Pawsitively Prepared: A Guide to Post-Op Care for Your Pet
Today we're diving into the important topic of post-operative care for your furry friend, no matter what type of surgery they've undergone. Whether your pet has been spayed, neutered, had dental work done, or even a tumor removed, proper post-operative care is crucial for a successful recovery. We'll cover important topics such as how long anesthesia typically takes to wear off, what to do as soon as you bring your pet home from the vet, and how to clean and monitor your pet's incisions for signs of swelling or bruising.
I'll also discuss why it's important to keep an eye on your pet even if they seem to be feeling fine, and provide tips for administering medication to your pet, including what to do if they're not fond of pills. You will learn about bandages and why they may not always be effective for pets, what to expect during the first 24-48 hours after your pet has had surgery, and important tips to help your pet make a full and speedy recovery.
What You’ll Learn:
How long it generally takes anesthesia to wear off.
What you should do as soon as you bring your pet home from the vet.
How to clean incisions when you get home.
How to check for bruising and swelling after your pet has gone through surgery.
Why you should still monitor your pet even if they seem like they’re feeling normal.
The importance of checking how to store and give your pet medications.
Advice for giving your pet medication if they do not like taking pills.
Why bandages are not always effective for your pets.
What you should expect for the 24-48 hours after your pets have had surgery.
Ideas Worth Sharing:
“After your pet has surgery, you want to make sure the incisions are kept clean and dry.” - Tyler Sugerman
“Only ever give medications to your pets as prescribed by your veterinarian.” - Tyler Sugerman
“We want to stay on top of the pain medication for our pets before they are in pain. So that way we are not trying to catch the pain after it’s beginning to wind up.” - Tyler Sugerman
Resources Mentioned:
ASPCA 888-426-4435 or pet poison helpline 855-764-7661
Read The Transcript:
Welcome to Vetsplanation. I'm Tyler, or you can call me Suggs. I love being able to educate my pet parents on what's going on with their furry little loved one. But as an emergency veterinarian, I'm usually running around from critical case to critical case and don't always have the time to be able to tell you what I've learned in 25 years of experience in just those short two minutes.
I'm hoping with this podcast, I'm going to be able to help you guys understand what your veterinarian is trying to tell you. So, let's jump into this week's episode.
Tyler Sugerman: Hey everybody. Welcome back to the podcast. So, today we're going to be talking about post-op care. Now there are lots and lots of different things that your pet might be going into the vet for, some sort of procedure. This could be due to having dental work done. We call that dental prophylaxis. Basically, just doing a dental.
It could be from a mast removal; it could be from a laceration repair or an abscess or even after being spayed or neutered, that we might have to do some post-op care for our patients at home.
So, I want to kind of talk about what that looks like, what you can do at home and just things that you can do to try to help ease your pet as well. So, this is really important to make sure that we do all these post-op care things to ensure your pet's comfort and their safety and to help them recuperate faster.
One thing to know is that anesthesia does take usually about 24 to 48 hours to wear off. So, we kind of have to keep that in mind when we think about what's going to happen with our pet after we get them home.
Typically, when you go into the vet to go pick them up, most of the time people are going to go over this paperwork with you there and hopefully send you home with it as well.
But sometimes it's just a verbal thing and you're just excited to get your pet back, knowing everything is okay. And also, you may not remember a lot of the things that they had mentioned. So, this is going to try to help you just remember some of those things that they may have mentioned.
So, what are some of the things that you should do when you get home, after picking them up from the vet? So, a couple things is while that incision is healing, you should check the incision at least daily if not twice daily. The goal is we just want to make sure that the incision looks clean and it's dry.
We shouldn't have any seepage of any kind. If you have a little bit of seepage in the beginning, it's probably not as big of a deal but that should decrease. We should not see a lot of seepage. It should only be a very small amount.
And by seepage, I mean that there might be just a little bit of clear fluid or a little bit of clear-ish, bloody-ish fluid. There shouldn't be changes of color of the fluid that comes out. So, if you start seeing that there's green discharge or yellow discharge or just tons of blood, those are not good. You need to be seen right away to either get antibiotics or potentially to check to see if we have something bleeding that's going on.
