My Husky just had recent surgery to remove a mass found adjacent to her rectum area. We thought at first it might have been a abcessed anal gland; however, antibiotics did not work to resolve the problem. She underwent surgery on Wednesday. They let me take her home the first day with very strict instructions on wound care and her medicine regiment. I followed all of these instructions to the T.

Everything was going well and the incision looked well until about last night when part of the incision began draining and appeared to be opening. This morning it looked as a gaping hole near one of the stitches. I took her to the vet today and she has to go back in for surgery tomorrow for debridement and resuture of the site. The vet is taking this approach to be on the safe side although he said we could let it granulate because the rectum area along with the mouth area have a good supply of blood flow.

The vet explained that due to the location of the surgery that this was common and she could have done this by sitting, wagging her tail, or defacating. My question is though after she goes through the debridement and resuture how can I prevent this from happening again. She is absolutely miserable and in obvious discomfort and it is breaking my heart. I feel helpless that I can't fix this for her or make her feel better. My vet said that he would be creative in the suturing but I am still very nervous about this problem happening again. Any thoughts or suggestions would be so greatly appreciated.

Sincerely,
Adoredevotion

This may be a bit out there, but have you considered acupuncture? That might help calm and settle her, especially if it makes it hurt less. My mom had it done when her knee implant was causing a lot of pain, and she didn't want to keep getting steroid shots. She says it helped a lot more than anything else that had been done with the situation. And it can't hurt anything, in this case.

I can't think of much except carefully following the vet's instructions. I don't know if occupying her by giving her a Kong with peanut butter in it would help. Ask the vet about walks to tire her out.