline asthma that's been on the anti-inflammatory dose of prednisolone for about 6 years with no issues whatsoever. She gets routine check ups and blood work and she's perfectly healthy.

I have a ton of horrific stories, but weirdest injury? The first one that came to mind was a little dachshund that presented when I was an ER tech. When I entered the room, I thought she had a rubber feeding tube sticking out of her neck, but it looked very bizarre. Once we got the history and did a PE, it turned out to be her left jugular. It was completely torn from her throat and coagulated. The owners returned home from dinner and found her outside on the deck, quiet but very alive and alert, completely surrounded by blood. Our best guess was something like a raccoon, because coyotes are very common in the area, but she would've just been carried away if it was a coyote. We immediately went to surgery and she recovered beautifully and went home. :)
 
the dog who ate his female owner's private "toy," she immediately said "my dog spent the weekend at my sisters, must have eaten it there"

the cat who swallowed a string, but it wrapped around his tongue. He literally had the same piece of string going from mouth to anus.

the miniature stallion who had been attacked by pit bulls. They'd only gone for his balls though, and only really mangled one. The owners insisted they "used him for breeding" and implored us to do what we could to keep him intact, so we only took one ball.
 
3.
Obligatory photo (NOTE, we caught *most* of the fluid with a friggin bucket):
http://distilleryimage6.s3.amazonaws.com/0d789de8321011e28e3c22000a1f9d44_7.jpg

EDIT:
4. Wasn't *that* weird, but worth telling: A family of three (including a young boy of 5-6) brought in their jack russel for what they thought to be a "growing laceration" on the front of the dog's neck. It took about 2 seconds with the clippers and one whiff of the dog before the doc and I turned around for a pair of gloves... We found a rubber band (*cringe*) around this guy's neck. It must have been there for at least a week because it had burrowed quite a bit and the wound was starting to fester.
Needless to say, the parents were appalled. And the look on that poor kid's face when mom gasped his name... Parents, keep a close eye on them kids n' pets!

3. Holy cripes, that's a lot of blood! :eek:

4. Haha. Reminds me of how my mother found me one day in my room. She says I was way too quiet and so she went in and check on me, and she found me sitting on my bed with a rubber band wrapped tightly around my neck, grinning at her. To this day she has no idea how I got it around my neck, but my point of this is, I guess I turned to self-torture versus going through that phase with my animals. :rolleyes: Sometimes I wonder what makes some kids much more prone to fooling around with animals (like the story on that x-ray link, about the boy who put nails in the dog's water bowl) than others.




I work at a dental clinic, so no terribly weird things yet. :p The weirdest things I've seen there were a dog with multiple/extra roots in his teeth and stomatitis absolutely fascinates me. But for now, I'm mostly lurking and reading. Hopefully I'll be able to come back here at some point with my own stories.
 
We had another odd injury today, but this time on a hyacinth macaw. Poor thing actually had either a hatching defect or old injury that broke the wrist of the wing and the tip of the wing was actually bent backwards. The doctor that peformed the partial wing amputation said it was likely that she either broke her wrist a long time ago and caused repetitive trauma to the area or she was born that way. Apparently there is a condition that happens inside the egg where as the bird is developing the wing will bend back. I don't remember what he said it was called but definitely learned something new today.
 
We had another odd injury today, but this time on a hyacinth macaw. Poor thing actually had either a hatching defect or old injury that broke the wrist of the wing and the tip of the wing was actually bent backwards. The doctor that peformed the partial wing amputation said it was likely that she either broke her wrist a long time ago and caused repetitive trauma to the area or she was born that way. Apparently there is a condition that happens inside the egg where as the bird is developing the wing will bend back. I don't remember what he said it was called but definitely learned something new today.

Interesting..did you happen to get a photo?
 
This story sounds exceedingly country in my head, but it's one of the weirder I've seen.

We have a patient, an oversized ~8yr old male pitbull, with a bad habit for hunting down wildlife and bringing it back to his owner. Recently we got a call from the owner in a panic asking us what to do for a piercing injury to the abdomen. We told him to bring the dog in as fast as he could and were a little surprised to see that the injury had been caused by a fairly large section of a deer's antlers.