This also kind of depends on what they've had done as well. You might notice more blood from the mouth because they're constantly licking at that area. So, dogs who have had a fractured tooth or had to have a tooth that was taken out, they're constantly kind of licking at it and they usually have a little suture that's inside there which bothers them a little bit as well. So, that's going to be normal in the first day to have more blood coming from the mouth.
For procedures like a neuter, so if your male dog or cat had a neuter, where they take out the testicles so they cannot breed anymore, if they had one of those done then you should check the scrotum as well. So, where the testicles used to be, to make sure that that's not getting larger. Sometimes they'll have bleeding into the scrotum, and so it'll look like their testicles are still there when really in fact it's actually bleeding that's in there.
And also, making sure the scrotum doesn't look like it's really red or really irritated because sometimes that's a sign of that as well.
Another thing is going to be to keep that incision really clean. So again, we want to make sure those incisions are clean and dry, and are staying together, we should have the skin touching the other side, both sides of the skin touching.
So, ways that you can help clean this are going to be using some saline. So, usually a contact solution will have saline in it. That's going to be a really good thing to be able to use to make sure everything stays really sanitary, and we don't have a lot of bacteria that's in there.
You can also use warm water just on a washcloth and use that to kind of wipe things away. It just needs to be very gentle to wipe it away. It doesn't need to be really aggressive, because again, we want to make sure everything stays together and if we're really aggressive with wiping it might come apart.
And you don't have to do this constantly, you don't have to twice a day, go and clean the incision. Really this is that if you notice that your pet, maybe the dog went outside to go to the bathroom, and you notice that they rolled in something, and you need to clean off that incision.
Or for cats, a lot of times they'll go into the litter box and kind of sit there and then they'll get litter on them, so you can just clean the incision off that way.
I do usually recommend if you can wear gloves to do it because you got to remember, you still have bacteria in your hands and your pet still has bacteria even on their body and we want to try to eliminate as much bacteria getting into that incision as possible. So, ideally just putting on some gloves to try to make sure that we keep everything really clean.
You're also going to want to check for any bruising. You should expect, there should be a little bit of bruising afterwards, especially after really big procedures. Things like orthopedic procedures, so knee surgeries, fracture pairs, things like that. You should definitely expect that there's going to be some bruising but there shouldn't be a lot of bruising.
One of the dogs that I had treated ended up having bruising up its entire leg from its toes all the way up into its abdomen after having a knee surgery, which is really extensive. It should not go that far. Really for a knee surgery, maybe just like around the knee or for a fracture repair, maybe around the fracture area but usually it shouldn't be the entire leg.
Or if they had a spay, a little bit of bruising around the incision is fine but their whole abdomen or their whole belly should not be bruised.
So, check for those things because if you do see that couple things, one is if you think it might be big but you're just not really sure, you can draw on their skin with a sharpie around the outline of that bruise and that way you can kind of keep track if that bruising has gotten worse.
So, if you draw that outline and you see the next day that that bruising has moved outside of that outline, then you know that the bruising is getting worse and they need to go back in.
If not though, if it seems like it's just a very small amount, usually it'll start to go away and you shouldn't usually have to worry about it.
Next thing is to check for swelling. So, a small amount of swelling again right after surgery, that's okay. Again, we've been manipulating these tissues a lot so you're going to notice that there's going to be swelling from that tissue around where that incision is. But there shouldn't be a lot of swelling, so that incision should be looking better and better as the days go on. So, that swelling should get less and less as the days go on as well.
If you start noticing the swelling is getting worse and worse, again, definitely something to have it rechecked because that's not normal.
Another big thing is to give medications as prescribed. So, first of all with pain medication there's lots of different types of pain medication, there's an anti-inflammatory type pain medication. There's usually called Carprofen or Metacam or Rimadyl, those type of things. And with those usually it's a once a day to twice a day just kind of depending on the dose.
