Dog Injured After Accidentally Kicked by a Horse | Dr. Jeff: Rocky Mountain Vet S1 E2 |Animal Planet

Well, I just brought him in because, well, he got kicked in the face by a horse. By a horse? Well, he got kicked in the eye. In the eye? Yeah. Okay. And his name? Nico. Alright, let me grab the doctor and I'll send her right in. It's a busy morning in surgery, which means one of the other seven vets in the clinic will handle the walk-ins. Amy is the rookie. Jeff hired her a few months back right out of vet school. Hello. Hi. I'm Dr. Hutchison. Well, I'm 26. Most people say I look like I'm 21 or something like that. So, what's going on with Nico? It's tough. I'll walk into a room and I don't know how many times people will ask me if I'm just a technician or, you know, a receptionist or something. And then I have to explain to them I'm actually the doctor. And sometimes they look a little bit worried about that. So, it's kind of frustrating. Has he been eating and drinking still? Having normal bowel movements and urination and stuff? Okay. Injuries like Nico's are common in Colorado. When ranch dogs live with animals 30 times their size, accidents are bound to happen. Oh, yeah. I can see that eye. That one's really cloudy and red. And that was after he got kicked? Yeah. The eyes, it's got hemorrhage in it. It's also cloudy. And I can see the hole on the top there, right there. That looks like an ulcer. It looks pretty deep. The ulcer could be from the kick. It could be, you know, maybe he's been rubbing it or something if it's hurting him. And he could have actually caused it. So, we need to do what's called a fluorescein stain. The dye will soak into that ulcerated area and it will glow. So, we'll be able to see how deep it is exactly. Good boy. There's a spot in the middle of the hole that isn't picking up the stain. So, that means it's very deep. We'd have to take him to surgery to fix that. It almost looks like his eye is about to rupture. We need to get that fixed as soon as possible. While I was in school, we don't get to do that many surgeries. Mainly because we're working with live animals, you know, and we can't really mess that up. So, we'll practice on models and stuff like that. So, I have this dog here who has a very deep ulcer in his cornea. But nothing's sticking out of the hole. No, yeah. It looks otherwise intact. I think we need to go to surgery to cover it. Do a third eyelid flap? Yeah. All right. So, human eyes, we don't have the third eyelid like many animals do. Dogs have it, cats have it. Having that extra membrane there is a perfect little flap that you can just pull right across the eye. And that just gives a nice little extra layer of protection for the eye to heal under. So, I'm going to take a look. Worst case scenario, this dog would lose its eye. The ulcer would spread, get infected. So, Amy, see if you can get a look down here. This is obviously not an aggressive ulcer, or it would be a lot worse already. So, we just put a needle suture through the third eyelid. We're going to use a little tubing and something to tie to. I don't want to get right along the edge, so I want to come back a little bit, you know. All right. And then it's a matter of where you hook to the third eyelid. So, I'm going to come back on the other side. I go back and forth on these all the time. I can backstitch, but I really want a precise stitch with this. You can tie these a little bit tight and cause a little necrosis. There's some hair loss. You don't want to do them too tight. You don't want to do them too loose. All right. So, the next one you get to do. Yeah. Go ahead. I haven't done this surgery before. Not this type of surgery. Nico's eyesight is on the line. It's the rookie's chance to prove she can fix it. For the first place, rookies will fail. If you don't have someone willing to teach you surgery and show you things, then you never do it. So, I'm going to have Amy finish off the procedure and fix the ulcer in Nico's eye. Amy is sewing the third eyelid in place to protect Nico's eye while the ulcer heals on its own. I was a little bit nervous, but that's okay. Does that look good, though? Is it too shallow? I think it's too shallow. Okay. Amy's a rookie, and I think, you know, it took her a while to understand that third eyelid is not very thick. And you don't want suture rubbing the eyeball and making the ulcer actually worse or making a new ulcer. About to get it? Well, yeah, but I don't like it. It's like... All right, pull the whole thing back out and start over. Do one more. Take the whole thing out. Just pull it all out. Pull all the way through? Yeah, pull all the way through. One stitch. You can do it. Jeff is a great mentor. He doesn't beat around the bush, and he explains things well. So, you've got to poke through, come down, hook this over here and pull it up. Okay. Yeah, go ahead. Okay. Sometimes it's hard to keep up with him. You know, you have to keep up and pay attention or you'll miss something. It's kind of hard because I put the first stitch in, so I had the easier view of it. But it's pretty straightforward. Stitch looks pretty good. Yeah, that looks good. So go back up and tie it off. Yep. Amy did a great job on Nico's eye. You can tell she's still a little nervous, and I don't know if it's because she doesn't have the experience or she knows I'm watching. The third eyelid is completely covering his eye now, so it looks like we did a good job. So he's just going to get recovered, and we'll be watching him while he recovers from the anesthesia, and that's it. A day after surgery, Nico