calliecritturs
Posted : 10/7/2006 10:46:02 AM
Sheer stress can cause gi bacteria -- she could have gotten pesticide on her paws from grass and licked it off, or it could have had to do with irritation caused BY trying to digest that shirt. In short, you probably won't know but it could be darned near anything.
And frankly, sometimes stuff like this just happens -- and it's all a judgement call and how much you trust your vet. I've seen vets talk me into unnecessary procedures just because they "wanted to try out their new laser" or some equally stuipd thing (and no I don't go to him any more!!) -- but on the otherhand there are vets I'd trust if they said "it's a risk to do it now, but if it gets BAD it could get *so* bad it would be dangerous to do later" and I'd believe them.
Building a trust relationship with a vet is tough -- and going thru stuff like this is going to tell YOU how much to trust this vet the next time. so much of dog guardianship is experience and filtering out what is imperative and what's not ... and man, a lot of times it IS a crapshoot.
Don't beat yourself up -- you made the same decision I probably would have -- it was a calculated educated guess as to whether it was an obstruction and it was a very very likely thing in this case. You *knew* the dog had eaten fiber and dang, but you can NOT see fiber on an x-ray!!!! Sometimes the only thing you CAN see is if the intestines are blocked somewhere.
I had a similar situation earlier this week with a vet I'd trust with my OWN life. I took Billy up (he's the one who has been SOOOOO sick all summer with IMHA) with some symptoms of what *I* thot were just plain drug side effects (and heaven knows this dog is on bazoodles of meds still). But Dr. B caught something disturbing that could have pointed to something truly awful and fatal -- and he had another visiting vet there sort of muddying the waters a bit.
BUT -- my vet spent a ton of time the next day doing his OWN research -- calling other vets (and university vets he knew) to find out what the likelihood was of this dire thing and could it Be?? As it turns out -- nope, it wasn't a big deal at all. And HE CALLED ME to say "Ok -- we're very vey very likely safe ... but this is what I found out".
My point is -- you watch how the vet operates and that's going to tell you for *next* time how far to trust them.
If this vet doesn't give you a word of "Gee, I'm sorry but all the signs pointed to this being dire!!" but blows it off -- then I'd be ticked off. But if the vet discusses it with you and indicates they learned something valuable and generally they treat YOU well and are caring ... well, that's a growing experience with the vet.
I've seen vets totally MISS obstructions. I've seen them use it as an excuse to switch food, or blame the owner (WHO ved this dog junk???) or make every wrong guess, and even tho you told the vet the dog ate a tire they won't admit an obstruction because they don't want to deal with it.
But I always welcome it when a vet discovers they did something not quite right -- because you can tell SO much by how they handle it.