Dr. Di's Vetblog: Animals can get in the strangest trouble

One of the things that makes working at a veterinary hospital a great job is that it is never boring. I'm sure it's kind of like working in a hospital emergency room. The news is filled with stories like the guy that shot himself in head with a nail gun and didn't even know it until his head was x-rayed or the woman that had a toilet seat stuck to her back end. I once had someone bring in a stray cat that they found walking around with its head stuck in a clear glass jar. That was pretty cool. He kind of looked like one of those cartoon astronauts. I had to sedate him to safely break the glass and get the jar off his head. I'm sure he was happy to get that off his head.

Well a month or two ago, this cute little dog Princess was running around her backyard playing with her dog friend when her owner heard Princess cry out and come running up to the back door. At first she couldn't see anything, but then noticed that Princess had a piece of a stick coming out her skin on the lower part of her neck. So she brought her into the clinic.

I sedated Princess to get a better look at what was going on. Here is the what it looked like after we sedated her and shaved all the fur off her neck.

And when I opened the wound and pulled the stick out, this is what I found.

That was one big ol' hunk of wood that Miss Princess impaled herself on. It took a lot of time to clean out all the hair and debris that the chunk of wood carried deep into her neck. When all was cleaned up, everyone in the surgical room got a good look at Princess's jugular vein. That was quite impressive and quite the lucky dog for the stick to miss this. (I just had to make this picture a little bigger so you all could get a good luck at that big old vein.)

Princess went home with a drain tube in place. You can tell in this picture taken after the wood was removed that she was sore and didn't want to bend her neck.