The other ones are going to be other types of pain medications like Gabapentin or Tramadol that people typically use. There are other ones, but those are the most common ones. And I usually tell people, with those medications it usually will say on the bottle every 8 to 12 hours.
Now people will tend not to give that pain medication unless they think the dog is painful at that moment. But the problem is, is that we need to help with that wind up pain.
So, let's say if I hurt my knee and I walk on it, it's going to be really painful. So, I take pain medication and I sit down and I rest and then I wait for that pain medication to kick in and then go back to whatever it was I was doing beforehand.
And now, once that pain medication starts to wear off in about eight hours or so, then I'm back to sitting down again because I'm really painful again and it's going to be harder for me to get that pain under control.
It's the same thing for the dogs, so you'll notice that they're not moving around as much because they're painful and then you get them pain medication and they're up and running around because remember we're giving them medication to make them feel better, and so they are going to feel better and want to try to do things. They don't understand the fact that they have stitches in their leg or that their abdomen was just opened up.
They really have no concept of that. So, they'll start to feel better and then as that pain medication wears off they start feeling worse and worse, and now it's harder to catch up to try to help manage their pain.
So ideally, we want to try to help with their pain before they start going into pain again. So, sometimes people will just do pain medication every 24 hours, but we're not catching up on that pain, we can just never catch up at that point. It's like sleep, we can just never catch up on sleep.
So, same thing with our pain medication is we've got to make sure to stay on top of it before the pet becomes painful, so that way we're not trying to catch after this windup pain.
The next thing to talk about is antibiotics. So, the antibiotics you got to make sure you give them the antibiotics as it's prescribed.
So, if it says twice a day for seven days, then you got to make sure you give the whole dosage, because if you don't then it can actually make some of that bacteria that we worry about more resistant and now we have to use bigger and bigger types of medications to try to help get rid of it, until at some point we've run out of medications that we can use to help get rid of it. So, we don't want to get to that point.
So, we want to make sure to give the medications all the way through the prescription as it was prescribed.
If you have any liquid medications, check to see if they need to go in the refrigerator. You can call the vet if it doesn't have a label on the bottle and just say, “Hey, I got this liquid medication, I just want to know if it goes in the refrigerator.”
A lot of liquid medications do go in the refrigerator but there are some that don't. We have quite a few at our hospital that don't. But if somebody forgot to tell you or forgot to put it on the label, then we want to make sure to know if it really should go in the refrigerator or not.
And even before leaving the clinic, that's a great thing to ask, just say, “I see this as a liquid medication, I just want to know should this go in the refrigerator?” That way we make sure that whatever we're using is going to stay active. Because sometimes if you have a liquid medication and you leave it out, then it may not work as well. So, we want to make sure everything is working appropriately.
A note about pills, so don't crush the pills, we don't want to crush or cut them if they're not supposed to be cut. There are certain antibiotics and stuff that should not be cut. They have special coatings on them to make sure that they stay as a pill form until it gets to a certain point in the digestive system.
So, things like Clavamox is an antibiotic that's supposed to not be cut. So, we want to try to make sure we don't cut those things or don't crush those things.
If it's big pills maybe you could ask your veterinarian instead to do liquids or if they have some other compounded one that's much smaller to be able to give, so that that way we don't have to worry about these bigger pills if you're worried about your dog not being able to swallow them, because just there are some really big pills out there like some of the heart medications are really big.
And so, I understand wanting to crush them to be able to put them into stuff but ideally, we don't want to do that.
So again, if we need to, maybe we need to come up with some sort of liquid form instead. There are definitely dogs out there who are not going to eat their pills. I have a Labrador who she would definitely eat all of her pills if I put it into just her regular food.
But if you have a pet that doesn't eat it then maybe for a dog you might want to try turkey or roll it in some ham or cheese, just little bits. Or a good trick is even strawberries, for some reason they really like strawberries as well, so you can just hide the pill in the strawberry and give them the strawberry.
For cats, they do have pill pockets for those cats and sometimes again just putting them in weird little things like the turkey and ham and stuff.
