Rolling Dog Farm Blog

We noticed that Bobby the blind cat didn’t look good this morning.  He had a lot of icky drool hanging off his mouth, and he kept stretching his head way up, then bringing it down and stretching it out again.  The drool didn’t smell bad (yes, we check these things out closely!), which was kind of weird because it looked like it would stink.  Bobby had all his teeth removed a few years ago because of chronic stomatitis, an oral inflammation in the gums, and this particular strain of stomatitis did not respond to any treatment.  The only thing left to do was remove all his teeth, and ever since he had been fine. 

But when I looked in his mouth this morning, I could see bright red areas along his gums.  Uh oh. 

I was headed to Missoula today anyway to take blind Brynn the foal in for her bi-weekly blood draw, so I called our internal medicine specialist in Missoula, Dr. Dave Bostwick, to see if he could look at Bobby.  For good measure I added wobbly Ito the dog to the trip, since Dave had said he wanted to re-check her bloodwork.  Ito is on two medications to control the seizures which are part of her overall neurological problem.

In the first photo Dave is examining Bobby.  Yes, his stomatitis has come back.  Aaarggh.  So he’s on steroids and antibiotics for the next several days, and hopefully we’ll get it under control again.  Bobby was a very good patient — no fussing at all.  After working on Bobby, we drew blood from Ito (I had to hold her still for Dave so I didn’t get any photos).

Then, after running a couple of errands, I headed over to Dr. Bill Brown’s clinic for Brynn’s blood draw.  Ever since she came back from surgery at Washington State University, we’ve been taking her temperature daily and checking her bloodwork every other week.  This is because there’s a remote chance the urethral extension the surgeons did to stop her constant leaking could inadvertently cause urine to back up her ureters and into her kidneys.  If this were happening, we’d first learn it from her temperature, i.e. if she developed a fever from infection, and her kidney values — BUN and creatinine.

So far her temperature and kidney values have remained normal, and today was no exception.  In this photo Bill is pulling blood from an unusual place … on Brynn’s cheek!  Brynn has had so many needles jabbed in her jugular vein over the past several weeks, especially during her month stay at WSU, that she gets a bit cranky when we try and draw blood from that location now.  It turns out there’s a perfectly good alternative site on a horse’s cheek, in a certain spot a few inches below the eye.   Bill was reminded of this from a veterinary journal article he had just read a couple of days ago.  (Title: "The transverse facial venous sinus: an alternative location for blood collection in the horse.")  Who knew?

Sure enough, Brynn was very cooperative when Bill inserted the needle.  He showed me how to do it and gave me the syringes and blood vials, so next time I get to do it back here at the ranch.  (Oh no.)  This will save me having to trailer her in to Missoula for such a simple, quick procedure.  I can just pull blood from Brynn, leave her and the horse trailer behind at the ranch, and drive the blood vial into town when I do the rest of the errands.  Well, that’s the theory, anyway.  We’ll see!

(Click on photos for larger image.)