Mordie is a 5 year old, male neutered Australian Shepherd Dog who presented for investigation of a sudden onset swelling in the palmar aspect of the right forelimb between the carpus and his central pad. The swelling had developed very suddenly whilst outside, plain radiographs had not revealed any changes other than soft tissue swelling although a fine needle aspirate had revealed some neutrophilic inflammatory changes.

 

Sadly Mordie was not very amenable to up close examination and so as there was initially no lameness we elected to do nothing and see what happened. Within a few weeks he did then go lame and a discharging sinus developed just proximal to the stopper pad, his owner recalled that there had been a thorn tree in the area when he had developed the initial swelling and we suspected that there may be a foreign body present.

 

The idea of digging into the back of his foot in the forlorn hope of finding something did not fill me with much joy, memories of attempts to remove grass seeds “back in the day” were mixed with despair at finding nothing and elation at finding a piece only for further eruptions weeks later as more pieces came to the surface. So before embarking on blind hunt Mordie returned so that we could run a contrast CT of his foot. The CT was sent to Vet Oracle for reporting and this confirmed the presence of a 3.5cm linear foreign body in the palmar aspect of the metacarpal region.

 

Having this vital information to hand meant that we could firstly provide his owner with a definitive answer and secondly plan in order to remove it in its entirety. Mordie returned once more and the 3.5cm long thorn was removed from the palmar aspect of meta carpal region deep to the flexor tendons and vasculature. The sinus was dissected out and the wounds closed. A dressing was placed which was changed 48hours later and removed after another 3 days.