I have a cat who I think that she would probably eat it if I was just to put it in a little bit of turkey or a piece of fish, tuna, things like that. And if we get to the point where they won't eat them, I have a Great Dane who most of the time will not eat her pills and unfortunately, that means that we might have to give it to them.
So, it usually means just opening their mouth. So, what I usually do is they put my left hand on top of their head, so that my thumb and my middle finger are kind of behind their canines to be able to lift their head up and then I put my right hand down on their bottom jaw with the pill in my right hand as well and put it in the back of their throat to be able to get them to eat their pills.
I know it's a scary thing and it's really hard to do sometimes, especially in a cat. Cats are definitely hard to give pills too, but we have to remember it's a temporary thing and it's for their own good. We need them to have these medications in order to be able to make them feel better.
You could also ask your veterinarian or the vet tech to help you to understand how to give those pills as well. They're usually more than happy to demonstrate how to do those things to make sure you know how to do it when you get home.
And one thing also just to mention about being at the vet's office, make sure you understand before you leave the clinic everything that you're supposed to give, when you're supposed to give it and what it's for.
I've definitely seen people who have given eye drops just by mouth and we've had to call poison control or I've seen people crush things and give it in as a liquid but it doesn't work that way and then they don't actually get the medication and they don't do well. And I've seen people who have just not understood what the directions were and gave it multiple times a day or the wrong dosage.
So, just go back over with them, even if you have to say, “Can I repeat all of this to you? So, that you know that you understand how to give it, what it's for and when to give it.
Next, we're going to talk about some activity restrictions. So, most of the time like I said, we give pain medications, they feel great and now the pet wants to run and climb and jump and spring around, especially when they're puppies and kittens.
So, some of the things to try to help with that is like if you have a cat, you can put them into a large dog crate, so you can put their litter box in there, you can put their food in there and that’ll kind of help them not to be able to jump up and down off of things. They kind of have to stay in this enclosed area until they start healing and feeling better.
For a dog, crate training is great as well. Putting them into a kennel, at least even a temporary one just so that we can keep them in one place until they have healed, again because we don't want them jumping up and down off of things. We don't want them running around and playing with other dogs, and so keeping them in a confined area will really help with that.
When they go outside to go to the bathroom for dogs, put a leash on them because again, they're going to want to play, they're going to want to run as soon as you walk out there they're going to want to chase that squirrel that just ran up the tree and they're going to take off.
And when they do that, all those muscles that are not quite healed yet may rip open or what's going on inside might rip open or maybe they had a mass that was really difficult for us to be able to take off in the first place. If that rips open, that's not good because it's going to be even harder to close that, if that happens.
I've even had one that we couldn't close afterwards, so we want to make sure that we are really strict about taking them out on a leash to go to the bathroom to make sure that they can't take off.
Stop them from jumping up and down off of the furniture. Keeping them confined is great for doing that but maybe they don't do well on the kennel. My Great Dane did terrible on a kennel, she would not stay in a kennel.
So, just one thing to help with that is just making sure they don't jump up and down off of the furniture, confining them maybe in an area like the kitchen where they can't chip up and down off of things. Or confining them into a bedroom where maybe we only have the bed they jump up and down off of when you're not there. But ideally, we want them to stay off of it.
If you're around, great, then hopefully you can help pick them up and put them up on the couch or the bed and then pick them up to take them down off of the couch or the bed.
And the same thing goes for the car. There's lots of dogs that like to go for car rides with you and one thing you can do for that is … it's great because it still keeps them enclosed somewhere, but one thing you can do is just help them into and out of the car. Especially really tall cars like SUVs and trucks and stuff, hopefully picking them up to put them up and down, so that that way they don't again, hurt their incision or whatever's going on inside.
If you find that putting them in a crate is just too much or putting them in an isolated area, they're just getting really bored. A couple things to help combat that, one is you can use a KONG, those KONG toys, you can stuff them with peanut butter or lots of other different wet foods and stuff.
And then adding in dry food kibble type things is really helpful as well because they really like that different textures of things or even freezing it because then they have to lick it quite a lot to be able to get it to melt away so that they can get to it.
