Miracle dog

Times Reporter

 

A miracle dog is what Carol Sansome is calling Norton. She has owned Norton for four and a half years after he jumped into her yard to play with her other dogs. She posted signs and when no one responded she decided to keep and care for the dog who had already started to warm her heart. 

“I got him neutered, got him his shots and kept him,” said Sansome. Norton, an American Staffordshire, has always been a happy friendly dog and when he started to act strange she noticed right away.  

“He started to act strange, He was peeing a lot more and when he was sitting he would back into things. When he lay down he would lay straight down. He normally likes to sleep on his side. I could tell something’s not right with this dog.” 

On May 29, She took him in to see Dr. Gerald Wolper at the Strathmore veterinary clinic. They began with a urinalysis and everything came back fine. They did blood work and once again everything was fine. 

“He had x-ray’s done on his spine and everything kept coming back fine,” said Sansome. She told them to keep going, determined to find out what was wrong with her dog. Wolper and his assistants did an x-ray of Norton’s chest, and that was when they started to see something was off. Sansome was told Norton had no organs in his abdomen; they were all up in his chest.   

“I thought I was going to be going home with my little vial of pills to fix a bladder infection and we ended up at Western Vet (in Calgary) in emergency,” said Sansome. 

Norton had a Diaphragmatic hernia, which sometimes happens when a puppy is maybe kicked across a room really hard, or if the mid-section is run over by a car, blunt force trauma which causes the diaphragm to open up and suck everything up into the dogs chest. When she took him to Western Vet, she was told he might be able to live like that for another year or two as long as he keeps eating, but at that point, Norton had stopped eating and was throwing up regularly. Surgery became a must, but it came with some risks.  

“They give you all the things that can go wrong just so you know. But you know you have to chance it,” said Sansome.  

Norton pulled through fine and has been recovering. Norton lived like that for four years and Sansome never knew.  

“If your dogs are off, or they’re acting weird, get them to the vet. Or if they’ve been hit by a car and it doesn’t look like there are any injuries, get them x-rayed.”  

Sansome is still sleeping on the floor with Norton because he is not allowed to jump up just in case the incision reopens. He should have a normal life now thanks to the veterinarians and Sansome noticing something was off.