July 07, 2005
Family dog survives extraordinary pup delivery
Oroville Mercury Register
It was a tense and harrowing two hours for the Vollendroff family about two weeks ago as it was forced to perform an emergency Cesarean section on a Chinese pug dog.
The Sunday delivery occurred after several calls to area veterinarians who told the family they couldn't perform a C-section without a $1,000 deposit, the Vollendroffs said. An offer to give them the dog and pups also was declined.
Ed Vollendroff (pronounced Vollendorff) said his daughter was "crying her eyes out" over her dog's situation, and he looked at the pretty pug and decided he had to give it a try.
The problem was the puppies were too big to come out of the small dog's vagina, and she was unable to give birth to them on her own, Vollendroff said.
Prior to the C-section, his daughter, Christie Christenson, was advised by a veterinarian to pull a puppy out by hand when its head started out, but that didn't work. Instead, the head broke off and floated back inside the mother.
So the family gathered seven members together and began the procedure with instructions obtained through the Internet and a call to a son, Ed IV, in Portland, Oregon whose bulldog had had a C-section and still bore a scar line on her belly which was described over the phone. Vollendroff followed the directions, he said, sweating and worrying the whole time.
Christie is a scrub nurse at a local hospital and provided her dad with scrubs, gloves, a mask and sterile solutions bought at Wal-Mart, he said.
They all felt there was no choice but to attempt it, Vollendroff added. Otherwise, the dog was sure to die.
The next to impossible effort concluded with the delivery of three healthy puppies, the removal of the dead pup's head, and the mother dog's survival, as she is running around happy nursing her babies today.
Nonetheless, the Vollendroffs don't recommend other lay people do this, they said, since it's dangerous, and it was a miracle the animals made it.
Vollendroff had 15 minutes to get ready and was warned by his nephew, William, not to nick the dog's bladder or she'd die. He made an incision in the belly and soon the dog was opened up.
The bladder came out, but Vollendroff didn't know it, he said. Then, he searched for the uterus and eventually found it. The race was on as he had only seven minutes to get the pups out, the instructions said, or they'd be dead.
Vollendroff got one pup out, then milked another down the canal, and discovered a third just as he began sewing the dog's uterus up. He also retrieved the head of the dead pup. The others were revived by the family team.
"They (the pups) were huge, he said. "Their heads were too big to come through the vagina."
Next, he had to sew up the uterus, the muscle lining and the skin, according to the Internet instructions. Vollendroff carefully cleaned the uterus, while Diane Vollendroff held up the bladder. He did most of the sewing from the bottom muscle with dissolvable sutures. When it came time to sew the skin back, he ran out of sutures but managed to get it sewn in place anyway. Now, the outside sutures were removed this week, he said.
A call to the vet the next day, brought an amazed response, the Vollendroffs said, as she couldn't believe the dogs were still alive.
Penicillin shots have been given to "Lilly," the pug once a day, and she's running around the house happy and in good shape.
Additional C-section team members included Billy Vollendroff as the nurse and Anna and Joaquin Carrasco who assisted in the effort.
The Vollendroff family is relieved because the dog apparently had everything go back into place correctly. She went bathroom the next day and hasn't shown any symptoms of distress since.
The three surviving pups, two males and a female, were named "Hope," "Faith," and "Miracle" for their remarkable survival, Vollendroff's wife, Patsy said. However, they intend to have the mother dog spayed once the pups are weaned.
Mrs. Vollendroff said the dog's obviously too little to go through something like that again, so future breedings are out of the question.