Greyhound welfare, rehoming greyhounds and oesophageal foreign bodies in dogs

The NSW Government is seeking feedback re the recommendations of its Greyhound Industry Reform Panel

Since announcing a backdown on the Greyhound Racing Prohibition Act banning greyhound racing in New South Wales, the State Government has been keen to rapidly progress industry reforms.

The Recommendations of the Greyhound Industry Reform Panel have been published. These include both a best practice governance structure and an animal welfare plan including establishment of an independent Greyhound Welfare and Integrity Commission.

The reform panel, headed by former Premier Morris Iemma, has made 122 recommendations based on the McHugh report and consultation with stakeholders.

They are seeking feedback as soon as possible.

For those of us who read the McHugh report (900 pages) this is a light read at just over 80 pages. Recommendations highlighted in the Government press release include:

• Restrictions on keeping small animals on properties with greyhounds;
• An independent regulator with broad investigative powers;
• An enforceable code of practice for greyhound welfare;
• Whole-of-life registration and tracking of greyhounds;
• An accreditation scheme for industry participants;
• Increased penalties for animal welfare offences;
• Strict controls on euthanasia;
• Improved safety at tracks.

The panel did not recommend a breeding cap at this stage, nor did they recommend zero unnecessary euthanasia. Other recommendations are consistent, consistent in principle, partially consistent or occasionally not consistent with the McHugh report.

To read the document in full and have your say, click here.

Meanwhile the Australian Veterinary Behaviour Interest Group (AVBIG) of the AVA is hosting a webinar on the rehoming of racing greyounds. “Through their eyes: helping a retired greyhound adjust as a pet” is presented by Dr Karen Dawson from 8-9pm on March 1. There is a fee to register which varies depending on your membership status. Click here for more info.

Finally, Dr Trudi McAlees is conducting a survey on oesophageal foreign bodies in dogs. She is calling on any and hopefully all veterinarians to do some citizen science. This is a survey that does involve looking up the practice records so you will need access to those to do it.

As Dr McAlees says. “The most arduous part of participating in the survey will be looking up your practice records to find the last foreign body dog case, and then listing the breed of dog of the 10 cases that presented for any reason directly prior to the oesophageal foreign body dog patient. Completing the rest of the survey will take only a few minutes.”

She will be sharing the results in the Centre for Veterinary Education’s Control and Therapy newsletter. Click here to start. Please do it soon - the deadline is February 26.

Why are foreign bodies such bad news and why is intestinal surgery risky?

Unhappy intestines. The foreign body is distending this dog's intestine, compromising blood supply.

Radiographs can tell incredible stories, and often the best radiographic stories relate to foreign bodies: things that should not be inside animals that are inadvertently ingested.

Every year, Veterinary Practice News runs their ”They ate what?!” imaging competition, to highlight the more unusual items dogs, cats and other species swallow. You can review the impressive results here, and nope, you don't have to work as a vet, nurse or student to interpret most of these x-rays.

The foreign body once removed - a piece of rubber from a toy.

Such as 26 golf balls (all swallowed by one dog). Or a fishing pole. Gorilla glue, hair ties, a plastic dinosaur, steel wool pads, teddy bears and rocks also feature. The radiographs presented give an indication of just how problematic foreign bodies can be, without the full-colour gore we see on the operating table.

They make for great stories, but foreign bodies are life-threatening. As mentioned in the results of the competition, unfortunately not all of the patients made it. Why not?

Even in the best hands, intestinal repairs can break down (the overall rate of intestinal incision breakdown, or dehiscence, is 12-16 per cent). The risk of such complications is much higher in animals over time, i.e. the longer the foreign body is present, the higher the risk. The risk is also higher in animals that are systemically unwell, septic or those who have had a previous surgery.

There is a fabulous article by Sabrina Barry explaining all of this in the latest issue of Clinician’s Brief. Following surgery, intestine undergoes inflammation in the early stages of healing. Inflammation actually reduces the holding strength of the wound – so there is a real race between collagen breakdown and collagen synthesis.

Barry recommends supporting tissue oxygen delivery to the GIT, minimising contamination, being mindful of vascular anatomy, minimising inflammation and ensuring vascular wound edges, engaging the submucosa during suturing (even though its softer than the muscular layer, the submucosa is the layer that maintains its integrity when other tissues at the wound edge have lost their strength), approximating submucosal edges, minimising the number of enterotomies, preserving the omentum and offering early nutrition.

