Pet of the month for September 2020 goes to Shady! Shady is a 9-month-old Border Collie, who came to see Dr Joe after eating 10-12 tablets of ibuprofen causing severe diarrhoea.
Ibuprofen is very toxic in dog and cats and if not treated in the first few hours of ingestion by inducing vomiting and then protecting the stomach to ensure none of the toxins are absorbed, it can lead to issues such as stomach ulcer, acute renal failure (Acute kidney failure occurs when your kidneys suddenly become unable to filter waste products from your blood. When your kidneys lose their filtering ability, dangerous levels of wastes may accumulate, and your blood's chemical makeup may get out of balance) and sometimes can be fatal. Because Shady was showing signs of being unwell Dr Joe suggested we do a blood test to check his kidney function, unfortunately for Shady the bloods showed that his kidneys had started shutting down due to the poison (acute kidney failure). Shady was admitted into hospital for intravenous fluids to flush the kidneys, monitoring and daily blood tests to ensure the kidneys didn’t get any worse. Shady spent 4 days with us and on day 4 his blood test showed that his kidneys had responded to the treatment and were now back functioning as normal. He went home that afternoon on a kidney diet and was to come back for other blood test in a weeks’ time. 2 weeks on and Shady is back to acting like a puppy and his blood test came back all normal.
We would like to thank Shady’s mum and dad for being so good to Shady and allowing us to provide him with the best care possible. For everyone else at home please be very careful with human medications, do not give anything without consulting your vet and if your animal does eat or you think they have eaten them take them straight to the vet.