Meet Lucky. His dad Joe brought him to one of our CVCOA clinic days in Barre. Lucky is a whopping 30 pound hunk of burning love. Unfortunately, Lucky had ALOT of trouble breathing because he had some typical brachycephalic (smush face dogs) genetic malformations. When an animal breathes their epiglottis covers their trachea so that food doesn’t go down the wrong way. In Lucky’s case his epiglottis and elongated soft palate sealed his trachea and often he struggled to breath with even zero to no overexertion. He also had laryngeal saccules that we also had to remove. We also made his nostrils bigger so that he could physically move more air. He also needed to have a nip and tuck of his eyelids because they needed to hold in his eyes better. At any point he could easily have ejected his eye and he tried too during surgery because they were so shallowly seeded in his orbits. Then to boot we neutered him. Oy! This little man did great post operatively and his breathing is so so much better. He may have had the most amount of procedures technically in one anesthetic event! A Stenotic Nare Repair, Laryngeal Saccules removal, Elongated Soft Palate excision, Bilateral Tarsorraphy Eyelid Reduction, and a neuter. The struggle and deformities that come with cuteness in these breeds is real and so so many animals have lifelong struggles because of their inherently bad breeding. Sometimes just because you can breed doesn’t mean you should! The product of these poorly bred dogs is suffering.
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