25/06/2025
✨🐱 𝗣𝗘𝗧 𝗢𝗙 𝗧𝗛𝗘 𝗠𝗢𝗡𝗧𝗛 🐶 ✨
🐶 Meet Missy, a bubbly one-year-old Cavalier King Charles Spaniel who recently visited our clinic in quite a bit of discomfort. Her owners noticed she wasn’t eating, drinking, or going to the toilet—and she was crying and shaking from pain. The night before, Missy had been given a bone, and her owners felt a small lump in her tummy. She had also vomited up a piece of the bone.
🔍 What We Found
During her exam, Missy showed signs of stomach pain, and the vet could feel something unusual in her gut. X-rays revealed a large piece of bone stuck in her stomach, along with a lot of gas and smaller bone fragments throughout her intestines. She also had a lot of normal stool in her re**um. These findings suggested a possible partial or impending full obstruction.
👩⚕️ Treatment Options
We discussed three options with Missy’s family:
🐾 Medical Management – Support her body to try pass the bone naturally with IV fluids, anti-nausea and pain relief meds, e***as, and regular walks.
🐾 Specialist Referral for Endoscopy – A procedure using a camera and tools inserted through the oesophagus (throat) to retrieve bone fragments from the stomach. However, this wouldn’t address obstructions further along the tract.
🐾 Exploratory Surgery (Laparotomy + Gastrotomy) – Surgery to open the gastrointestinal tract, remove obstructions, and resect any damaged bowel if necessary.
Missy’s owners decided to try medical treatment first for 24hours and if this didn’t work then would proceed to step 2 or 3.
💊 Her Recovery Journey
Missy was started on fluids, medication, and a bland diet with special contrast beads (called BIPS) that show up on X-rays. These beads help track how food moves through the gut and show if anything is stuck.
The next day, X-rays showed the beads were still in her stomach, meaning her stomach wasn’t emptying properly. But Missy was still bright and alert, so we added another medication to help her gut move. She was walked every hour and given an e***a to help clear her bowels.
Later that day, a second round of X-rays showed some progress: the smaller contrast beads had moved all the way down to the colon. However, the larger beads were still higher up in the digestive tract. Ideally, these larger beads needed to move down to confirm that material could pass through normally.
Missy was kept on her treatments overnight, and a final round of X-rays was done the following morning. This time, all the contrast beads had moved into the colon—great news! It meant that her gut was working properly again and material could pass through as it should.
She stayed on her medications for the rest of the day to ensure maximum benefit. Once home, she continued on oral medication, passed faeces normally, and was back to her happy, playful self in no time!
❤️ A Reminder for Pet Owners
Bones can be dangerous for dogs, especially if they splinter or get stuck. If your pet shows signs of pain, vomiting, or changes in appetite or toileting, please contact us right away. Acting quickly can make all the difference.
