Poor Pancake

My poor little doggie has had a very tough few weeks. Pancake (the Jackapoo I adopted with my boyfriend in September) hadn't been spayed when we got her so we made her an appointment to get her lady parts snipped a couple weeks ago. Since she is 8 years old and slightly fragile, we had a feeling this was going to be a slightly traumatic experience. However, we never could have predicted the pain, suffering and sheer lunacy that was ahead.

The woman who adopted Pancake to us runs a shelter whose name I cannot mention because my law school boyfriend says if I do, it's slander. Let's just say if you live in NY, you've totally seen her. Anyway- her website claims that all dogs adopted through her organization are spayed and micro-chipped. We were upset to find out that Pancake was neither spayed nor micro-chipped, but we were assured that in "a couple days" we could have these things taken care of.

We made an appointment for the following week with the dog lady, who told us to meet her in Union Square with our dog and she'd have the whole thing taken care of. We waited outside in the cold for two hours and she never showed up. Even after calling her several times and her saying "I'm stuck in traffic Mami" she never showed. This happened 4 times before we finally insisted that we take her to the doctor to get spayed ourselves. Dog lady insisted that we bring Pancake to "her doctor" who is conveniently located in the north Bronx. Basically- unless we went to that doctor, we were not going to be given Pancake's medical records and rabies tag.

We sucked it up and showed up at the doctor's medical center (a metal table and some operating supplies set up IN HIS GARAGE) on a Fri. night. It was super sketchy, but we sucked it up, and were relieved when the guy ended up being kind of nice. We also saw the guy's medical certificates... he works at a dog hospital during the week and used to be the head doctor of the Nothside Animal Clinic. Ok- so we figured he must be legit.

When Pancake started to recover from the anesthesia, we took her home. She was a complete mess- peeing and throwing up on herself. We were freaking out and totally upset. My boyfriend's mother assured us that we were over-reacting and that it would just take awhile for Pancake to recover from this minor surgery. We kept calling the doctor asking if she would be ok- and he had us come in to get medicine which he forgot to give us before. Two days later when she was still throwing up, shaking, and not eating, we decided it was time for action.

We took Pancake to the doggie hospital- where they discovered she was in a lot of pain. She went into emergency surgery and the hospital peeps called the first doctor for information on her blood work. When the doctor realized our dog was going into surgery, he figured it was time to call us and let us know that he may have "made a mistake." My heart sank as he told us he was really tired when he did her surgery and that he may have left something inside of her. Of course, one hour and $3,500.00 later, the hospital discovered the sponge left inside Pancake's stomach. OOOPPS!

Now, a week and a half after her first surgery, Pancake is finally recovering. She has 8 inches in staples in her stomach and has to wear a cone on her head, but we are just relieved that she's ok. She's doing better everyday, and we think in a couple weeks that she'll be back to the regular old pancake.

So there are 3 very important lessons to be learned from this story:

1. Be sure your dog is fixed before you adopt it
2. NEVER EVER get your dog spayed in some guy's garage in the Bronx
3. If your dog is throwing up and not drinking or eating 48 hours after being spayed, she may have had a foreign object left inside her body. We discovered that this actually happens with some regularity, although we were unable to find anything about it online.

Get well soon Pancake!