A couple of months ago, Reggie – a 6-year-old yellow Labrador, came into practice for a routine health check with vet Adam.  Although Adam declared Reggie fighting fit and in his prime, he did have a slow growing mass on his right leg that was starting to cause him trouble.  After a discussion with Reggie’s owners, it was decided that the best course of action was to surgically remove this pesky lump. Surgery was booked in and all went to plan, the mass was skin-deep and was removed without any complications. Reggie recovered well from his surgery and was very bright when he got discharged later that day.

Two days later, Reggie’s owners bought him back into the practice for his routine post operative check and although Reggie’s owners reported that he was well in himself, his surgical site did not appear to be as happy.  Reggie’s wound was a little bit inflamed and weeping a small amount of discharge.  Reggie’s surgical site had also opened slightly, but although the wound didn’t look very pretty, we were not too concerned at this stage.

However, a couple of days later the ever-exuberant Reggie bounced back into the practice for another post operative check, where it soon became apparent that his wound healing process wasn’t going to be as straightforward as we first thought. At five days post-surgery, the wound had completely broken down and left Reggie with an open wound around 1 inch in length and ¾ inch in diameter.

Although on first look the wound looked rather gruesome, the tissues were quite healthy and Reggie was a happy boy (despite the cone of shame). His temperature was normal, he was comfortable and  he was taking his pain relief and antibiotics well.

This initial breakdown left Reggie and his owners with 2 options –

• The first option was to re-suture part of the wound to allow it to heal quicker, however, this would entail another general anaesthetic and the risk that the same thing would happen again (wound breakdown).
• The second option would be to allow the wound to close naturally by itself (healing by second intention). But, due to the size of the wound this would potentially take weeks and would require a fair bit of home care by the owners.

Bandaging and dressing the area was not an option due to the location of the mass removal. Several attempts of clever crafting and bandaging skills from our experienced nursing team could not help protect this surgical site.

The decision was made to partially close the wound under general anaesthetic.

Like the previous surgery, everything went to plan. The surgical site was flushed, debrided partially closed and looked good. But a routine check, a couple of days later, soon confirmed that the plan had not worked. The location of the mass removal and the lack of skin to assist with the surgical closure, thus the amount of tension that it was under, meant for a very strained surgical site that was not going to stay closed.

It soon became apparent that for Reggie and his very patient owners we were now faced with one option – to allow the wound to granulate and heal slowly by second intention.

In the following 6 – 8 weeks Reggie’s incredible owners cleaned and flushed his wound at home, daily. During this time, Reggie was a very good boy, tolerating his buster collar  and did a lot of lazing about.  Initially, regular trips to the practice were required to make sure that Reggie’s wound was granulating nicely and not becoming infected. Our fabulous nursing team helped to steer Reggie in the right direction and after a couple of weeks the wound was looking really healthy, with pink granular tissue forming.  The healthy tissues were starting to fill in the rather large deficit that had been left behind and the edges of the wound were also starting to contract down. The nursing team were happy that Reggie’s wound was healing appropriately, so the plan was to continue weekly post-operative checks, with the view to reduce this down to weekly pictures via our whatsapp service.

Finally, after four long months, Reggie is doing incredibly well. The surgical site has completely closed and Reggie’s beautiful golden fur has grown back leaving just a small patch of pink scar tissue.  Reggie and his owners have been wonderful throughout this process, extremely patient, understanding and trusting in our guidance. The body can do amazing things when it comes to healing, and Reggie is very fortunate boy to have such caring owners that have helped him through this healing process.