Pet of the Month - June 2018

Brewski

We are excited to kick off summer with our June Pet of the Month, Brewski! We think he’s a rock-solid choice and we’re sure you’ll agree after reading his story. The almost three-year-old Chesapeake Bay Retriever joined Michael and Kat’s family in October of 2015. They had no idea at the time he would break one-hundred pounds. He still thinks of himself as a lap dog; a really, really big lap dog.

Aside from laps, Brewski loves the people attached to those laps. He also loves food-all the food-but especially cauliflower. One of this active and energetic dog’s favorite things is water. Swimming, hoses, sprinklers, if there’s water, Brewski’s drawn to it. Normally, he sticks to warmer days, logging ten-plus hour days swimming, diving for rocks, and chasing ducks, but he once went swimming on a 37 degree January day in 2017. Despite his imperviousness to cold, Brewski is sensitive to people and notices changes around the house.

The biggest change was the addition of Bianca, Kat and Michael’s newborn daughter. Brewski has taken to her and is very affectionate and caring towards his human sister. Since she’s come home, he has been looking out for her, especially when squirrels get in the backyard. Brewski does not like squirrels in the backyard.
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Recently, Kat brought Brewski to see us because he was not feeling like himself. He had vomited twice in 12 hours, was very lethargic, and not interested in food. This was very concerning because, as we mentioned earlier, he loves all food. During his exam, Dr. Weinrick became very concerned about a foreign body in his GI tract so we took two radiographs of his abdomen. Upon examination of the radiographs, she found a very peculiar and troubling object in his intestines. The next step was to do a barium series to ensure the object was in the intestines and to determine if anything was able to move around it. After we gave him the barium, he vomited it up within 30 minutes. This was not a good sign, but he was stable, so we set up a foreign body surgery for the next day and sent him home to rest with instructions to get him to an emergency hospital if his condition worsened before his surgery.

The next morning, Dr. Weinrick wanted one more radiograph before surgery to see if the object had moved. As we watched the image develop on the screen, we were all surprised to see the object was gone. Kat had reported he was feeling a little better that morning and had tried to pass stool the night before, but wasn’t able to produce anything. With his improved demeanor and apparent desire to eat, we fed him a small amount of bland prescription food and monitored him closely. When he kept it down and basically begged for more, we may have sent up a little cheer. After Dr. Weinrick relayed the great news to Michael and Kat, they sent us an email a short while later with a photo attachment. Turns out, Brewski did have a bowel movement the night before and they were able to find the offending foreign body. He had swallowed a rock. A rock!

He continued to keep food down the rest of the morning and went home without needing surgery. It was the best result for one of the best dogs. That’s why we think Brewski is a rock-solid choice for Pet of the Month.