pet connection

All of us who went to Bible school remember the story of Jonah. God wanted Johah to sail to a village near the Sea of Galilee to prophesy, but Jonah resists by sailing towards another village instead. A great storm arises, lots are drawn, fingers are pointed at Jonah, who admits his disobedience. He tells them to toss him overboard and the storm will stop. They do, it does, but miraculously a giant fish swallows Jonah and saves him from drowning. Inside the fish, Jonah prays for forgiveness and merciful God commands the fish to vomit him out on the shore.

Thousands of years later, and just last week, something similar happened in Brandon, Fla. (near Tampa). But the cast changed: Substitute, Pepper, a red-eared slider turtle for Jonah, Bella, a golden retriever for the giant fish, and 12-year-old, Shelby Terihay, for God. It seems Shelby had moved her pet pond turtles indoors to the bathtub to protect them from a cold snap when Curious Bella found them and decided that the 4 to 5 inch Pepper looked like an appropriate sized snack and swallowed him whole, sorry, on the half-shell.

Shelby did a quick head count of the turtles, looked at the guilty golden, and mounted a rescue mission.

Her folks contacted a local veterinarian who told them to give hydrogen peroxide to make the dog vomit. Well, the H2O2 took hold, and after having been inside Bella for about 10 minutes, Pepper came shooting like a rocket out of Bella’s gullet, alive, but broken up a bit.  Put another way, it was plop, plop (into tub, into retriever’s stomach), fizz, fizz (dark, hydrogen peroxide Jacuzzi), oh what a relief it is (for turtle and for retriever).

The Terihays rushed Pepper to Dr. David Thomassy at Valrico Animal Hospital who quickly examined Pepper and found that while a huge section of the turtle’s shell was gone and the internal organs were visible, the testy turtle (trying to bite the good doctor) was alert, walking on all four legs — a convertible rather than a hardtop — but otherwise normal. When presented with an estimate of costs, the Terihays never hesitated to say “YES” and the almost two-hour surgical repair began.

Pepper was given an injection of antibiotics and some fluids, the margins of the wounds were cleaned and the entire turtle was flushed with saline and chlorhexidine to remove whatever it had contacted on the journey down the retriever’s piehole, washed in stomach acid then hydrogen peroxide, then ricocheted back out the digestive tract to fly out Bella’s gaping mouth and land some distance away on a less than sterile floor.

Dr. Thomassy, who sees a fair amount of reptiles in his veterinary practice, built Pepper a new 3-layer shell using Tegaderm (a non-adhering bandage material), then Kool-iner (a dental acrylic) topped off with layers of fiberglass and 5-minute epoxy he got at Walmart. The total cost to treat Pepper’s golden gastric U-turn was about $300.00. About the same as it would have cost to fly Pepper on Delta Airlines to Los Angeles and back.

When I interviewed Thomassy (1997 Auburn College of Veterinary Medicine graduate) he marveled at the fact that the 75-80 pound golden retriever could swallow then regurgitate a turtle that was about 1 to 1.5 times the size of the palm of your hand. Moreover, that Pepper could survive his Jonah-journey or take a retriever-lickin’ and keep-on-tickin’.

Pardon this overused litany, but I must use it here:

Red-Eared slider turtle at the pet store – $10

Ala 6-Million Dollar Man “We can rebuild him” artificial turtle shell – $300

Seeing turtle come rocketing out of retriever alive and ending up on national news – PRICELESS!