Durham puppy survives knitting needle to heart

There’s no other way to say it: This pup has a lot of heart.

Tutti the dog, 17 weeks young and 10 pounds light, showed up at Triangle Veterinary Referral Hospital in Durham on New Year’s Eve with a knitting needle sticking from her tiny chest.

“The owners were definitely, understandably, upset and concerned,” said veterinary cardiologist Jennifer Myers. “The dog was remarkably calm.”

Tutti is a black, white and caramel papillon with long fur and floppy ears. Somehow, she had gotten tangled up that morning with a metal needle nearly as long as she was, Myers said.

The dog had fallen onto the needle, according to the hospital, and her two owners rushed her from their home in Durham. They couldn’t be reached for comment; for privacy reasons, the hospital did not release their names.

The medical staff held the dog’s legs, hoping to keep the needle unperturbed, and dosed her with a sedative pain medication.

“The first question is, ‘How far in does this go, and is it damaging anything on its way in?’ ” Myers recalled.

As X-ray and ultrasound images soon revealed, the needle had pierced little Tutti’s heart. The dog had bled internally, near her lungs, but seemed stable.

The medical team and the dog’s owners had two options: Surgically open the dog’s chest to remove the needle or simply pull it out. Myers said the surgery would have been more complicated, more invasive and “much more expensive.” But surgery would have offered the best chance of coping with any complications from removing the needle.

Tutti’s family decided to go with the simpler removal, according to Myers. With help from her staff, Myers said she put a hand on the anesthetized dog’s chest, gripped the needle and pulled with “consistent, gentle traction.”

A pen-length portion of the needle slid out in seconds. (The dog’s two owners were waiting in another room.) Then it was a matter of waiting for the little dog to awaken.

“The first few minutes were the most critical,” said Myers, 31, who has worked at the hospital for about 18 months. It’s not unheard of for an animal to survive a wound to the heart. In this case, Tutti was saved because the wound caused only limited hemorrhaging, Myers said.

“Once she woke up from anesthesia, she was a very sweet little dog,” she said. “Really, she woke up and was looking around. She wanted to be held and cuddled.”

And 24 hours later, she was back home to start a new year.

This story was originally published January 5, 2015 at 7:46 PM.