Honorable Mention [gallery link="file" columns="2" size="medium" ids="52479,52480,52482,52483,52481"] That’s one ‘hairy’ situation! My tech brought in her 6.5 year-old female dog, Sunni, for a sudden onset of an episode of acting “spacey” and anorexia that started the night before. Upon exam, a large, round, firm swelling was found in the left upper quadrant of the abdomen. We X-rayed Sunni and saw a perfectly round, very radiopaque foreign body in the stomach, which looked too large for little Sunni to have swallowed. Owner was very nervous because Sunni’s dog mom had tossed her across the room as a puppy. Since then, Sunni has had neurologic problems and almost died once before, when she had to undergo surgery. Our team prepped Sunni for a gastrotomy. I had to make large incisions because the foreign body was so heavy, I had difficulty lifting the stomach to perform the extraction. As Sunni’s owner looked on nervously, we all gasped when the foreign body was extracted. Sunni recovered from surgery uneventfully. The foreign body turned out to be a perfectly round trichobezoar that weighed in at 0.26 lbs (Sunni weighs ~30 lbs). We cut open the hairball, expecting to find a ball in the middle that would have served as a template to form a perfectly round hairball. To our surprise, it was hair through and through to the core! Submitted by Cathy Grey, Shirley Animal Hospital Is this your favorite? Vote now!
