Heart-Shaped Surprise

Harry had surgery yesterday afternoon. He had rather suddenly stopped eating, appeared constipated, and bereft of spirit. Happy Wife was very concerned. She called our vet and one or two others, all of which were either slammed or already away for the holiday weekend. I advised watching and waiting, thinking (hoping really) his problem, whatever it was, would fix itself. When he wouldn’t eat Lucy’s custom-prepared food, however, I knew something was very wrong. Imagine a termite turning up its nose at a fresh, kiln-dried 2×4. Yeah, that kinda wrong.

Off to Pet Emergency Harry and Happy Wife went, and I swear we should get a punch card for this place. The veterinarian came out and showed Happy Wife the x-ray: “Missing anything heart-shaped in your house?” she asked. Lodged in his stomach was a very large mass. Happy Wife said it really was heart shaped, and she guessed it was a big hairball because in the past Harry has thrown up big balls of hair. How such hair comes to accumulate inside him I’m not sure, Happy Wife has theories.

Too big and/or tricky to remove by an endoscopic method, the vet recommended surgical removal. And good thing, too, because what she found when they cut him open was a large mass of vile looking crud congealed around a bunch of shredded plastic crap. Some fun. Worse, attached to this mass were stringy strands of undigested grass which had started to pass into the small intestine. Think jellyfish head & tentacles. Consequently, the muscle in the intestine is contracting like an inchworm trying to suck the mass down. Left untreated this condition can kill a dog.

Snip snip and out it came.

Harry is recovering well this morning and we hope to bring him home later this afternoon. When I phoned this morning to get an update they said he ate a meatball and kept it down. Not ordinarily a milestone for Harry, but today you can imagine how happy that made us.