Just make sure these KONGs are appropriate for their size. Don't give a little tiny KONG to a giant dog because they will swallow it and then choke on it. So, try to make sure it's the appropriate size for them.
I like toys as well; toys are great for them, but my biggest problem is just making sure that they're not ones that they can rip up and destroy. Or you're watching them to make sure that they can't rip them up and destroy them because we don't want to have surgery and then have to go back to surgery to take out a foreign body now.
My next big thing is the E-Collar. So, it's also called an Elizabethan Collar or people also know it as like the Satellite Dish or the Cone of Shame. So, people hate these, people hate them that they're plastic and they're big and I know it's really annoying but hear me out.
So, the problem is, if we don't have these plastic E-Collars on them, people will try to use the Donuts or they'll try to use those really soft E-Collars, which in theory are fantastic. We don't want them to be uncomfortable, so we want to have something that's not going to be around their head and something that seem to be really soft.
But the problem is, if you have a soft E-Collar, those soft squishy ones, they will sometimes be able to get around that. They squish it down and then they're able to get to their incision and then it doesn't really work.
Same thing with the Donut E-Collar that only prevents them from not being able to get to something on their chest, but they could definitely get to their back leg because they extend their back leg past that Donut and then now, they're able to lick it.
So, we don't want to use those in a good majority of the cases. If you have one that's like, there's just an incision just on the chest or just on the shoulder and then yeah maybe we can get away with using those but the majority of them are going to be in a place that they can easily get to when they have those other softer E-Collars on.
So, in most cases we want to make sure we keep those really hard E-Collars on. If we don't then they tend to lick at it and people are always like, “Well, I'm watching them all the time, they're not licking at it.”
But remember you go to sleep, you go to the bathroom, you walk out of the room for a second and dogs are smart, and cats are smart, and they will sometimes wait until you are out of the room to start licking at it.
And then we have them come back in because now we have an infection in the incision, which sometimes these are really minor and we can just give antibiotics for it.
But sometimes they're really bad, sometimes we don't see on the outside that there's any bacteria or any moisture on it. All of it has seeped in and now we have really big abscesses inside the incision, or we have abscesses inside the abdomen or inside wherever the mast was or wherever it is, unfortunately it might be inside there, and that wreaks havoc on them.
So, we don't want them to be able to look at those incisions. So, remember this is a really temporary thing. It's only going to be for about hopefully two weeks kind of depending on what the procedure is, but it's only going to be a short period of time that we have to deal with it.
I know that they hit the back of your legs and that's really annoying especially for the dogs. If it makes you feel any better, my Great Dane had to have this giant 40 centimeter E-Collar on and she would just knock us around, she would knock into the walls, they're going to do that but we just know that it's going to be a temporary thing.
And if you find that they're having problems, especially for dogs eating, sometimes you can't put their food bowl up on a box, so that that way they can stick their head over the bowl and be able to eat that way.
Most of the time these dogs usually can figure out how to eat without having to worry about finagling a box or something. But I do find that a box is helpful.
For cats, I know the biggest problem is usually going into the litter box because they can't get their head into the door when they're in the covered litter boxes. So, for the time being while they have the E-Collar on, it probably needs to be an uncovered litter box, so that that way they can easily get in and out and not have to worry about getting their head caught in there.
Same thing for them about eating, most of the time they'll figure out how to eat. I've definitely had a couple cats now who have had E-Collars on, and they've all figured out how to eat with that E-Collar on.
So, if you're there and you're monitoring them very closely, do not take your eyes off them, do not walk out of the room, sure you can take the E-Collar off, and then just make sure you put it right back on afterwards until that incision has healed.
Now, common question I get is, “Well, why can't I just put a bandage on it? If there's a bandage on the incision, then they can't lick at it and then we don't have to worry about that.” So, there's a couple things with that. It depends on where it is.
So, if this is up on the thigh or up on the top part of the arm, then we can't really bandage those areas very well. It's just going to slip off. So, a bandage isn't going to really work for those.