is ready to go home. Nico is a cone, you know what I'm saying? It's the bucket head. You know, you make a saddle-like dish out of him. You know, it's the cone of shame, as they say. We're pretty worried because we didn't want to lose him or anything, for him to lose his eye. Because he wouldn't be the same dog as before. He's happy to see you guys. He seems really, you know, good energy level, and a normal, happy dog. Perfect. So I think he's going to do well. We can't take the cone off, so that's going to be there for at least a week. Because if he scratches that eye even once, he can scratch all the stitches out. And we want them in for two weeks, total. And then we just need to see you back on Friday, just to make sure the stitches still look good, and they're still in place. And at that point, we can decide when we're going to take them out, okay? Alright, thank you so much. You're welcome. From start to finish, Amy did a really good job with Nico. There's no question, with a little bit more experience, she'll be an excellent vet. I'm happy that he's going to be able to go home now. If he cries during the night, then I'll just stay with him, pet him and stuff, so he won't be scared or something. It's Saturday morning, and Dr. Jeff and his staff are packing up for a trip to the mountains. Every few weeks, they volunteer their weekend time and take their low-cost vet clinic on the road. You get to get out and live a little bit more, see different things, and not just the routines that we have at the clinic. With plenty of other vets taking care of the animals in the clinic, Dr. Jeff, Hector, Dionne, and Tasha head 100 miles west to Leadville, high in the Rocky Mountains. We get out of the clinic and into the van, everybody starts acting like animals. I hate old people and cold. Old people, I do get cold. Here joins her. He's got a haircut. Kiss my ass! It's kind of madness being in a van. In some sense, it's kind of a reward for my vets and my techs. They pretty much fight over who gets to go. It's a big deal. Nestled in the Rockies at over 10,000 feet, Leadville, Colorado is one of the highest cities in America. These smaller communities really need outreach. Many of them just don't have the finances to get basic health care, and that's what we provide. The team sets up in a cabin owned by Dr. Jeff's friends from the Leadville Animal Shelter. Let's go, unload. Unload. This is all volunteer bases, and the truth is, my staff always steps up and does a good job. We're trying to set up the canopy for the check-in. To kind of make our visitors feel a little bit more comfortable and kind of feel like it is safe, even though it's not in an actual hospital. When word gets out that Dr. Jeff's mobile clinic has arrived, the locals start filing in. Hello. Hi. Ooh, he's handsome. Thank you. Yes. Hi, bud. What's his name? His name is Stingy. Hi, Stingy. He's got an abscess here. Oh, does he have an abscess? It's kind of coming off. Okay. Yeah. Okay. Yeah, we can look at that. Okay. All right, guys. Come here. Come here. What's his name? Stingy. Stingy? Yeah. Come here, Stingy. Sit. Sit. We had a pit bull come in, and his biggest problem was an abscess he had kind of, you know, right below his throat. Look at that. A nice big old abscess right here. But it was, you know, it was almost as big as my fist down in. So we'll open that up, get it flushed out. Yep. Good boy. Here in Leadville, we are pretty much cut off from everybody in the wintertime. We live in a really small mountain community. It's really neat for Dr. Jeff to come up here and offer this to us. You get a lot of this stuff up in the mountains. I mean, dogs run loose quite a bit, and there's lots of things to get poked with. There's a lot of things that like to bite you. Here in Leadville, my work is seasonal, and wintertime is our slow season. I work for Tips, and he offered to do that for free, which is just amazing because he needed that done. Such a big help. I got all the infected granulation tissue out. There's several little pus pockets in there. I'd like to get them on some oral antibiotics. So if you call me later with a pharmacy up here, I can call in a prescription. But he'll be fine. Well, thank you so much. I really appreciate it. No problem. Here's a slider turtle. Oh, he's awesome. It's a boy? We don't know. You don't know? Exactly. What's its name? Rockstone. Okay. Rock. Rockstone. Rock. I call him Stoney for so much. That Stoney's kind of cute. Yep. My turtle has, um, she has white stuff on her shell. I feed him once a day. Uh-huh. Okay, well, we'll have the doctor take a look at him, okay? Appreciate it. I'm going to sit down here. So whose turtle is this? Whose turtle is this? Is it yours? How long you had her? About a month. About a month? Okay. Do you know what sex it is? Boy or girl? I think it's a girl. I think it's a girl, too. You can tell by the short claws. Stoney the turtle has a few white spots on her shell. That's not a real problem. She is a little malnourished and dehydrated. So, Adeline, how big is her tank? About 15 inches. Okay. All right. About 40 gallons. I know. You might try to get her a bigger tank as possible. Certainly access to more water, you know? It's supposed to be 10 gallons of water for each inch. Okay. Which is crazy. I mean, you're looking at 50, 60 gallons of water. Right. You know, which probably isn't realistic to most people. Right. But the more water you can give her, the better. And then really keep that clean because that, you know, it does get dirty pretty fast with turtles. Yeah. I'm going to get you