A 5-year-old yellow lab was rushed to the emergency room after a piece of a reinforcing bar went right through him. A staff surgeon said she’s never seen anything like it.
(Courtesy Hope Advanced Veterinary Center)
Courtesy Hope Advanced Veterinary Center
A 5-year-old yellow lab was rushed to the emergency room after a piece of a reinforcing bar went right through him. A staff surgeon said she’s never seen anything like it.
(Courtesy Hope Advanced Veterinary Center)
Courtesy Hope Advanced Veterinary Center
Doctors had to cut more than two yards of quarter-inch thick metal and risk destabilizing the dog before operating, so they could lay him on the table for surgery.
(Courtesy of Hope Advanced Veterinary Center)
Courtesy of Hope Advanced Veterinary Center
Doctors had to cut more than two yards of quarter-inch thick metal and risk destabilizing the dog before operating, so they could lay him on the table for surgery.
(Courtesy of Hope Advanced Veterinary Center)
Courtesy of Hope Advanced Veterinary Center
“He had damage to the lung,” a surgeon said. “It went through the thorax, but missed the heart, that was fortunate.” The dog’s owners are asking for help in paying his $10,000 surgery bill online, through the Veterinary Care Foundation.
(Courtesy of Veterinary Surgical Centers)
Courtesy of Veterinary Surgical Centers
The dog’s owners are asking for help in paying his $10,000 surgery bill online, through the Veterinary Care Foundation.
(Courtesy of Veterinary Surgical Centers)
WASHINGTON — A 5-year-old yellow lab was rushed to the emergency room Monday after a piece of a reinforcing bar went right through him.
When Dr. Julia Hawthorne, a staff surgeon with Veterinary Surgical Centers in Vienna, Virginia, arrived to perform emergency surgery at Hope Advanced Veterinary Center, she describes being shocked at what she saw.
“He had 3 feet in the back end, and 3 feet in front of him, so it really got embedded,” Hawthorne says.
Much like a human emergency room, vets have no clue what is coming in next, she says. But seeing Espen impaled by more than 6 feet of metal rebar was a first, she says.
They had to cut more than 2 yards of quarter-inch thick metal and risk destabilizing the dog before operating, so they could lay him on the table for surgery.
“He had damage to the lung,” Hawthorne says. “It went through the thorax, but missed the heart; that was fortunate.”
Espen isn’t out of the woods, though. The dog’s owners are asking for help in paying his $10,000 surgery bill online, through the Veterinary Care Foundation.
Exactly how the accident happened is not known. The dog was in the care of a sitter at the time.