If it's in the area where they were neutered for a male, then we can't bandage that area either. Because it's kind of between the penis and the scrotum that just doesn't really work. And then the abdomen is not a great place either because again it's just going to squish up and it's not really going to work for that either.
The second part of this is that a bandage will keep bacteria in. Unfortunately, bandages are good for some things. They're great for helping with wounds and stuff when we're changing these bandages constantly.
But when people aren't changing them constantly, if you just put a bandage and wait that 10 to 14 days, then there's tons of bacteria that just sits in there and that incision is definitely going to get infected.
Some people even try to do a bandage on that they've changed once a day, but you also have to be really careful about how you put a bandage on them.
So, if you think about putting a rubber band or something around your finger, sometimes people don't realize how tight they're putting the bandages on, and it cuts off circulation to whatever it is that they're bandaging.
So, a lot of times there'll still be a leg and then they put a bandage on it but they put it on too tightly and then that circulation is cut off and that leg becomes very puffy, which you may not see, especially if you've bandaged the entire leg. So, you wouldn't notice that it was really swollen.
So, I ideally do not like bandages for those reasons, again, because most of the time we're usually going to have to deal with infection because of it. So ideally, we don't want to put a bandage on.
But let's say your pet does go home with a bandage, maybe it has a splint or something from a fracture. If that happens, then you just want to just kind of check to make sure that it stays dry. We want to make sure it stays clean and dry.
And one thing, especially if you're in the Pacific Northwest, it rains a lot. So, we want to put some sort of plastic wrap around it, so that that way when they go outside, for the dogs, when they go outside to go to the bathroom, they stay clean, and we don't have to worry about that bandage getting dirty or soiled.
Because if so, we may have to bring them back in to have it changed. If in the Pacific Northwest, every time they go outside, they go to the bathroom and their bandage gets wet and we have to change it, that's going to be constant.
So ideally, we want to put plastic on it, you can do plastic wrap and then just take it off as soon as you get in. Or sometimes we do a fluid bag, and so we'll cut it and then we'll put that over the bandage and then just with a tie so that we can just tie it on.
And then when you get back in with the dog from going outside, just take that bag right back off, so we can make sure that we have good airflow going through that bandage as much as possible and try to protect it from being wet.
With some bandages too, it depends on what part is being bandaged but let's say it's the leg that's being bandaged, sometimes they'll leave the toes exposed and that's a great way to be able to make sure that the bandage is not too tight.
If you start noticing the toes swelling or if you start noticing the toes kind of spreading apart, then that usually means that that's too tight and it needs to come off and have one re-put back on.
And if you feel like it's too tight, either just bring them back in immediately and have the vet redo it. Or if it's just too tight and it's swelling, then you might want to take that band off and then go back into the vet afterwards to make sure that we get that swelling to come down.
Let's talk more about the incision part here. So, some people put in sutures or staples into the incision, just again, kind of depends on what type of procedure was done, where it was done.
For the ones in the mouth for dentals, you don't really have to worry about this so much. But for the ones that are on the belly for spays or if they're between the penis and the scrotum for a neuter or maybe you did a mast removal or something, then sometimes they'll have sutures or staples in, you just want to be checking those to make sure that they're not coming out, we're not missing a bunch and that like I said, the skin is staying closed and dry, it shouldn't be open.
And then there's also people who don't put any sutures or staples on the outside of the skin. So, I usually do not put them on the outside. All of mine are usually under the skin and will just eventually dissolve on their own, but that still means that we have to treat that as if they still had sutures in or they had staples in, that incision is not completely healed, and we need to wait that 10 to 14 day time period for everything to heal.
Which also means no bathing them during that period of time. No going into lakes or streams or rivers or anything. Because again we want to make sure that all of that is healed before it gets wet.
If there is a drain that's put in, sometimes we'll put a drain in for when there's a dogfight wound or there's some sort of abscess. With those, we have this weird little drain that's put in there. It's usually some sort of plastic type thing. It can be something that's a cloth type thing as well just to kind of depending on where things are.
