Freddie is a 10-year old collie cross. He has been through the wars recently – not only has he been suffering with a hind limb lameness for some time (and recently had a CT scan to find the source of pain), but a few weeks ago, on the same day that Tess presented with her large splenic tumour (an abnormal growth on the spleen that carries roughly a 50 per cent to 66 per cent chance of being aggressive cancer), Freddie presented very unwell to South Moor Vets. Freddie is a dog who does not love the vets! To see him flat out on the floor, we knew that there was something very wrong. He had been vomiting for two days and it was suspected that he may have swallowed a chunk of his bedding.

We sedated Freddie in order to take some bloods, perform an abdominal ultrasound scan and x-rays, to try to find out what was causing him to be so unwell. His blood test showed a raised lactate, (which is an indicator of cell death), as well as generalised inflammation, confirming that he was indeed very sick. Despite these findings, it was still not obvious what was causing the problem. Freddie is complicated as he also has an underlying medical condition called Fanconi syndrome. Freddie’s abdominal x-rays revealed a suspicious area in his abdomen, which suggested a possible foreign body. Only certain things shown up well on x-rays, so in this case, we couldn’t be absolutely certain if there was an obstruction, but between us and Freddie’s owner, we decided exploratory surgery was the best option.

Freddie was anaesthetised and prepped for surgery. When we opened Freddie’s abdomen and traced through his intestines, it was remarkable to find a 12 cm long stick poking straight through his intestinal wall. There was bruising around the exit site in the intestine. I also found another section of intestine where the stick had started to poke a hole into it. Fortunately, both parts of the intestine appeared viable and didn’t need resection, so I carefully repaired them. We also performed a gastrotomy (incision into the stomach) to ensure there wasn’t any more stick in there waiting to cause another problem later. Amazingly, there was no evidence of intestinal contents in the abdominal space, but we knew that there would be microscopic contamination causing the start of peritonitis; so we flushed Freddie’s abdomen out with sterile saline and started him on intravenous antibiotics.

We would usually hospitalise patients that have had such extensive surgery, especially if there is suspicion of peritonitis, but Freddie is not a patient that would tolerate hospitalisation, and so he went home at 1 am that night. Luckily, he lives with a vet nurse who was able to look after him post-operatively at home. He was a very lucky dog and made a remarkable recovery from an injury that he would not have survived if left untreated.