corona99
January 18th, 2005, 11:00 AM
:sick: If anyone has both Dogs and Cats, please read. This is a story about my dog Bubba. He is a 90lb Rottweiler/Basset Hound mix. (yeah, I know, but he's so cute)
On September 20 I cleaned out the cats litter box and placed the bag by the door to take out. I went and took a shower before cleaning the rest of the house. I got out of the shower and found that Bubba, who had never shown interest in the litter boxes, had ripped apart the bag and consumed a great deal of the contents. At first I was more angry than anything, but looked it up on the internet.
Clumping cat litter expands to 15 times its size when wet, and takes the consistency of clay cement. I called the emerg. Vet as it was 600pm and he said to bring him in.
We had to wait a bit as an operation was going on then they looked at Bubba. He seemed OK, but they did an X-ray to check and found a huge mass of it in his stomach. They gave him a sedative, them put him out completely and hooked him up to all the monitors and pumped his stomach.
They thought they got quite a bit and no more was coming out so they did a second X-ray to check. Unfortunately they had only got a bit of it out. They did his stomach 2 more times and nothing else would come out. The 3rd X-ray showed that 2/3 was still left and was starting to travel through his intestines. We were now into hour 6 at the vet.
I was given 2 options. I could take him home with antibiotics and laxatives and hopefully he will pass it, and if he developed a blockage then I would have to rush him to vet for emerg surgery. Or they could do the surgery now, but as it is litter it would be a messy surgery and there was only about a 50% chance that he would live. So I brought him home.
I then spent the next 50 hours living in the basement with him. He was very ill after coming out of the anesthesia. He was retching as his throat was very sore due to the tube that was shoved down it for over an hour. Plus he went from no poop, to some soft poop to horrible runs with blood and now he is starting to form up a little, but very small so I am hoping it is not a blockage.
UPDATE: He finally did begin to have regular poops, but it was months before he was back to normal. The vet bill from what did happen was $900.00 and if I went ahead with the surgery it would be about $3000.00.
Please keep your dogs away from the cat litter......I had NO idea it was that bad, but it turns to cement in their tummies. And for some reason, they like it........
On September 20 I cleaned out the cats litter box and placed the bag by the door to take out. I went and took a shower before cleaning the rest of the house. I got out of the shower and found that Bubba, who had never shown interest in the litter boxes, had ripped apart the bag and consumed a great deal of the contents. At first I was more angry than anything, but looked it up on the internet.
Clumping cat litter expands to 15 times its size when wet, and takes the consistency of clay cement. I called the emerg. Vet as it was 600pm and he said to bring him in.
We had to wait a bit as an operation was going on then they looked at Bubba. He seemed OK, but they did an X-ray to check and found a huge mass of it in his stomach. They gave him a sedative, them put him out completely and hooked him up to all the monitors and pumped his stomach.
They thought they got quite a bit and no more was coming out so they did a second X-ray to check. Unfortunately they had only got a bit of it out. They did his stomach 2 more times and nothing else would come out. The 3rd X-ray showed that 2/3 was still left and was starting to travel through his intestines. We were now into hour 6 at the vet.
I was given 2 options. I could take him home with antibiotics and laxatives and hopefully he will pass it, and if he developed a blockage then I would have to rush him to vet for emerg surgery. Or they could do the surgery now, but as it is litter it would be a messy surgery and there was only about a 50% chance that he would live. So I brought him home.
I then spent the next 50 hours living in the basement with him. He was very ill after coming out of the anesthesia. He was retching as his throat was very sore due to the tube that was shoved down it for over an hour. Plus he went from no poop, to some soft poop to horrible runs with blood and now he is starting to form up a little, but very small so I am hoping it is not a blockage.
UPDATE: He finally did begin to have regular poops, but it was months before he was back to normal. The vet bill from what did happen was $900.00 and if I went ahead with the surgery it would be about $3000.00.
Please keep your dogs away from the cat litter......I had NO idea it was that bad, but it turns to cement in their tummies. And for some reason, they like it........