Stoney back and make sure you give him good food. And she should do pretty good, okay? There she goes. Thank you. Thank you so much. No problem. Thank you. I love coming up here. Honestly, God, never know what you're going to see or what you're going to do, which kind of makes it fun and exciting. With Dr. Jeff's mobile clinics, the staff has to be prepared for whatever walks up. That's a camel, and this is a baby. This is Sullivan. Hi, Sullivan. He's one and a half. He's trying to eat your shirt. Yeah, you like my shirt? Yeah, because I don't see a lot of camels in America. How old is he? He's one and a half. He's the third baby we've had. We breed them. Are they pretty expensive? The white ones are pretty rare, and they're pretty expensive. You know, when I first got into it, there's only 50 white ones in the U.S., and there's probably around 100 now. That's cool. I came over to Dr. Jeff's mobile clinic today to get my camel, Sullivan, gelded. We've got his mom at home, so we can't keep a bull camel at home with mom. The owner had the mother at home, and people don't understand this, but siblings will mate with their mother. Tasha, you want to bring the stuff out for our camel? Sure. About 500 pounds? 500 pounds. It's the first time I've been that close to a camel, yes. I've never touched one before, and it's certainly the first time I ever neutered one. But I'm not concerned. I have neutered lots of bulls and even a llama recently, and they're all pretty much the same. Camels are sensitive to anesthesia, so the dose we'll use is about one-quarter of what we'd give a horse. And while Sullivan's sedated, we're going to have to keep a close eye on him. It's the golden rule of injectables. Once you put it in, you can't take it out. You're getting drowsy. I kind of feel sorry for this species because they have unusually small testicles for their size. We're doing a good deed for the animal. A lot of unhealthy stuff that it has goes away with its testicles pretty much Because it's going to live longer, it's going to be less likely to have cancer. The anesthesia's going to be a little tricky. The camel's not going to be fully out, and we're going to have to be fairly quick about this. Okay, that's it. His testicle's really slimy. There we go. This seems a little funny that these testicles are so slippery, but the reality of it is, I don't want to give this animal any more anesthesia, so I really want to get this done. If it decided to get up all of a sudden and give us a kick, you can imagine how that would feel. You really need to pick up the pace, man. I'm going to open this up a little bit more. He was actually pretty cool through the whole procedure and woke up very uneventfully very soon afterwards. He's a little bit stumbly still. He's trying to find his feet. All right, well, thank you very much. Thank you, camera. I appreciate it. I really appreciate it. It's really cool. Take care. I appreciate it. Thank you very much. That is definitely one camel with two less lumps. I really love helping people out here. Let's put that somewhere flat. That was a pretty cool day, but now it's time to get back to the clinic. While Dr. Jeff has been on the road, his team has kept a close eye on Chico, the 14-year-old dog with heart problems, and he's doing surprisingly well. Some animals have more fight in them than other animals. It's what I call the gir factor. It's just that attitude about life, you know, that they just want to hang in there no matter what. Chico went into cardiac arrest, but, you know, he wants to eat, wants to drink, so he's walking around, so that's an improvement. His lungs sound better than they do by a lot, so, okay? Bottom line, he's doing really good. He's not well enough to go home yet, but I've asked the owners to stop by and see him. I think a visit would be good for them and for Chico. The bad news is you kind of suspected a heart issue, and there definitely is. I mean, the good news is that he's responded pretty well to treatment so far, and that if we can keep doing the right drugs, we might be able to buy him some good, you know, quality of life, and we're just not going to know for a while. And then hopefully he can go home, you know, and spend some time with you. It's all right, buddy. Yeah, you look much better. I want to see how Chico reacts when he sees his owners. That'll tell me a lot about how he's doing. While Chico recovers, he has a brief visit with the mother and daughter who have had him since he was a puppy. Hi, baby. Hi, pumpkin. Chico lives in a car with two people, and that's intimacy. I love you. I love you so much. It's not like your dog, you come home from work at 8, 10 hours, and you say hi and give him some food. I mean, these people have an intimate relationship with their dogs. Chico's everything to us. Chico and Diesel are the only things we have left in this world besides each other. Yeah. You're going to come home with us soon, buddy. Yeah. Dr. Jeff is going to take good care of you. Chico seems to want to hang in there. I mean, he could have died a couple of times, but he hasn't yet. He's a tough old man. Yeah. I call him my million-dollar baby. I mean, it could be he wants to stay alive and go home and die with his mom. You know, I don't know, you know. Okay, Deanna, you want to take him back in the O2 cage so he's a little more comfortable? Mama loves you. Mama loves you so much. We'll see you soon. He's a fighter, so he'll be okay. There's one or two cases that truly touch you and mean a lot to you. So, I mean, this little guy could honestly be part of my family.