Some months ago I wrote about a cat who couldn’t pee and ended up needing surgery. I was recently faced with a dog with a similar problem, but who needed a different type of surgery to help him.

This poor pooch had been taken to his local vet clinic because he was straining to urinate and failing. His vets attempted to pass a urinary catheter to relieve him, but to no avail. He was sent to our emergency clinic where his bladder was drained, first with a needle and then a catheter. But the emergency vets were still unable to shift the blockage and an x-ray revealed multiple bladder stones and, crucially, a small stone wedged firmly in his urethra (the tube that runs out from the bladder, through the pelvis and eventually out through the penis).

This was a tricky scenario. In an ideal world we would flush small stones back into the bladder and remove them from there – a relatively straightforward surgery. But as the stone was wedged so firmly in his lower urethra, we had to remove it from where it was stuck.

Operating with millimetre precision

In this small dog, we would be operating on a urethra no more than a few millimetres in size. Not only would we need to find this tiny stone in his rather small urethra, but we would have to remove it without causing any damage.

Careful measurements were taken from his x-rays and a small exploratory incision was made through the skin on his abdomen. After some very careful dissection, his urethra was identified and a small firm lump could be established at the exact site we thought the blockage was located.

The smallest nick possible was made through the lining of the urethra and a very sharp, irregular shaped stone was gently teased out. Almost instantly the urine started to flow, and we knew we had managed to relieve his blockage. The remaining stones were removed from his bladder and two days later he went home a much more relieved pooch than when he had come in.

He will have to stay on a special diet to prevent more stones from forming again, but at least he won’t suffer the misery of being unable to urinate in the future.