Turns out the dog had tried and partially succeeded to bring a live buck back to the owner's house. Owner shot the buck after it caught the dog on the side on their porch and just sawed off the end of the antlers to bring him in. Dog was fine after a few days hospitalization and the owner just kept joking about how he hated to ruin the dog's first mountable buck like that.
 
Not an injury, per se, but the aftermath of infection.

Was riding with my vet, and we go to this farm. The horse was resting on its right rear toe, and for some reason would not bear bear full weight on the limb. I find out later the horse had developed cellulitis, and while my vet was on vacation, two other doctors had come to treat the horse and both of them effed up the antibiotics. So, this poor horse had a raging infection in its leg, up until they managed to get it under control.

So, now the horse's tendons are all contracted due to the inflammatory damage from the infection, and it cannot extend the leg. So we, meaning me and the vet, begin cooperating with the local farrier to stretch out her leg with special shoes, lots of walking, and pressure wrapping to force her to bear weight on the limb. The horse is now retired to a farm in Virginia, and is perfectly sound.

Then there is the time I helped clean a maggot infested wound on the hindquarters of a lamb, and helped sew up a horse who decided to rub a little too forcefully on the point of a gate hitch. Pseudomonas...that smell...::shudder::
 
I've always heard horror stories of Hamsters/ Rodents being injured by their spinning wheels, but a couple weeks ago I witnessed it.

A teddy bear hamster was brought to the treatment area whose fur got caught in the wheel stand that holds the wheel in place. This caused the hamsters leg to be twisted around the wheel and the wheel stand basically impaled the hamsters abdomen. Of course the doctor wasn't there yet so I had to cut the fur of the hamster to free him. 30 minutes later the Dr. Arrived and Euthed him. I'm not a huge pocket pet fan, but this really hurt my feelings. No animal should go through such horror. :(
 
I had a syndactyl kitty today.
Wait, a cat that had only one toe on each foot?? What does that even look like? I've seen plenty of polys but no syndactyls. That is definitely weird. And has reminded me of a dog a group I was with treated in Costa Rica. If I find the picture of it I'll post it because there's no way I can describe it.

ETA: I've looked everywhere and can't find it, which is unfortunate because it was a very strange and interesting defect.
 
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This isn't exactly a weird injury but it still makes me chuckle. The SA clinic I work at is right near a big park so we get a lot of park-injuries like bite wounds from off-leash hours, etc. One Saturday we had a woman bring in her big yellow lab with blood dripping out of his mouth. Of course he was perfectly content and panting and looked like he hadn't a care in the world. Apparently he had been chewing on sticks in the park and the owner noticed he had blood in his mouth all of a sudden. After knocking him out we found he had peirced a hole straight through his tongue. The vet could put her finger all the way through... we stitched him up and he recovered just fine. It makes me laugh to remember his dopey looking, happy face with blood dripping out of his mouth... oh labs :laugh:
 
Wait, a cat that had only one toe on each foot?? What does that even look like? I've seen plenty of polys but no syndactyls. That is definitely weird. And has reminded me of a dog a group I was with treated in Costa Rica. If I find the picture of it I'll post it because there's no way I can describe it.

ETA: I've looked everywhere and can't find it, which is unfortunate because it was a very strange and interesting defect.

He had 3 toes on one foot and 4 on the other front foot with obvious deformity
 
He had 3 toes on one foot and 4 on the other front foot with obvious deformity
Oh, haha, silly me. I was thinking of an extreme case, but yea still very weird.
 
I have three good ones...

1. Chocolate lab came in for exploratory surgery. X-rays led to the suspicion of a mass in the stomach that was most likely cancer. When we opened her up turns out she didn't have a cancerous mass..she had consumed NINE socks that were stuck in her stomach..she survived :) ....however she came back a couple years later with carpet runner stuck in her stomach and had to have a second exploratory surgery to find it. She survived surgery but was pretty old by this point and died in recovery :(

2. At an emergency clinic I worked at a dog was brought in for an unknown illness..blood work showed kidney failure, but the dog was relatively young. They sent him home on some meds. He came back a few days later...further testing, an ultrasound and a contrast x-ray showed that he actually had a ruptured bladder! and it was an easy fix :)

3. Just yesterday we had a dog come in with a prolapsed vagina! It was so bad that it was swollen to the size of the dog's brain (this was a Pyrenees mix so you can only imagine how big...).
 
