Glory turned 7 last December, she provided me with 3 wonderful litters. She had a total of 29 puppies, 4 passed away either at birth or shortly there after, 1 passed away as a puppy and 2 passed away as young adults. That leaves us with 22 bundles of glorious joys filling their owners hearts with love. One of those bundles lives with me. Guilty has become a mother herself giving glory 9 grand puppies. Now that I have Guilty I’m my breeding program I feel it’s time to retire Glory. We’ve had some invasive breedings, and whelps, for the most part everything turned out fine so it is at this time I don’t want to take a chance that I breed her again and have something bad happen to her since she is now a senior dog. I also don’t want to leave her intact to risk an unplanned pregnancy or worse a pyometra so I decided to have her spayed. This happened yesterday.

A little morning play with the pups before her surgery. Glory will be spayed at my work which is Harmony Pet Clinic. This year marks 17 years of business and I have been there from day one. My boss will be performing the surgery and of course I will assisting.

Glory had pre anesthetic bloodwork done and it was all normal. We want to make sure her internal organs are working up to par. Once the bloodwork is done and checked she is premeditated to make her groggy so we can place an IV catheter to administer the induction medications and to give her IV Fluids during surgery. She is induced, clipped and prepared for surgery in the treatment area.

Once prepped she is moved into the surgery suite where she is hooked up to gas anesthetic, IV Fluids, heart monitor, blood pressure, pulse ox. She is asepticly scrubbed and ready for the spay.

The laser unit was used to do the cutting during her surgery. It cuts and cauterizes so there is less bleeding.

Glory’s uterus was well used. It stored all her fat reserves. The uterus is the reddish tubular area in the above picture. The yellow subastance is all fat. A young uterus is normally the tubular structure without all the fat attached.

There were numerous blood vessels in the uterus and broad ligament. Since there was so much fat a lot of “tying off” of the vessels had to be done. Most vessels got double ligated so no bleeding would happen after the uterus was removed. Doing this took time to make sure other structures weren’t hidden in the fat and only the uterus was removed.

Glory had a small lump on the side of her abdomen. This was removed since she was under already. The lump was just a benign fatty lump.

Glory was doing very well under anesthesia so I did a dental cleaning and polishing on her teeth. She had mild tarter on her teeth and one pre molar had a piece fractured off of it that needed to be smoothed off so it doesn’t keep building up the tartar. She came in with all her teeth and she went home with all her teeth.

Glory had a normal recovery, she was given pain medications and pretty much slept it off during the afternoon. She was still very groggy when I took her home which is normal since we finished up with her early afternoon. Once home she ate a little supper and up to bed she went. She can sleep it off tonight and should be back to normal tomorrow. Then the fun starts, after a spay she needs to be kept quite for 14 days while she heals. Once the 14 days are up and her incision looks good she can go back to normal activity. I chose to spay her now so when the weather warms up she will be healed up for training and then we can enter her in hunt tests this summer without having to worry about her going into heat and having to withdraw her entry. The biggest plus is that now there is one less intact girl in the house to drive Gambler nuts during their heat cycle.

A big thanks to Harmony and Dr. Johansen for doing such a great job on her surgery and taking such great care of us.