A dog suffering from a chronic cough after eating grass was saved when his owners noticed he wasn’t ‘singing’ along to Shania Twain.
Five-year-old Border Collie Jax is called ‘Man!’ Love to shout on the hit songs of desi stars including. ‘I Feel Like a Woman’ and ‘That Don’t Impress Me Much.’
When the musical dog suddenly lost his barking and started coughing, owner Elana Farrow knew something was wrong.
She took him to Linnaeus-owned Northwest Veterinary Specialists (NWVS) in Sutton Weaver, Cheshire.
A CT scan revealed that he had swallowed a 5 cm long grass seed which had lodged in his lungs.
Veterinarians performed a bronchoscopy procedure using a small camera on the end of a tube to remove hay from inside Jax.
Elena, from Preston, Lancs, suspected that Jax’s health had deteriorated when he stopped singing with Shania Twain.
She said: “At the beginning of August Jax suddenly started coughing a lot for no apparent reason.
“I thought it might just be a virus, but when it didn’t improve after a few weeks I went to my local vet.”
Elena, who is a respiratory physiotherapist, says her professional background has tempered her fears for the worst.
She said: “Vets treated him for possible lungworm, but when Jax still had symptoms weeks later I worried it might be something more sinister.
“He was referred to NWVS and once the CT scan confirmed the problem was probably grass seed or similar I wasn’t too worried, in fact I was a little relieved.
“However, I was surprised by the size of the grass seeds. It was 5 cm long and resembled a complete seed head of some tall grass.
“Jax is back to his normal self and is running with me and chasing Frisbees like nothing ever happened. The best part is that he is singing again.
“I have a camera in the living room to keep an eye on her if I go out for a while and whenever I went to meet her I would often see her singing on the radio.
“She didn’t do that for a long time, but then shortly after her vet treatment, Shania Twain came over while we were both relaxing in the living room, and she decided to sing.”
Veterinarian Chantal Rosa said: “Fortunately, no surgery was required as we were able to retrieve the troublesome seed by performing a bronchoscopy, where a thin, flexible tube with a camera, light source and miniature instruments is passed through the airway. The medium is inserted into the lungs.
“This allowed us to locate the grass seed and carefully preserve it before retrieving it.
“The size of the seed was quite large, measuring 5cm, so it’s no wonder Jacques was coughing so much as it would have been a major irritation to him.
“The whole procedure went very well and Jax recovered quickly.
“He was allowed to go home the same day and is doing very well and has completely recovered from the cough.”
