This is a radiograph of a one and a half year old female terrier mix who ingested rat poison. It came in as a referral from another vet. The initial complaint from the owners was that the dog was having difficulty breathing. We did a blood test and found out that she was severely anemic and on physical examination we found a huge hematoma on her neck where the referring vet drew blood from her.

The owners had no money for a blood transfusion so we gave her vitamin K (to treat the rat poison toxicity) and balanced fluid therapy with diluting her blood to the point where her difficulty breathing grew even worse.

The radiograph shows that her entire left lung was filled with fluid. The fluid is probably blood because rat poison affects blood's ability to clot and dogs who ingest rat poison often bleed into their lungs. She's lucky only one lung was affected!

After a couple days of hospitalization she went from a dog who couldn't lay down due to her difficulty breathing and having severely pale mucous membranes and no appetite despite her hip bones showing to a dog who'd wag her tail as you approached her cage and had fairly pink mucous membranes (almost normal), and who'd devour any food put in front of her.

I did her TPR's while she was hospitalized with us and by listening to her lung sounds you could easily tell which side was affected -the left lung was silent while you could hear breathing on the right side. Just before she was released, I could start to hear a little bit of air flow on the left side which was a sign that the amount of fluid was starting to go down in that lung.

Many of the vets and techs thought she was a gonner when she came in and we learned that a blood transfusion wasn't an option for her, but we were all super happy she pulled through. She was such a cute and affectionate little dog! <3