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Time to Spay Your Golden? Something You Should Know.

29 10:32:59

One of our Wisteria Golden family members recently had her girl spayed and the procedure did not go well. While this is a common surgery for our pets, it is not without risk or without error and you should be aware of how it can go wrong.

Brooke (Lyra/Aspen) went into be spayed (www.peteducation.com/article.cfm?c=2+2112&aid=926). Everything went as planned and the family took Brooke home to rest and recover from her surgery. From the moment they got home she was incontinent, constantly peeing every couple minutes - even in her crate, which had never happened before.

The family called the vet immediately and it was "assumed" she had a UTI, even though her urine was clean and Brooke was started on an antibiotic. It was shortly realized this was not helping. The vet decided it must be estrogen related after the surgery and prescribed PPA. It also didn't help.

After a few weeks of struggling with what was happening the family went to another vet and Brooke was sent to get an ultrasound. The vet who did the ultrasound saw a granuloma at the neck of the bladder. The next day a Board Certified Vet Surgeon (www.acvs.org)operated and found the vet that did the surgery left most of the uterine body in and tied it off at the neck of her bladder. The suture that tied it off kept poking her in the bladder giving her the sensation of needing to go to the bathroom no matter how little urine was in the bladder - this was the reason for her discomfort all along!

This had also caused irritation to the tissue on the outside of the bladder finally causing this granuloma to form around the suture and into the outside of the bladder wall keeping constant pressure on the bladder. The vet that had done the surgery had botched it terribly.

According to the surgeon, the ovaries and uterus in a female dog form a Y. The ovaries are the tops of the Y on either side and the tail forms the uterine body. The entire uterine body should be removed and tied at the bottom of the bladder. The biopsy showed there was not only uterine body and suture material, but a little bit of ovarian tissue as well. He said some vets make the mistake thinking they can do the procedure the way it was originally done with Brooke. It may only cause a problem in 1 out of 200 surgeries doing it this way, but it is wrong and dangerous for your dog.

As with our own health, we need to be proactive in asking questions, but we don't always know the right questions to ask. I hope sharing Brooke's story will help you with asking the right questions for the health of your dog.