Texas Equine Veterinary Association

www.texasequineva.com • Page 23 BO BROCK, DVM, DABVP Being a veterinarian is a lot like being a detective. There is a crime to be solved and clues that lead a trail to the culprit. Sometimes this job is easy…….sometimes it requires a great deal of work. Mrs. Prad was concerned about her short nosed dog and was determined. Yes she was determined. You might ask what she was determined about? Well, she was determined to get to the bottom of why her dog had so much static electricity. In her explanation of the problem to me she even insisted that she could actually hear it when the dog slept next to her head on the pillow at night. The detailed history she had written down and given to me was remarkable. It began with a wordy definition of static electricity that she had obviously copied out of Webster's dictionary, and then was followed with some quotes from her granddaughter's ninth grade physical science text. I was perched on a bench in the waiting room reading the letter and wondering what in the world I needed an introduction to static electricity prior to reading the rest of the content of a nine (yes that is nine) page hand written letter about her dog. I was perched in the waiting room because she refused to go in to the exam room until I had completely read the letter and we could discuss it properly prior to the exam. Oh my, how I hate to sit still when the place is busy and other people are waiting. I just hate to sit still because I just hate sitting still anyway, but when other people are getting impatient while I read a nine page letter, it is almost impossible to even concentrate on what the letter says, especially when it starts off with an introduction to physics. I decided I was never gonna get to the exam unless I read the letter and comprehended it enough to have a question/answer session, so I focused and proceeded. Her hand writing was terrible at best and I would have to ask what a word was about every two or three sentences. After a good ten minutes of reading and squinting, I had come to the conclusion that this was going to be a frustrating case. You see she was convinced that the dog had somehow internalized the static electricity that was always causing it's hair to stand up in the fall and winter and it was now effecting her internal organs. She had researched how electricity travels through different materials and because she had recently purchased new extremely lush carpet, the incredible amount of static electricity that occurred between her very fuzzy dog and the new carpet had caused the dog to become saturated with electricity and now it was internal. Static Electricity She was afraid the dog was going to die from it and was also afraid that someday it might get to such a high level that it would arc across to her while they slept on her pillow and perhaps kill her too. After we talked a while she informed me that it was time for me to examine the dog but cautioned me that I should wear rubber gloves to keep down my own personal risk. She told me that she never pets him without wearing them herself and will not let him walk on the carpet anymore. I ambled slowly toward the exam room trying to use the slow pace to give my brain a few extra seconds to come up what in the heck I was gonna do. I put on rubber gloves and picked the critter up and placed him on the exam table. What now? I had no page in my mind from the notes of vet school that described how to exam a dog for potentially lethal doses of static electricity. Temperature….normal. Ears, eyes, nose and throat……normal. Hair coat……normal. Next came the stethoscope. I put the thing on the chest and everything sounded great. When I slid it back to the abdomen I heard a strange crackling noise. It was like nothing I had ever heard inside an animal before. I took the stethoscope off and picked the dog up and shook it. The more a shook it, the louder the noise got. In the silent exam room the noise was very apparent and the lady exclaimed, "There it is, that is the noise I hear on my pillow at night!!!!! It is the electricity popping inside my dog. I am so glad you are wearing those rubber gloves. Thank God I remembered to tell you." As I palpated the pooch's abdomen I felt what the problem was. Are you wondering? Do you have any idea? Are you a detective and able to follow the clues until you find the culprit? The dog had bladder stones. Hundreds of them. They had deformed his bladder into a softball sized bag of marbles that rubbed and grinded together when his stubby little nose pulled air into his lungs and moved his abdomen. The grinding resulted in a noise she could only hear at night when her world got silent. Radiographs confirmed the diagnosis and we removed the stones surgically the next morning. From "Crowded in the Middle of Nowhere" written by TEVA Founding Member and Current Vice President, Bo Brock, DVM, DABVP. Available for purchase on Amazon.

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