Page 15 - Winter 23/24

Case No. 3 (M. V. Marcelo Aníbal Álvarez)
April 24, 2008
Patient: canine, Pointer breed, bitch, 2 years old. Habitat: small house with patio, located in Tandil, Province of Buenos Aires.
Family group: young woman, veterinarian.
Reason for consultation: simple and post-traumatic phobia.
Case taking: adopted at 35 days of age. After a move, “... Every time the patient feels the trucks are working in front of the house (they start at 6 a.m. and end at 10 a.m.), she wakes up screaming, trembling in all 4 limbs, with dilates pupils and drooling. The first time she emptied the anal glands. She doesn’t urinate or defecate...”
Previous diseases: from 4 to 9 months “... She had signs of pancreatic insufficiency: pica, coprophagia, voracious appetite, flatulence, diarrhoea of the large intestine (pasty faeces and of normal colour, with a frequency greater than 6 times a day, at any time of the day. Until 4 months she ate normally, and with the same balanced food. She didn’t put on any weight, despite eating voraciously. She ate like a starving wolf. After eating she was still hungry, but if I offered her more food she vomited as if she had just eaten it, after half an hour ...” “... The vomiting is always violent, very marked gagging, nervously looking for a place to vomit, always with dilated pupils, until she vomits. She does a lot of gagging.” During this period, the complete feed was changed several times.
With regard to these signs, she comments “...All of a sudden her gastrointestinal problems were resolved.”
She also had a bilateral otitis with black discharge, rancid odour (rancid butter), very pasty. Along with a dermatitis (allergic?) that has troubled her ever since, periodically.
Otitis is very bothersome.
During this period, she was bred with 2 other dogs and “...
she always tried to make good friends; the others subdued her, especially the Beagle.”
In the same year she moved 2 times. With the first move “...Nothing happened.” She moved alone to a house with 5 dogs and 3 cats and on that first occasion it was all fine”...nothing bad happened.” The second move was from that house, where she lived with other animals, to her current house, which has a patio “...to which she wants to go out, not very convincing and after a while asks to come back in.”
She was spayed before the first season, at 9 months, and at this time coincided with two factors: there was a change of food, from puppies to adults, and intestinal problems were solved.
She was first vaccinated at 45 days and the last at 90 days. She was weaned very early.
The patient’s mother is very calm and gluttonous, but not scared. The father is a tormenting dog, “...He walks in the street, without fear of anything.”
Behaviour: “She’s very nervous. It gets out of control when people come, whether she knows them or not. She does this when she sees them arrive and it lasts a few minutes. If they ignore it, it passes. If they are strangers, when they go through the door she goes behind the owner.
“When she gets really crazy, her movements are out of control.”
“She was always fearful, suspicious of strangers, of everything new; Fear of dogs, noise, fireworks at the end of the year just like when you hear the trucks. She hides under the countertops and tears the walls.”
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