More and more dogs, cats, birds, horses, even pot-bellied pigs and lizards are now living thanks to pacemakers, cardiac medication and catheter interventions.
Posted today at 23:00—
–Has a congenital heart defect: Phoebe the puppy during a heart examination.
Photo: Michele Limina
“Feel it,” says Tony Glaus and holds the dog so that the owner can take hold of its chest. Phoebe is her first dog, the little puppy has been living with Silvia Wertli for two weeks.
“Our greatest fear is that nothing could be done,” says Wertli, while she feels the buzzing on Phoebe’s chest – a sign of the congenital heart defect that Phoebe’s veterinarian discovered when he tried to chip the 15-week-old dog.
Heart sick sea columns and snakes
That is why Phoebe is now with the specialists at the Zurich University Animal Hospital. “We can do something,” says Tony Glaus, head of the cardiology department at the small animal clinic. For a long time, the motto in veterinary medicine was that animals rarely have heart disease and that these diseases cannot be treated anyway – two fallacies.
