Sonia

UPDATE 1 FEBRUARY: Sonia came to us as a surrendered dog from Renbury Farm Pound in early January 2015 and was in shocking condition with a filthy matted coat, horrendous teeth and what looked like a very large hernia on her abdomen. The vet decided to do an x-ray and ultrasound of the lump and what he discovered was pretty awful! You can read the veterinary report on Sonia’s condition below:

As suspected she had an inguinal hernia that contained a gravid uterus. The body of the uterus and the right horn ( with 3 foetuses) had herniated and the pregnancy was developing between the skin and abdominal wall. It’s impossible to say whether she was already pregnant when the hernia occurred, or the uterus had always been in the hernia and then she got pregnant. The uterus and foetuses were obviously expanding as the pregnancy was progressing so the 'lump' was actually situated in the midline and underneath the caudal most right mammary gland. We made a routine abdominal incision as if to spey - planning to pull the herniated uterus back into the abdomen and spey as normal. But this didn’t work because the uterus had grown and was now too large to pull back through the inguinal canal. So we had to remove the ovaries, tie them off, pull them through into the hernia and spey her that way; then push the uterine stump back into the abdomen, and repair the hernia ..... challenging surgery !! Also, on entering the abdomen I noticed hundreds of tiny purple masses throughout the omentum ( the membrane that lines all the abdominal organs) all about 1-2mm diameter - very small, plus there was a lot of scarring on the spleen and the omentum was adhered to the spleen in several places. W hat I suspect is that Sonya at some some stage had a partially ruptured spleen - obviously not severe enough to cause massive bleeding but the capsule of the spleen was damaged and there was some bleeding into the abdominal cavity. This caused hundreds of tiny ectopic spleens to grow inside her abdomen and the adhesions. They are nothing to worry about and the spleen looks happy. I did sample one of the 'baby spleens for pathology and all samples taken were benign.