But with that the goal is that we're trying to help get out as much bacteria as possible. So, it might be with an abscess, there's a bunch of pus that's in there, we want to make sure all that pus comes out.
Or for dog fight wounds, if there's a pocket that's in there, so there's skin that's pulled away from that underlying muscle, it creates this pocket of skin and we want to make sure that bacteria doesn't just sit in there because that's going to make things worse.
So, we put this drain in there to allow for that bacteria to be able to drain out of there. When that happens, people will expect that it's actually going to be from the middle of the drain because the drain looks like a tube. They think that it's going to be from the middle of the drain but it's not actually, actually this comes from around the drain.
So, we want to make sure to keep that really clean and again to make sure that our pets can't get to it, because we don't want them to chew it and then we kind of lose where that drain is and then we have to go back in, open it up and try to find the rest of it.
So, we want to make sure we try to keep that really clean. Again, the same things that we did for our incision sites. So, either using the saline, with your contact solution or just using warm water on a washcloth.
And ideally using gloves, so that that way we don't get bacteria in there as well, just because we have that drain in there getting bacteria out, that doesn't mean that bacteria can't go back in that drain as well. So, we want to make sure we keep it really clean.
And as far as that drain goes, typically that comes out between days three and five after having it being put in. And then for the sutures or staples, usually between like 10 to 14 days is when you can have those out.
And then they'll usually check to make sure everything looks okay at that time too to make sure that it's okay for those things to actually come out and not that they need to stand longer or maybe we have to change antibiotics or whatever it is, they're usually checking them around that time.
So, let's talk about some of the things that you should anticipate after surgery. Some of the normal things are going to happen, that seem weird at the time but are normal for having just had anesthesia.
So, we talked about how anesthesia can last up to 48 hours afterwards, so that's quite a long period of time. So, some of the things to know is that for about 24 hours after the procedure they usually are not going to eat very much.
Cats are really stressed out, so they're not going to eat very much. Dogs, maybe they're just really groggy and they're not going to eat very much. And same thing with drinking, they're just not going to drink very much.
And during some of the procedures they're actually getting a lot of fluids during it too. So, their body's already hydrated and they don't think that they need any more fluid. So, it's not uncommon for them not to drink for that first 24 to 48 hours after they get home. So, you should expect that, that they're probably not going to eat or drink after they get home.
You should keep them on their same diet though. So, some people worry that they're not eating, and so they try some other diet. A very quick switch like that is going to be something that upsets their stomach and it's going to cause something called a pancreatitis, which you can go back to my other episodes to listen to or gastroenteritis, which again there’s a recent episode.
But it's going to make their stomach upset and now we have to deal with trying to heal from this post-op care and have to deal with this diet change that suddenly occurred.
So, it's ideally, we want to keep them on the same diet unless your regular veterinarian has said that we needed to change diets for some reason. Maybe it's a cat who has a urinary problem or maybe it is a dog that had a really bad surgery, like an intestinal surgery and maybe they need a bland diet. And that's fine, most of the time they'll be able to tell you how quickly you need to change them over.
But in the majority of the situations, usually just keeping them on their same diet and we don't need to add in people food to that because again it can cause things like pancreatitis or gastroenteritis. So, an upset pancreas and an upset stomach and intestines and that's not going to be good either because we need to be able to heal and if we're concentrating on an upset stomach then they're not going to heal as well.
You can also sometimes see that they're going to have diarrhea that happens right after surgery. This is from stressful situations And also just from adding in medications, the antibiotics that they're on can give them an upset stomach. Sometimes the anti-inflammatories that they're on can give them an upset stomach as well.
So, just kind of know if they do have diarrhea, you can put them on a bland diet. So, that chicken and rice, usually just bland, boiled chicken breast, no skin, no bones, no seasoning, no oil. Make sure it is boiled and not just baked because it sits in too much fat when it's baked and then with white rice or brown rice. Doesn't matter which one. But if that does happen usually within a couple of days the diarrhea will resolve.
You should expect that there's going to be some level of pain once they get home that'll slowly start to decrease over the next couple of days.
