21/10/2025
The story of a vomiting puppy - "unplugged" 🥲
It could have been a very different outcome for little Silver, a 12-week-old French bulldog puppy, when he turned up at Vitalvet Medical Centre after hours on Monday evening 12/09/25 after he had a few vomiting episodes over the previous 24hours.
Intestinal viruses like Parvovirus are one of the most likely diagnoses in a young incompletely vaccinated puppy, which causes severe illness for days despite intensive in-hospital care and treatment, and could potentially be fatal.
Luckily for Silver, his breeder and owner ensured he received his vaccinations correctly, which made the diagnosis less likely, although not impossible. An equally daunting diagnosis could be an intestinal foreign body - an accidental ingestion of an object that cannot pass successfully through the intestine and causes an obstruction. Unfortunately for Silver, the moment we palpated his abdomen, it was clear there was a hard object inside that did not belong there.
X-rays confirmed a strange-looking "blocky" object in his intestines. At this point, Silver was quiet but not actively vomiting, not severely dehydrated, and not in shock, so the decision was made not to rush in and do a potentially risky surgery in such a young puppy. He was kept comfortable overnight on fluids, pain medication, and anti-nausea treatment and after a good night's rest under the watchful eyes of our 24-hour in-hospital night nurse, the X-ray was repeated in the morning.
There was such relief when the object was found virtually at the exit of his large intestine and "within reach". With the help of a small and minimally invasive procedure under sedation only, Silver was "unplugged"! 😄 Yes, it turned out to be a rubber plug of some kind. And after scoffing down a few meals during the day, making up for lost time, he could go home that afternoon, also just in time to get his next due immunization against the dreaded Parvovirus.
*Please be careful of objects lying around, children's toys, lego blocks, chewy bite size rubber objects, fluffy toys etc.
044 050 6000 | www.vitalvet.co.za | Emergencies: 072 088 1957
