I’m writing this in late July during a rare rainstorm, welcome respite from the record-breaking temperatures we endured earlier this week.  The air conditioning in Swan House was very welcome for pets, clients and staff!  After the rain, the parched grass will start to grow again. Lawnmowers and strimmers will need dusting off and putting to work after weeks of laying idle. This means, garden hazards for pets!

A salient reminder that power tools and pets do not go together happened in dramatic fashion just recently.  A devastated owner called us just before closing one Saturday afternoon. His dog’s foot had been badly injured by a grass strimmer.  Using the words “hanging off” focused all our minds but often things are not as bad as they first seem. So we hoped. Unfortunately, in vain in this case.  The poor dog had all but one of its metatarsals severed (the bones in the foot between ankle and toes). The owner had not exaggerated.  As with many boney injuries, it’s the soft tissues and blood supply that determine the chances of success for any attempt at repair. I will not go into graphic detail about this injury, suffice to say we knew the foot wasn’t savable. 

Although the old saying “no foot, no horse” is true, luckily for small animals three legs are quite sufficient for a good quality of life, providing the remaining limbs are in working order. Our patient that day was a young, slim terrier so the decision to amputate the entire leg was the right one.  Although there have been cases of prosthetic limbs being applied to animals, the welfare issue of such a procedure is highly questionable.  So poor Terry the Terrier lost his leg due to a tragic accident and I hope all reading this will shut the dogs, the cats and the kids well away when the gardening equipment comes out.  

On this theme of “garden hazards for pets”, I’ll share a personal story to illustrate another preventable injury.  This time it involves a lawn mower, a piece of wood and my left eye (although it could have been anyone or anything’s eye).  You may have guessed how this goes; a piece of wood flew out from under the mower, hitting me directly in the eye. Well, not quite directly. Luckily, my blink reflex was fast enough to prevent any corneal impact, my upper eyelid taking the initial force.  Not that I knew that at the time, I was too busy staggering around the garden clutching my face. 

Ballistic injuries to eyes are always painful even if they are non-penetrating and can easily cause blindness.  In my case, the high-speed piece of wood caused a pressure wave inside my eye. Which, of course, is full of a liquid (aqueous humour) and a jelly (vitreous humour) with a lens in between.  The pressure in the eye is carefully regulated but if this control mechanism fails and the pressure increases, glaucoma results.  I’m sure most of you have had your intra-ocular pressures (IOP) checked by the optician, using the clever machine that delivers a puff of air and makes you blink.

We now have our own device to measure cats’ and dogs’ IOPs.  It looks like a fat pen and after applying local anaesthetic to the patient’s eye, the tip of the pen touches the cornea and a series of tiny pulses record the eye’s resistance, measuring the internal pressure.  Keeping a normal pressure in the eye is essential to preserve the retina, which is super-sensitive to any increase.  Sudden pressure increases in the eye, as in my case, are more likely to damage the iris and the lens. It can even cause the sclera (the tough white of the eye) to rupture.

All this was going through my mind as I struggled to examine myself in the mirror!  Serious damage to the iris causes bleeding into the eye and this is visible through the cornea. I was relieved to see my iris was intact and responsive to light and no blood was present.  Bleeding under the conjunctiva is another common finding after trauma, producing a blood-shot sclera. Dramatic, but not too serious.  

Happily, I avoided structural damage to my eye but it took two weeks of treatment before it stopped hurting.  I’ll wear safety glasses in future for protection. But, remember who else is in range of flying debris, be they pets/people.  This happened a week after I broke a rib, again in the garden, prompting a friend to remark that I seem to have elevated gardening to an extreme sport. So take care out there everyone! Remember that our routine maintenance can pose serious garden related hazards to our pets!