This is a lovely article and well worth a read for anyone who performs intestinal surgery.

However, you can do all of these things and an intestinal incision can still break down. As Barry points out, intestinal incisions aren’t like skin incisions – we can’t inspect them regularly, treat them topically or just throw in a few additional sutures if we think the wound needs reinforcing. And foreign bodies can wreak total devastation on the gut, especially those with sharp or abrasive edges.

Prevention is the best bet. Often, foreign body eaters are repeat offenders. I’ve surgically retrieved foreign objects from the same patient (almost invariably a dog) up to four times. They don’t associate eating the thing they ate with gut pain, nausea, hospitalisation or surgery.

If you notice your animal swallowing things they should not in your presence, it’s reasonable to expect they will do so in your absence. Toddler-proof your home, lock your laundry basket, put the garbage bins out of reach, block access to the compost – it’s worth the inconvenience.

And if you see your pet swallow something, seek immediate veterinary attention. Sometimes these objects can be retrieved by inducing vomiting or endoscopy, before they hit the intestines.

Reference

Barry, SL (2016) Intedyinal incision dehiscence. Clinician’s Brief April 2016: 71-76.

Why dogs should avoid the hor d'oeuvres: the tale of a migrating toothpick

These, I am told, are "devils on horseback". A plate like this, left unattended, can easily turn into "devils inside a dog".

Reading a decent case report is like reading a great detective story, with the added bonus of learning something you might use in practice.

In this month’s issue of the Australian Veterinary Practitioner there is a case report, modestly entitled “Toothpick as a perforating splenic foreign body in a dog: ultrasonography diagnosis and surgical treatment”. Some of you might have tuned out half way through the title, but this little tale contains some very important lessons for dogs and those who live with them – as well as their vets.

Let me paint the picture for you. A five-year-old, 8.5kg male dachshund, kept indoors with another dachsy, is a much loved companion. The owner dotes on the dogs and I would imagine these dogs are the kind who are ever-present when one is preparing meals or hor d’oeuvres for special occasions.

But this poor dog develops diarrhoea, which continues for about two months. There is occasional vomiting and abdominal pain. It’s one of those cases where they have good days and bad days, the signs are occasionally subtle, sometimes more dramatic, but nothing to write home about.

The regular vet, concerned there might be something more sinister going on (perhaps pancreatitis) refers the dog for an abdominal ultrasound. The dog has peritonitis – an inflamed abdomen containing free fluid, which was sampled and contained bacteria and inflammatory cells. Ultrasound is very good for detecting fluid, but when there is a lot of fluid it can mask some things that would otherwise be visible.

No diagnostic test is 100 per cent perfect, none guarantees a definitive diagnosis and far too often in a veterinary context we’re reluctant to repeat a test, instead moving up the diagnostic ladder. Fortunately, after some fluid was drained, the ultrasound was repeated. The culprit, previously hidden by a volume of fluid, was immediately visible: a toothpick sitting in the spleen.

How does a toothpick get into a spleen? One of two ways. One either falls on that toothpick with such force that it is rammed through the skin and lodges into the organ, although you’d imagine there would be an obvious wound or tract. OR one swallows the offending toothpick which, with its pointy tips, simply perforates the stomach and goes a-wandering around the abdomen until it lodges somewhere else.

Pointy foreign bodies can migrate, I found this kebab tip in a skin abscess in a dog that had nibbled on a kebab several months prior. 

Once the toothpick was sited, the owner vaguely recalled a possible window during which the dog might have ingested the toothpick – around two months ago. That explains the chronic signs.

Foreign bodies – particularly those that don’t obstruct the gastrointestinal tract – can be very tricky to diagnose. They can cause intermittent, waxing and waning clinical signs. Bloodwork may be unremarkable. Wood and plant material, including toothpicks, don’t show up very well on radiographs.

There are several morals to the story.

1. Be very wary when using toothpicks or those sharp wooden kebab skewers anywhere in the vicinity of a canine (and remember that dogs don’t mind going through the trash after you have a party, and toothpicks are the sort of thing that perforate garbage bags so are easily sited and removed by dogs).
2. If you detect evidence of inflammation in the thorax or abdomen, consider a migrating foreign body as a possibility.
3. Ultrasound is an important diagnostic step for identifying the cause of abdominal pain, but it might have to be repeated.

