Q:
 Our old dog, Nate, has a broken toenail, but it won’t come off.
He was limping for a few days, but now it doesn’t seem to bother
him. Can I treat this at home? Will his toenail grow back?
Q:Â Our old dog, Nate, has a broken toenail, but it won’t come off. He was limping for a few days, but now it doesn’t seem to bother him. Can I treat this at home? Will his toenail grow back?
A:Â You can try treating this but it might be painful, and you may see a little bit of blood. It all depends on where the nail is broken. If it’s cracked in the middle, it’s any easy fix. But most nails avulse (separate or tear away) at their base.
This can really hurt and if you try to remove the broken fragment, you can cause considerable bleeding. And if his nail bed (the cuticle) becomes infected, a simple problem can become significantly worse. So take him to see his veterinarian.
Most of these injuries heal well with treatment and the nail usually grows back. The vet can tell you more after looking at the injury and seeing if it goes deep into the area where new nail growth occurs.
Avulsion is most common in dogs with long, overgrown nails. Regular trimming to keep toenails short prevents hooking on things like carpet fibers or other hazards inside and outside the house. Besides all this, long nails are actually painful to older dogs because they push the toes out of their normal position. Trimming nails is easy with most dogs. If you’re not sure how to do this, ask your vet if an assistant can demonstrate. You’ll keep Nate a lot happier and healthier.
Q: Divot (our Jack Russell) passes a few drops of blood immediately after urinating. Our vet saw a couple of stones in the X-rays of his bladder. The vet says after his bladder empties, the deposits rub against the lining and cause irritation and bleeding. He is now on Hill’s S/D diet and his vet hopes this will help dissolve them. After three months, if there is no change she wants to remove them. Does this sound right to you? Is this a dangerous situation?
A: Bladder stones come in different forms depending on their mineral content. Triple phosphate stones (also known as struvites) are the most common. But there are other stones that consist of different minerals such as oxalate, cystine or uric acid. Of the four, struvites are the most common.
Your vet probably ran a urinalysis to try to determine the mineral makeup of the stones. If not, you should request this test. If it shows high levels of other minerals, dietary treatment will not be effective. In addition, a urinalysis can detect a bladder infection which might complicate Divot’s recovery if he isn’t given proper antibiotics.
Struvites usually respond to a diet adjusted to have low mineral and protein content. Hill’s diet S/D is the food of choice for this treatment, and it takes at least 2 months to be thoroughly effective. The stones literally shrink and disappear. Dietary treatment is the method many vets use to treat struvite bladder stones.
You’ll need to keep in touch with Divot’s vet through the next few months. And here are a few things to remember as he clears out these stones. First, watch him for any straining and/or discomfort. Once in a while, these shrinking stone particles can exit the bladder and become lodged in the urethra on the way out. The urethra has a narrow area located where it passes through the penis. Once in a while, a small stone piece can become lodged there. If this happens, Divot will try to urinate, but only a little will come out. He’ll feel like he has to go all the time simply because he won’t be able to empty his bladder effectively. He may even feel sickly if his bladder becomes distended. Any of these symptoms need medical attention the same day.
Remember that he’ll only be on this special diet for a limited time (3 months or so). Because of its nutritional makeup, prolonged use of the food (more than five months) can cause an unhealthy mineral imbalance. But in the short time Divot’s on this diet, he’ll be perfectly safe.
Surgery is usually the alternate choice for treating struvite stones and vets choose this only after dietary therapy fails. Let’s hope his new culinary fare does the job. If it does, your vet will later switch him to a different food to help prevent recurrence of these crystals and stones. Then Divot and you can live the life without worry of recurring bladder problems.
