Brutus is a 1 year old Bloodhound mix. He’s been seeing us here at Animal Health Care Specialists since he was a young puppy. His owners dutifully and responsibly got all of his puppy vaccines and had him neutered, and started him on heartworm prevention. They did everything they could to get Brutus started on the right track in life, and adored him completely.

All was well until one day, Brutus started throwing up. He threw up several times and refused to eat or drink anything at all. Worried, his owner called and scheduled an appointment to come in. By the time Brutus got to the hospital, he was so weak he could barely stand. He was very dehydrated from being so sick, and needed a lot of help.

We took him in and immediately ran bloodwork and started giving him IV fluids to rehydrate him. The bloodwork results were very concerning - his kidneys were in failure. We suspected that perhaps Brutus had gotten into some poison or something toxic to him. His owners were very sure that he could not have gotten into anything inappropriate - they just had a baby 3 weeks prior and the entire house was baby and puppy proof.

We took x-rays - and what we found was very frightening. Brutus had an obstruction in his intestines, and his stomach and intestines were bloated with fluid. Regardless of what shape Brutus’ kidneys were in, if he was going to live, he needed emergency surgery right away.
Our doctor explained to Brutus’ family the risks - it was very possible that Brutus may die in surgery, or that the obstruction might have caused so much damage to his intestines that he wouldn’t survive after the surgery. We were still unsure what the cause of his kidney failure was. To make matters worse - with the new baby in the house and only one income, Brutus’ family had no money to pay for the surgery he absolutely needed if he was going to live.

Thankfully, his family was able to find friends to help pay the very discounted surgery fee. We went into surgery immediately - with his poor condition, we could not afford to waste another minute. He had so much fluid (water and digestive juices) in his stomach and intestines that the weight of it all was pressing against the blood vessels to his kidneys, causing them to not function well. He did have an obstruction - a gigantic hairball and some string! He lost about 6 inches of his small intestine. He was in surgery for over an hour.

After surgery, Brutus started looking and feeling better almost right away, and the morning after he was so happy that he was wagging his tail, very much his normal self again. Brutus is still not out of the woods - he needs fluids to flush out his kidneys and help them recover from the stress they were under, and its still possible that he may have side effects from being obstructed. We won’t know for another few days whether Brutus will have the happy-ever-after we’re looking for, but his chances certainly look good now.