Joey’s Pet of the Week – Simba’s Sore Stomach

By Scott Lackenby | Dated December 4, 2015

Hey peeps!! How are you all? It’s been a super busy week at GVH. Lots of tick cases to keep us all on our toes. I really do hate them. Such terrible little critters they are. I bet you’re sick of hearing it from me, but PLEASE make sure you are applying tick prevention to your pets regularly. There are lots of products on the market, so pop in and have a chat to my lovely Nurses about the best product for your 4legged friend.

My star this week is the handsome Simba, a 3 1/2 year old Samoyed from South Turramurra. Simba came in and saw Dr David Owen after he had off his food for a few days. Simba had been eating grass and was drinking a lot of water and vomiting. Simba’s temperature was ok, his gums were a good colour and he wasn’t sore in his tummy. Given the time of year, Dr David O did a tick search, which wasn’t an easy job with Simba’s thick Samoyed coat! No ticks were found, and given Simba has a history of chewing things, there was a possibility of a foreign body. But given Simba wasn’t sore in the stomach, Dr David sent Simba home with some tablets to help settle his stomach and instructions for him to be fed small amounts of food at frequent intervals, plenty of water and for his humans to bring him back if he wasn’t getting better.

Simba came back the next day and saw Dr Scott Lackenby. Simba hadn’t vomited anymore, but he was now not eating, he was salivating and was lethargic. Dr Scott admitted Simba for some blood tests and some X-rays and a possible ultrasound of his tummy. Simba’s blood test results were ok and the Xray showed that there was some bones in his stomach, but not enough to be causing him any problems. Next we did an ultrasound which showed that Simba’s stomach was thickened and looked unhappy. Simba was given some pain relief, and some medication to help settle his stomach and Dr Scott advised Simba’s Mum that unless he had improved by the next day, he would need surgery to rule out a foreign body that we couldn’t see on either the X-rays or Ultrasound. How can we not see a foreign body, I hear you ask? Well, If the offending item is soft like fabric or even some plastics, they don’t show up easily when we do Xrays. Unfortunately for Simba, he did need surgery so we could have a look at was was going on with his tummy. Dr Helen Burns performed the surgery and found that Simba did indeed have a foreign body that was some sort of plastic. Dr Helen tried to “milk” out the offending foreign body but was unable to so she had to remove that section of Simba’s intestine.

The surgery went well and while it took Simba a while to recovery, once he was back on his feet he was a much happier dog. He just wouldn’t eat for us! After big surgeries like this, it’s very important that dogs eat a low fat diet, but Simba was not happy with this option!! In the end, his Mummy came in with some tasty cooked chicken and he ate for her, so he was able to go home!! Simba and his family were extremely happy to have him home, and they even made us a fantastic card with some amazing Simba pics on it! Hopefully Simba sticks to eating regular things now, and keeps away from inedible objects!

Well, I’d better go. Lots of things for me to wreck, I mean finish, before the days over. Meows for now, love Joey xoxo