Dogs with porcupine quills in their face are a reliable indicator that spring has arrived in the Okanagan.

Precious’ Late Night Adventure.

Precious is a 1 year old cat who loves to venture outside during the day and explore but she always returns home before dark where she is safe and secure.   The night of August 6^th however, Precious did not return home at her usual time and actually didn’t return home until the following morning.

When her owners found her they were instantly concerned because Precious was not using on of her front legs and furthermore they noticed that She had a very thick rope caught around her paw.  When her owners had a closer look they realized that the rope was actually their lawnmowers pull cord and figured that sometime during Precious’ adventure she must have gotten stuck to the pull cord of the lawn mower and in an attempt to free herself from the cord ended up winding the cord tighter and tighter around her paw until the only way for precious to get back home and away from the lawnmower was to chew the cord from the lawn mower.   Unfortunately the cord was still tied around her paw and was so tight that it was impossible for the owners to remove on there own.

That’s when Precious’ owners brought her to our clinic.   We could see that Precious was in quite the predicament and we were concerned for the health of her paw.  We needed to remove the rope quickly and then asses her foot to ensure that there would be no long term damage.   Because Precious was so uncomfortable we needed to sedate her to be able to remove the rope and examine her paw more completely.    Once Precious was sedated we removed the rope using a curved scalpel blade that allowed us to cut the rope and no Precious’ paw.  Once the rope was removed we took a radiograph of her foot to ensure that she hadn’t broken any bones in her paw, and lucky for Precious that wasn’t the case.   Precious’ foot did swell up quite significantly after the rope was removed due to blood flow returning to her foot and extensive soft tissue damage however, lucky for her, the rope hadn’t been on the foot long enough to cause any significant tissue damage.  If the rope had been left on Precious’ foot for a longer period of time the damage it could have caused may have resulted in the loss of her foot.  Lucky for Precious her owners found her quick enough and she can still enjoy her days frolicking around with all four feet.