Dog with rare condition eats from a high chair
(CNN/WXMI) – A dog in Grand Rapids, Michigan has a special condition that requires her to get extra special treatment at the dinner table.
While we’re used to babies eating dinner in high chairs, you have to admit, this is quite a sight.
“She’s a Labrador retriever. She fetches things in the water, she plays Frisbee, she goes on walks, she licks people to death, she cuddles she does everything,” says Tom Sullivan, Tink’s dad.
Tink has been eating out of a Bailey chair, a sort of high chair for a dog, since she was nine weeks old.
“When she was nine weeks old, my brother had watched her and she came home and one side of her stomach was flat and the other one was distended, said Tom’s wife, Cori, “That’s when the emergency vet had told us maybe this is megaesophagus.”
Megaesophagus means when Tink eats, the food and water never makes it all the way to the stomach.
“The esophagus, how it works is it kind of squeezes the food and water down in a wave like motion we call that peristalsis, and because she can’t do that, when she eats or drinks the food just stays in the esophagus,” said Dr. Jeremy Hutchinson, a veterenarian at Weisner, Innis & Schoen.
And when it sits there, her body rejects it.
“She’ll regurgitate it,” says Tom. “It’s like a burp up and it just comes up.”
So the chair keeps Tink in an upright position and gravity does the work her esophagus can’t.
“If she’s in an upright position anything in the esophagus is going to move downward,” Hutchinson said.
Tink eats four times a day and after mealtime, just like a baby, it’s burping time.
“After she sits in her chair, this is a normal thing, for about five minutes, we typically burp her, As crazy as that sounds” Tom said. “Then we do a throat massage where we get in deep to the esophagus and just try to help move the food down.”
And like a baby, it’s a lot of work and patience. Most just don’t have the time.
“What ends happening is the animal might be euthanized because the owners can’t handle or can’t dedicate the time and effort it takes or they suffer,” said Hutchinson.
Sadly, the survival rate is low. But thanks to the Sullivans, Tink has a second chance at life.
“Not knowing if we could care for her or even not knowing if we were going to euthanize, I cried for at least fot days straight trying to figure out what was going to happen and how much money we were going to put into her, but every penny has been worth it, I wouldn’t change it for the world,” Cori said.
The Sullivans say online support groups and tips they get from other owners of dogs with megaesophagus have been the key to help them give Tink a second chance.