During the course of a typical day when we are examining our patients it can sometimes be difficult to determine the exact cause of the problem. Clinical signs are not always clear and there is the major disadvantage that our patients cannot tell us what is wrong.
Then again, in some cases, the problem is obvious.

Samsome, a five year old German Shepherd dog was one of those.

He came in for emergency treatment because he had run into a wooden fence and a piece of wood got stuck in his left eye. Because touching the eye was incredibly painful to him and because it was impossible to remove the piece under local anaesthesia, Samsome had to be sedated for a proper examination.

At first glance the eye seemed to have collapsed and I feared that Samsome would lose the eye. I had to act fast and remove the piece of wood as quickly as possible. When pulling it out of the eye, there just didn’t seem to be an end to it. After the foreign body was finally removed and could be measured imagine my surprise that it was over eight and a half centimetres long!

Checking the eye for damage I could see that the stick had gone over the eye ball and that the eye itself was intact. Knowing the length of the piece of wood, Samsome is very lucky that he can keep his sight in both eyes… hopefully he will watch his step more carefully in the future.

Michel Lampens MRCVS

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