Listen up! This is not a drill. Please, no bones ever of any kind for your best friends, never, at least not the real ones.

This is the story of Shane, an old, gentle, and dearly loved Pit Bull Terrier who was the third member of a family which was wiped out when the Big Kat leveled eastern New Orleans in 2005. These poor, and I do mean POOR POOR POOR folks fled to northern Louisiana for a number of weeks before eventually moving back into a FEMA trailer on their ravaged homestead. While up-state, Shane started vomiting and was taken to a vet who advised the lady that he was losing weight and had an upset stomach because hurricanes make dogs sad when the storms destroy the family's home. The dear old lady, being blessed with a suicidal level of "faith", trusted that idiotic observation and got about the work of recovering her life thinking all that time that Shane was going to be OK when they got back home.

Some time after returning to New Orleans, Shane's mama called yours truly to refill his heartworm medicine. Just some drugs mind yiou. Nothing else on her mind. Compliance required that I contact the up-state vet's office for appropriate history. Strangely they had no fax machine. Huh? But OK, they're up-state. No copy machine? UGBSM! But I was truly thunderstruck when their then existing telephone was rendered irrelevant because they KEPT NO RECORDS. No joke, no records at all. Ole Critterdoc didn't know it yet, but the collapse of that sacrosanct professional process saved Shane's life.

At that moment in time I figured, OK, this ain't good but we can handle this without me getting into a pissing match with a fool. The lack of history and medical record left no option but to tell the lady that Shane would have to be tested before giving her the HW drug. The lady could not afford anything other than a few doses of heartworm preventative medicine, so I quickly conjured up your typical "free exam and HW test for aging Pit Bulls named Shane post katrina special" and cheerfully told Shane's mama to haul the old dude in to the office here for a freebie look-see and HW screening test to ensure he could safely continue on the HW medicine. Nothing to it. Shane's mama would then buy a few bucks worth of tabs, I'd have done a good deed for aging Katrina Pit Bulls named Shane hurricane victims, and I'd have then been on my fat, happy, and merry way with a pocket full of green stamps. How unrealistically simple life seems at times. Little did I know of the huge shit storm was heading in my direction. Not yet.

I almost stroked when I first saw Shane the next day. He was a virtual bag of bones and was wrapped in an aura of impending death. I asked the lady to give some consideration to her available resources because Shane was in big trouble and heartworm medicine was the least important thing in his life at that time. Shane's mama was genuinely shocked and frightened when I started describing my level of concern for his very life and all I could think was that "but for the grace of God, I could be walking in her shoes!"

Speaking candidly, just about this time I was beginning to think "holy crap, WTF have I gotten myself into now!" Shane and family had about a dollar three eighty to their collective name, but the old man had a look in his eyes that was major cool beyond belief. There be misery. Yet, there be faith in humanity. And there be peace with the universe. I really had no idea where to start from the standpoint of economy, but Shane resolved that dilemma when he began violently tossing up a bowl full of water that we had offered him when he arrived at the office and falling to the floor. Duhhhhhh, maybe an x-ray or two is in order. Right now!

And so here is the Paul Harvey - or the "rest of the story." I suspect that Shane got into chicken bones when he was up-state some time before I saw him. If you look closely at the pictures below you can see an entire demineralizing chicken leg bone that Shane must have swallowed whole. The bone is the faint double walled curved grey-white shadow (curving from lower left to upper right in the photos) in the center of the much larger and darker oval shaped gas filled stomach. In this case the bone itself is less white than it would have been shorty after being swallowed. The reason that the bone is less radio-dense, or less white, on these x-rays is that the stomach acids have dissolved much of the bone's mineral content which is what makes bones look white on x-rays to begin with. The darkest reverse s-curved tubular looking object is a loop of intestine that is distended with gas which is crossing the stomach on the outside and underneath the stomach ifself. Think: black is air, white is bone, grey is most often some type of soft tissue and - poof - you are almost a radiologist.

OK, so what now? Da bone has gotta go or Shane gets to take the fast train to puppy heaven - which was probably going to happen anyway because the bad boy was far past go and almost in jail with one foot in the grave and another on the proverbial banana peel in what looked like the final inning of the end game of his life.

I said a prayer, God dropped in.

Shane went under inhalational general anesthesia whereupon he lost his killer chicken bone along with a sizable part of his stomach which and been pretty effectively trashed. And oh yeah, Shane sorta lost his life a few times while I was in there removing some pretty toxic tissue and scrambling to get him closed up while his motor was still running. God stayed, and about an hour later this magnificent beast was walking, tail wagging, licking our hands and faces, wanting to know that was for lunch, and requesting a taxi to the casino!!!

My man Shane did great all through the night and into the morning, then, he almost died again, several more times!!! God came back and I got to do another Godzilla tap dance on his tummy, this time removing a lot more of his stomach wall and a part of his small intestine.

And so the cycle went, every steenking day for five consecutive days through five extremely risky and traumatic procedures. God kept coming back, and anyone who doubts the importance that the almighty places on man's best friend should have been here for the six or so days that passed before Shane went home to live happily ever after. Clearly this was one of the most humbling and eventually gratifying experiences in my time as a critterdoc.

Amen. Done deal. My hat stays off to one tough, tough dog that didn't have a mean bone-of-his-own in his body. Shane didn't cry, moan, or complain; and he exhibited a sense of courage and trust that makes the human spirit pale in comparison. I cannot help but wonder about the possibility that Shane's intrepidity throughout his ordeal was not bolstered by an entity that he saw watching over my shoulder every step of the way.