Dachshund Mysteriously Balloons Out to Three Times His Normal Size
A Dachshund gave his family a huge shock when he ballooned to three times his size right in front of them.
Trevor was having a regular morning with his owner, Jessica Jennings, when her mother noticed something strange and asked her: “Does Trevor look fat to you?”
The normally slender Dachshund was inflating right in front of them. “Before we knew it, his head and his body resembled one big mass,” Jennings told CBC’s As It Happens. “He literally looks like a seal. He had just blown up like a really, really large balloon. There was no definition of where his head, his neck, his body, his legs, where any of it started.”
When they went over and touched him, “he felt like bubble wrap, because he was all sort of crinkly underneath.” Jessica immediately rushed Trevor to the vet.
It turns out Trevor had a serious injury – a hole in his windpipe that was causing expelled air to fill inside his body.
“Every time he took a breath, some of the inhaled air escaped through a hole in his windpipe around the muscles and fatty tissue under the skin, and X-rays showed the emphysema was worsening,” veterinarian Michelle Coward of the Willows Veterinary Group said in a press release.
“Surgery was the only way to repair the injury but due to its location, there was a significant risk of complications.”
Fortunately, the surgery was successful and vets were able to close the hole in his windpipe. They also left a small nick on his skin for the excess air to escape.
Jessica says they had to knead the extra air out of him from bottom to top. “We had to start from his bottom and work our way up to his head and neck and gently squeeze the air out of him just to deflate him,” Jennings said. “He was dead happy. I think it was more of a release for him.”
Thankfully, Trevor is on the mend and putting his frightening ordeal behind him. Jessica says it hasn’t affected him at all and he is back to his “cheeky” happy-go-lucky self.
Watch the full story in the video below.
