Dog Surgery

In general, we can divide surgery into three categories: necessary, elective, and vanity.

Necessary surgery is surgery to save life or improve the quality of life. Automobile injuries to the soft tissue and fractures are examples. The surgical approach to eliminate cancer is also necessary and successful more often than not.

In days gone by and occasionally today seriously injured dog were and are unnecessarily destroyed by well-meaning unenlightened people - people who do not realize how effective a veterinarian can be. For the novice to assume an injured dog is hopelessly injured is a mi stake. Even we veterinarians surprise ourselves at times when a seemingly hopeless case recovers.

A three-pound adult Chihuahua ran out in front of a car that was traveling fifty miles an hour. The wheels straddled the dog but the undercarriage of the vehicle struck the little dog on top of its head, crushing the skull and indenting the head, forming a large depression. The owner rushed in with the unconscious dog, which appeared to be taking its last breath. This was a fatal injury, the owner left in tears as quickly as she had arrived. What appeared to be is that little can be done but to operate immediately. However, when we grasped the skin with an instrument at the deepest part of the depression and pulled, the fragments of the fracture had pinched the inner layer of skin between them so that when the skin was pulled with a surgical forceps the fractured skull returned to its normal position. The little dog recovered from unconsciousness in ten minutes, but the injury appeared to be so serious we waited for half an hour before phoning the distraught owner to come and get her dog. That Chihuahua lived another fourteen years to die at sixteen years of age of natural causes.

Dog Physical Exams

Any concerned person can and should do the simple, straight forward home examination. First, consider how the dog appears in general. Is it gaining or losing weight? Is its fluid and food intake and out put normal? Are there any personality changes? Does it limp, cough, sneeze excessively, or have halitosis? Have there been any changes since its health was last evaluated?

If everything appears normal you have passed the first hurdle. Next make a closer examination of the dog's eyes, cars, nose, and mouth. Do the whites of its eyes look normal and not inflamed? Do they squint or have an ocular discharge? Look in the ears: Are they clean with a minimum of brown waxy substance and with no excess hair? Smell them. Any unusual odor? Then examine the nose, lips, gums, tongue, throat, and teeth. Are the membranes a normal pink? Look at the teeth for plaque or tartar. Fan the hair and look for blemishes and parasite such as ticks, fleas, and lice. Lice look like motorized dandruff of the biting variety.

Next check the nails, pads, and between the digits.

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Dog Personality Guide

There can be little argument that personality traits are inherited as are coat, eye color, and scenting either with the nose close to the ground, as with hounds, or with head high, as with bird dogs. To breed dogs with good dispositions is one of the easier challenges for the breeder and yet there are perhaps ten casual mating's for each well-studied mating. With such odds of personality traits that are unacceptable. Strains of some breeds are bred by design to attack and guard dog. Unfortunately many of these puppies find their way into households where there is no one to train them and they grow up to be dangerous dog.

Because of the unfortunate but necessary experience of destroying unwanted dogs in pounds it is obvious that fully half of them are personality misfits; in other words, they are untrustworthy and will bite. This destruction of unwanted unfit dog is tragic but it does destroy genetic material that should not be reproduced.

Every breeding there should be an unbiased committee of three people, one of whom might be a veterinarian, to approve the male and female before a mating. Most dogs with personality problem scan should be spotted by strangers who can examine the dog in the absence of the owners.

Dog Tail

Dislocations occur in the tails and the toes of dogs of all breeds. Puppies born with tails that bend backward actually have dislocated vertebrae (an uncorrectable condition). Bending the tail to straighten it usually results in breaking it or damaging it so severely that the end below the break dies and must be removed.

Toes that are broken at the joints usually are easily repaired by applying casts to the feet after reduction or setting. But when a ligament of the toes is cut or broken, it seldom regenerates and the nail bends upward. This is a familiar sight to veterinarians, who see so many steel-trap wounds.

The dog’s tail speaks a lot regarding the mood and over all personality of the dog. Dog owners or dog specialists do not take much time to interpret the mood of a dog by recognizing the physical appearance including the tail. The following are some information on the various signs indicated by the different movement of tails.

Dog Nail Care

The nails are appendages of the skin. Each nail has a hard outer crust protecting it, and inside there is a blood and nerve supply. Nails, be in organs of defense and aids in locomotion, as well as being useful in holding food while the teeth tear it apart, are strongly attached to the toes - much more so than our nails.

Dogs' nails are constantly growing to make up for the loss of nail which, in a wild dog, would be worn off by contact wills rough surfaces. House pets seldom have the opportunity of wearing down the nails sufficiently. Dogs running the streets keep their nails filed off by the pavements, but dogs walking on carpets or sleeping most of the time having no such opportunity and often their nails curve back under the foot until they press into the toes. Various dogs differ markedly in their rate of nail growth. In some the rate of growth is so rapid that even running on city streets fails to wear their nails off.

Dog Owner Responsibility

The obligations of dog owning are few, but you must fulfill them. All that the dog requires of you is food, water, comfort, exercise, health,affection, and protection. If you can't supply these simple needs, it would be better for you not to have a dog, for it will only be a burden.

For example, veterinarians will often see a Poodle whose coat is solidly matted and thick with fleas. No one could possibly comb it. The owner laments, "Oh, why didn't somebody tell me what he would be like when he grew up!" A dog allowed to get in such a condition poses medical problem and a nuisance to the owner as well. When the dog has been clipped all over, deflead, and the owner made to understand that Irons then on he must spend some time on the dog's grooming,he's likely to say, "But that's so expensive!" The owner should have known before he bought the poodle that a dog with a shorter coat is cheaper to keep.

Too often the prospective dog owner overlooks his or her own desire sand tendencies when selecting a pet. The sedentary man of studious disposition not infrequently makes the mistake of selecting a dog that requires much more exercise than he is willing to give it. Let's say he has a Foxhound. Every day he takes it for a walk around the block thereby satisfying his own conscience but providing practically no exercise for the dog. All the owner has done is to give the dog a chance to relieve itself. He should know that sometimes a foxhound will run Mona trail for as long as forty-eight hours. At so miles ass hour, it will have traveled 48o miles in that time. The hungry wild dog may run so°miles to get a single meal. In the face of such facts, the owner's walk around the block to exercise the dog becomes ludicrous. What the dog really enjoys is a so- or so-mile hike once a week an outing that would probably do the owner as much good as it does the dog.