One thing that you can do to help with that pain is just doing icing on the incision. So, you want to do it usually for about 10 to 15 minutes every six hours if possible. If you can only do it every 12 hours just once before you go to work, once after you get home from work, that's great. That's really going to just help with the swelling and the pain.
It's not going to be detrimental if it's not done, it's just something to try to help with their comfort level.
Right now, let's kind of talk about just what you can do for the after that post-op care. So, let's say we've done the 10 to 14 days and they're seen to be doing better, I will say if this is an orthopedic thing like doing the fracture repairs or doing the knee surgeries and stuff, this might be longer, this might be after two months or so, but most of our surgeries are going to be about a 10 to 14 day healing period.
So, after that 10 to 14 days they usually can have their E-Collar off, hooray. We don't have to worry about them slamming into the back of our legs anymore. So, they can have that off. And then you can try to slowly get them back into their normal exercise routine.
For cats it's a little bit hard because usually they're just free wanderers and they go where they're going to go. So, I do understand the cats that it's a difficult thing to do. But with dogs we can just slowly get them back into our normal exercise routine.
So, if you normally go on hikes and stuff, then maybe we just start out with just a quick jaunt around the block. And then you just slowly increase to around a couple of blocks. And then we increase to about a mile. We just want to slowly increase those things because we don't want, again, those incisions and stuff to rip open.
You want to watch for other complications still. So, looking to make sure that they don't have pale gums, they don't seem like they're getting more depressed, they're eating normally, that they're not having more diarrhea and that there's no discharge or bleeding from the incision.
One of the other interesting things to note is that if you had a male dog or a male cat that it was neutered, people also like to call that just getting fixed, basically. But if you have a male dog or male cat that was recently neutered, you actually don't want to let them to be around any unspayed or unfixed females, any intact females for about 30 days after that neuter because they actually have some stored up sperm and could still get that dog pregnant even though they were neutered.
So, for about a month, still keep them away from them, so that way you don't have any unplanned puppies or kittens.
That was a lot of information. You're like, “I just got my pet home from just having this surgery,” and you were anticipating everything that was going to happen for the surgery, everything leading up to it. It's always very scary. And then now you have them home and you're like, “Oh man, I have so much more that I have to deal with now as well.”
But like I said, remember it is temporary. It's only for hopefully about 14 days as long as we have no complications and hopefully it's not an orthopedic surgery, but these are all temporary things. You're going to be able to get through it, your pet is going to be able to get through it and when you're done, you guys can go back to your normal lives again.
I'm going to do my fun animal fact real quick. So, my fun animal fact is going to be that did you know that an ostrich brain is actually smaller than its eyeball? They have tiny, tiny brains. For such a big bird you'd think that they'd have a very large brain but it's a very small brain.
And even though it is a small brain, it is pretty adequate still. They can do everything that a normal bird can do. They do even more too. They learn to adapt to a lot of situations and their eyes are actually really needed to be able to make sure that they can see great distances because they're a really large bird. It's not easy for them to hide. They got to be able to figure out if they need to run away really fast. So, their eye allows them to do that.
But again, their brain is tiny compared to what another bird's brain is. I feel like maybe that's where they got the term bird brain. I'll have to look into that and see if that's where they came from, but super interesting.
Alright guys, if you have any questions, if you have any ideas for the podcast, anything you want me to cover or something else you would like me to do, please email me. You can email me at suggs@vetsplanationpodcast.com or you can find us on Facebook or Instagram at Vetsplanation.
And thank you to all my regular listeners. I will be talking to you guys next week when we are talking about amphetamine toxicities. Thanks guys.
Please remember that this podcast is for informational purposes only. This is not meant to be a diagnosis for your pet. If you have questions about diagnostics or about treatment options, please talk to your veterinarian about those things. Remember, we are all practicing veterinarian medicine and medicine is not an exact science. Your veterinarian may have different treatment options. If you like our podcast, please leave a five-star review and hit subscribe, so you'll be able to hear all the future episodes.
Thank you again and I wish you and your pet well.