Can you avoid this?

marcandsusan, I am so sorry for your loss ( hugs).

It is not your fault. It is natural to question the death of a loved one.

My beautiful GSD Colby died tragically as well. He had to have emergency surgery, and survived the surgery but had heart failure after it. He was my pal too! I have his ashes and miss him terribly!

(I lost my father too- and I think of them together in heaven! )

Hoping your happy memories get you through this difficult time!

Peace-
Mel

marcandsusan, I am so sorry for your loss. I can understand your frustration of the complications of the surgery.

I had a St.Bernard mix many years ago that had twiststed his sleen and the surgery was at best was touch and go. So let me tell you the things that I learned from my Vet at the time this happened. It might be long so please bear with me.

First, let's start at the time of surgery. The sleen, while a dog can live without it produces red blood cells, it is sorta the emergency producer so when there is an injury it kicks into gear, the more the body needs red blood cells the more the sleen produces. That is a where a lot of the problems with this type of injury come into play.

My Vet did mention that large breeds are more prone to the Spleen Torsion, but it isn't any where near as common as the stomach torsion and a lot more difficult for the owner to realize there is a problem. Bloat has a list of things that are big warning signals, Spleen Torsion the signs are so subtial that many people don't seem them until it is to late to save the dog. I saw the Xray and the Vet showed me the area where the Spleen was very very much enlarged, it is normally the size of an adults fist, my guys was like the size of a basketball.

I was like you I asked what caused it, my Vet though a hard sharp blow to the chest may have caused it. Well I had two males at the time who would stand accross the yard from each other and charge like Big Horn Sheep only instead of butting heads they slammed chest to chest so it is possible that that is what happened to my dog.

From what my Vet told me, my male's heart stopped beating 3 times while having the surgery, my Vet was in awe that he could bring him back three times.

Any time a dog has surgery there is that slight possibility that some thing will go wrong. Now add to that there this was an emergency surgery with intestinal damage and the odds increase. When this happened to my dog, my Vet wouldn't even give me a 50 - 50% chance that the dog would survive, but he was my personal protector and I had to try everything to save him and I am sure that even if the Vet would have told you there was a chance that your dog wouldn't have survived surgery you would have done the same thing you did and went ahead with the surgery.

I am so sorry, that you lost your best friend. It hurts so bad and we wish there was something we could have done differently. There isn't my friend, they are dogs and they play rough and hard some times. You can't take a joy of their life away on the slight chance that somethig like this could happen.

Neither you or your Vet IMHO are to blame. Some times life just sucks.

Val

You are right it was so wonderful to watch our old guy and his brother of 2 -2 1/2 years old play together and I would have never taken that away. I suppose I am going to second guess that time for a while and learn to remember all the happy times after Klondyke was brought back to health after being rescued and a beautiful GSD he was. Another neighbor of mine tried to comfort me with positive memories as well he mentioned that Klondyke was one of the smartest animals he had ever seen and we must remember that all he wanted was to make us happy. That brings me back to the issue of you are right I did not know that he was in trouble until he collapsed but watching that moment take place broke me and I hope in time I will repair myself now. We have started that process by saving Samantha out of Carroll County,GA and as soon as she is well enough to travel I will go there to get her and start another branch of my german shepherd family tree. In my life time I have had 5 of them now with no regrets and Samantha will make the 6th.

Marc