Fortunately for this patient the diagnosis was the tricky bit. Once that was achieved the surgery was (relatively speaking) a piece of cake. The toothpick was easily located and very gently extracted from the spleen by simply pulling it out. There was no major haemorrhage and certainly no need to remove the spleen. The abdomen was lavaged (washed with sterile saline) and he made a complete recovery.

Reference

Silva DM, Pavelski M, Govoni VM, de Oliveira ST and Froes TR (2015) Toothpick as a perforating splenic foreign body in a dog: ultrasonography diagnosis and surgical treatment. Australian Veterinary Practitioner 45(2):91-93.

Weekend read: tree kangaroos, veterinary imaging and that dog that ate 43.5 socks

One-year-old Tree Kangaroo joey Nupela with mum this week.

Tree kangaroos are incredibly beautiful, unfortunately rare creatures. The first encounter I had with one was visiting a colleague in Port Moresby, Papua New Guinea. A wealthy businessman was keeping a number of unhappy-looking tree kangaroos in barren enclosures (why do some wealthy people feel the need to possess rare and endangered wildlife when their husbandry is so appalling?).

This photo was taken in Port Moresby, Papua New Guinea. This Tree Kangaroo was kept by a wealthy businessman, and was going stir crazy in its barren enclosure.

Different species of tree kangaroos are found in lowland and mountainous forests in Papua New Guinea, Indonesia and in patches of Far North Queensland.

Taronga Zoo’s tree kangaroo joey Nupela was weighed this week, a year after she was born. Since leaving her mum’s pouch three months ago she has doubled in weight to 3.8kg – still smaller than your average Aussie cat (around 4.5-5kg).

Nupela hops on the scales while mum checks out the camera.

In fact it wasn’t her first weigh in. Keepers have been doing weekly weigh ins since June, training Nupela to follow a target and step onto the scales.

“She’s been growing rapidly and eating incredibly well, putting on about 10 per cent of her body weight each week,” said keeper Sam Bennett.

Among her fave foods are corn, grapes, beetroot and more recently eggs. She likes banana skins more than the banana – which would be handy if you were ever sharing a meal with her.

Nupela was born on September 4 2013 but no one spotted her til March when she poked her head out of the pouch. Her mum, Kwikila, and dad Parum, were paired up as part of a global breeding program.

Nupela in her mother's pouch.

The problem if course is that if we destroy the habitat of these beautiful creatures, we can breed as many as we want but they won’t be able to be reintroduced into the wild where they really belong.

Another earlier snap of Nupela from Taronga Zoo. This is the face of a threatened species.

Veterinary Imaging conference

The Australasian Association of Veterinary Diagnostic Imaging is hosting its conference on November 1 and 2 – at the Australian Museum. Not only do you get to learn all about veterinary radiography, ultrasound and advanced imaging modalities, you also get free entry to the museum all weekend.

For info on speakers and the program, click here. 

To register online, click here.

Great Dane eats 43.5 socks

Finally one veterinarystory doing the rounds of the internet at the moment is the staggering finding, on exploratory laparotomy, of 43.5 socks in the stomach of a Great Dane.

The dog, who has not been named, had been unwell for some time but it wasn’t until radiographs were taken that a knot of gastric foreign bodies were detected. Socks sound soft and gentle but inside the gut of a dog (or anyone really) they can cause havoc – from affecting gastric motility, obstructing gastric outflow (movement of the stuff in the stomach into the intestines and then beyond), mucosal trauma and basically pain, pain and more pain. The amazing thing about this case is a) the dog had to eat 43.5 before anyone twigged and b) that anyone has 22 (21 and a bit?) pairs of socks. Note, if you DO think your dog has eaten socks, or undies, or hosiery, or really any non-food item, call your vet immediately. I can't tell you how many Friday nights I've spent inducing vomiting to retrieve footy socks...but its a lot less costly, and a lot less risky, than waiting until those things cause an obstruction then having to surgically retrieve them. [Note, inducing vomiting works best within 2-4 hours of ingestion].

Another tip: lockable laundry baskets.

Check out our previous post about foreign bodies here.