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Sedona was born June 22, 2007 and died at the age of one year and one month. Her father was Scout and mother CoCa.
Early Monday July 21 I had her spayed. She came home after spending over 24 hours at the vets and was doing just fine. She seemed to be healing perfectly. She never bothered her incision site. Never licked it, never smelled it, in fact seemed very normal. We kept her in a separate kennel from our other AIDog, Kyoshi, so they could see each other but not play. Wednesday night my son fed her, her evening dinner and then went to bed, as I was in an evening meeting. Two hours later when I got home, I found she had completely disemboweled herself. My heart stopped as she stood up weakly to greet me.
Without going into much detail, I would like to say I have been a paramedic now for 21 years and this was very shocking and one of the more difficult scenes I have come across.
Even though I knew deep down that probably very little could be done for her, I gathered her up and took her to the emergency vet. The vet told me she could try and save her although she had never seen such a severe case. The vet told me there was slim chance she would survive and that if she did her quality of life would be very limited. She said she would require a feeding tube and have very limited activity. For any of you who had met Sedona, you know that she was a very high energy, high drive dog and without those qualities she would be very sad.
I made a very difficult decision to have her put down. I stayed with her as she died to pet her and to provide whatever any comfort I could to her. At 2 am Thursday morning my wife and I buried her on our property.
Devastated, is one word that begins to describe how I felt. She is and will be greatly missed.
Several days later I was able to go visit Kim and talk with him. Going to visit Kim and his pack of dogs was a very helpful healing experience for me. Thanks Kim.
All the answers I will probably never have but here are some things I have learned:
1. To spay your dog is a very normal everyday safe occurrence. Of the vets I have talked to or that Kim has talked to say this is an extremely rare case. In fact so rare that some vets have never seen this happen.
2. I have learned that there are possibly different stitching methods used by different vets. One method is to double stitch (one a deeper muscle stitch and then a surface stitch), and the other method just a surface stitch. I do not know the method my vet used.
3. I have learned that there are a small handful of vets who send home a protective collar for your dog to wear just in case the dog decides to chew the stitches (These vets seem to be in the extreme minority). My vet did not provide me with a protective collar. They said if your dog doesn’t bother the incision site within the first 24 hours, they probably won’t.
There are so many small things that could have gone wrong with the procedure or the healing process it’s hard to say what went wrong. I still plan on talking to my vet to try to find out more about her procedure and what may have gone wrong, although I am doubtful that he will tell me anything.
Again, this is not meant to scare anyone away from spaying or neutering your dogs. As I talked to Kim he reminded me of all the very important plusses of spaying and neutering your dogs. The procedure really is a very safe and common procedure. As Kim has mentioned so many times how much more healthy the fixed dogs are compared to the un-fixed. Thousands of years ago the Native Americans fixed their dogs for the same reasons it is important to spay and neuter our dogs today…the improved personality of the dogs, not having to deal with the hormonal changes and the ability for them to focus on you as the trainer/pack leader. Fixed dogs just are more healthy then the un-fixed. Kim told me that most people just don’t realize how many dogs (including the AIDogs) have been run over or shot when out looking for that female in season or male to breed with. So please spay and neuter your dogs, this post is not meant to scare anyone away from doing that. We all are responsible to do this, not just because our contract says we have to, but for the health and future of the breed I just hope someone learns something from my experience.
I will continue to post any updates I may learn after I talk to my vet.
Sedona
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