Friday 9/10

Today I observed two spays on a pair of siblings from the same litter. They were miniature poodles about the size of my arm. To get them ready for surgery, the vet put them in a plastic tub attached to the anesthesia gas with one tube and had another tube that pumped the gas out of the tub and out of the clinic. Once asleep, a breathing tube as well as the anesthesia gas was inserted into the throat of the dog and it was moved to the surgery room. The dog was then attached to heart rate monitors and breath monitors to regulate the breathing. The vet then took something that looks like a scalpel and sliced down the medial line of the animal so as not to cut across many blood vessels to minimize bleeding. Using a tool like a hook, the vet proceeded to do what he called "fishing" as he probed for the ovaries and horn attached to it. Commonly, the spay consists of removing the ovaries and the horns from the animal, but in this case, the dog did not have a second horn and it was difficult to locate the second ovary. This case is called the uterus unicornous which in Latin means one horn.

The sibling to the other, however, did possess both, but also had a slight birth defect. The umbilical cord had not been completely healed over and bits of fat tissue had formed a bubble underneath the skin. To remove this, the vet put a thin slit through the bubble and used medical tweezers to pull out the fatty tissue and snip off the excess. After the surgery, there are three layers that need to be sewn together. There is the epidermis layer, then the dermis, then the muscle layer. The muscle layer is the most vital to be properly sewn because this holds in the inner organs. The dermis is also important to close completely for this keeps the shallower parts from coming out. The epidermis is sewn of course for the safety of both the animal and the otherwise exposed underneath layers.

When the dog wakes up, it usually is cold from the lack heat production during anesthesia, especially in smaller animals. It is therefore usually wrapped in a blanket and placed in the kennel to recover. However, if the animal decided it would like to move around, it has to be removed from the cage because in the waking stages it lacks the coordination to keep itself upright.