1. A Boston Terrier was attacked through a chain link fence, resulting in some massive neck wounds from the other dogs trying to pull him through. When he was brought into our clinic, his jugular was hanging out about 3 or 4". It had been pulled taught enough to not bleed. He survived for about 2 weeks, but the resulting inflammation in his neck made it nearly impossible to breathe and he was euthanized.

2. A shepherd mix had stillborn puppy 2 weeks after giving birth to 3 other pups. We opened her up and found a massive TVT stuck in her cervix and 2 other pups that had ruptured through the uterus and were now decaying in her abdomen. No idea how that stillborn made it out.

3. A client brought in their shepherd after it had been attacked by a cat. I went outside to call them in to the exam room, expecting just a few scratches but found myself staring at a VOLLEYBALL sized abscess on this dogs cheek. My immediate reaction was "Oh $%!*," which the owners laughed and said "Yep." We sedated him and lanced the abscess. It was like a fountain. It was awesome.
 
3. A client brought in their shepherd after it had been attacked by a cat. I went outside to call them in to the exam room, expecting just a few scratches but found myself staring at a VOLLEYBALL sized abscess on this dogs cheek. My immediate reaction was "Oh $%!*," which the owners laughed and said "Yep." We sedated him and lanced the abscess. It was like a fountain. It was awesome.


I'm glad I'm not the only one who feels that way about abscesses :)
 
Saw a chihuahua once with subcutaneous emphysema. Apparently another dog grabbed it by the neck and shook it, tearing its trachea. Every time the dog would take a breath you could see the space under his skin literally inflating. It was like a chihuahua parade balloon. The vet deflated it as much as possible with a needle and sent it to the ER. I've heard since that it's not that uncommon but it definitely freaked me out!
 
1) I saw a schnauzer that was attached my a former Italian fighting dog; the poor schnauzer was missing nearly all the skin on the left side of her abdomen. We made her a bandage out of a diaper that she had to wear for a few months; thankfully she did fully recover.

2) A pitbull came into our clinic after it ran into a tree branch and had a V-shaped laceration on its shoulder. Each leg of the V was around 8 inches, so there was just a giant flap of skin hanging off. Thankfully we were able to just staple it closed and he recovered perfectly!

3) A shepherd mix that ate over two pounds of sand. It was a very odd looking radiograph.

4) My coworker saw a JRT that was run over my a lawn mower and was still alive when presented to the ER. It was immediately euthanized, since the injuries were so severe (I was told its face was unrecognizable).
 
1) I saw a schnauzer that was attached my a former Italian fighting dog; the poor schnauzer was missing nearly all the skin on the left side of her abdomen. We made her a bandage out of a diaper that she had to wear for a few months; thankfully she did fully recover.

2) A pitbull came into our clinic after it ran into a tree branch and had a V-shaped laceration on its shoulder. Each leg of the V was around 8 inches, so there was just a giant flap of skin hanging off. Thankfully we were able to just staple it closed and he recovered perfectly!

3) A shepherd mix that ate over two pounds of sand. It was a very odd looking radiograph.

4) My coworker saw a JRT that was run over my a lawn mower and was still alive when presented to the ER. It was immediately euthanized, since the injuries were so severe (I was told its face was unrecognizable).
Who the heck would not see a jack russell laying in the grass while they're mowing? It's not like they're a tea cup chihuahua or anything.
 
Last summer we had a woman come in the clinic with her cocker spaniel. She said he had scratched the back of his ear open. The dog had long ears and neck hair so we didn't see the wound right away. It was awful.

Inside of the dog's ear was badly infected and sealed shut. I think an abscess formed inside the ear canal and bursted and drained through the neck. You can see a tunnel in the neck about the width of a golf ball and as long as a pen. We could clearly see the muscles and connective tissues. The smell was tremendous.

I felt bad for the owner (somewhat). She obviously cared a lot for her little friend but she didn't have any money. The dog had chronic ear infections that were being treated off an on but she hadn't been in for 5 years. She claimed to have only noticed this within the past week but the whole side of the dog's head and neck was rotten. We end up euthanizing the elderly dog and upon examination after he was deceased, it was worse than we thought. That poor guy must have been in so much pain and discomfort.
 
You both are not alone in those feelings haha

I find lancing an abscess to be so satisfying. I am fascinated by blood and pus. My non vet wannabe friends think I'm disgusting and crazy. Internal parasites are also neat.
 
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