A three-month-old miniature donkey named Harper was brought to the veterinary teaching hospital at Virginia Tech with an emergency situation: she had eaten an entire towel.
The teaching hospital treats large animals but said its rare to have to remove foreign bodies from the digestive tract of a horse or donkey.
While small animals including dogs are known for eating almost anything, donkeys usually stick to straw, hay and grass, and perhaps the occasional fruit or vegetable.
Harper was brought to the hospital by Lexi Tarpy, the stable manager at Stone Ridge Stables. The farm in Concord has 52 donkeys and horses and offers guided trail rides.
Harper was referred to the Virginia-Maryland College of Veterinary Medicine at Virginia Tech by veterinarian Caroline Rossner of Southside Equine Services.
“We brought her in here because our vet said it was an emergency situation,” said Tarpy.
Clinicians decided to perform an exploratory celiotomy — a surgical procedure to enter the abdomen — and found two pieces of cloth blocking Harper’s colon. Those pieces of towel were removed.
“They’re [donkeys] usually pretty good at sticking to the things that they should normally eat,” said Elaine Claffey, assistant clinical professor of large animal surgery. “We don’t do as many foreign body removals as a small animal veterinarian would, because dogs, as we know, are indiscriminate eaters and eat all sorts of things that they shouldn’t. It’s much more common in small animal gastrointestinal surgery versus what we do over on the large animal side.”
Harper fully recovered, and Tarpy returned to take her back to the farm.
“They’ve been great and very helpful, transparent with everything for us,” Tarpy said of her experience with the teaching hospital.
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Crystal Graham
