Anal Gland Expression of a Dog

hi i'm kara i'm one of the cbts here at dove lewis and this is penny and today we're going to learn how to express anal glands in a dog but before we learn how we're going to learn why so essentially dogs have two anal sacs or they're called anal glands more commonly and they lay just inside of the anus and typically when dogs defecate and they will express these anal glands and it releases this really fast smelling liquid but it's the way that they communicate with each other so it's kind of why dogs are always sniffing each other's rear ends sniffing each other's feces so it's a really normal thing for these guys to do but sometimes they get issues where they can't express them normally so some of these things that can happen some dogs just anatomy wise their anal glands don't express pretty easily so they have trouble other times when we have overweight dogs like penny especially small breed overweight dogs they tend to have more issues expressing their anal glands normally and also if there's any changes in stool consistency so typically they need a nice normal firm stool to express them but if we're having chronic diarrhea chronic soft stool that can also cause some issues where those glands are not expressing fully or at all so they may need us to come help them out with that when that happens you'll see some some changes in your dog most often you'll see them sort of scooting their rear end across the ground sometimes they'll pay a lot of attention to the rear end you'll see a lot of licking a lot of biting you can also see some oozing as well and when they're not trying to defecate some of that liquid might come out a little bit so when we see those signs that's a good indication that we might need to express these manually and we're going to demonstrate how to do that all right so we're going to demonstrate how to express penny's anal glands now i have our ta assistant evan here to help me so this is always a two-person job it can be a little uncomfortable i'm sure you've seen this when you're taking rectal temperatures or when doctors are doing rectal exams it can be mildly uncomfortable so we do want to have someone here to help hold the dog and make sure we're all nice and safe but we do have some supplies here that we'll need so you do want to wear gloves always we need lubricant you need some sort of material to catch the anal gland substance so i'm going to use gauze today you can use paper towels a towel we'll also need something to clean the dog up after with so we use waterless shampoo here at dove lewis you can use baby wipes anything like that but it is important that we are cleaning up these dogs before we're sending them home to owners and the anal gland substance is really pungent it's got a pretty fishy odor so we should be cleaning them up before we're sending them home so i've got some towels and some water with shampoo for that i'm starting to get penny ready so i'm actually going to switch places with evan and the ideal position to have this happen is to have the dog standing you can do them in sternal or lateral but standing is the easiest it gives you the most access to the rear end and is easier to express this way evan's doing a great job of holding her so we want to keep her rear end nice and high so it's easier for the person expressing them if she tries to sit down that's not ideal but he's also making sure that she's securing her head like i said it can be mildly uncomfortable so just want to keep everyone nice and safe so he's going to make sure that she's nice and secure and can't turn around and get access to me so what's going to happen is we're going to do a quick external examination of the rear end so when anal glands aren't expressed normally they can actually become infected and abscess so we want to make sure that that's not happening here we want to make sure there's no large swellings on either side there's no purulent material leaking out um when they abscess they can't actually rupture as well so we're just making sure there's not any open wounds before we start doing this if we see any of those things we're going to stop we're going to consult our doctor because it's not in this dog's best interest to have these manually expressed at this point but she looks great so we're going to go ahead and get started the two anal glands are typically located if you're thinking of a clock face at the four and eight position they can be located a little bit higher depending on the dog's anatomy but typically that's where you're going to start to look for them so we're going to get some lube on our fingers a nice generous amount and i'm going to start with her left so evan are you ready perfect um so you're just going to insert your finger so you see that she can kick a little bit so good or straight is necessary and i'm going to use my thumb to kind of brace my finger in here and i'm going to try to locate where this anal gland is so depending on how large they are they can be as small as like a small blueberry and they can be as large like a large grape um so you're going to try and find them it's going to feel like a firm essentially like a grape like a sack full of liquid and what i want to do is find the most cranial aspect of this gland so essentially i want to start at the beginning and slowly milk that material out because that opening is going to be right at the opening of her anus because they're going to filter out that way so i'm going to use my thumb to brace my finger and i'm going to reach that front gland and kind of just milk it forward push it forward i'm going to hold the gauze up here so i'm not going to splatter it everywhere this is a good technique to not stand right in front of the dog and also to keep your mouth closed when you're doing this masks are very helpful for this at this point but it can get pretty messy so we're just going to casually milk this out now this may be mildly discomforting and you're gonna we're leaving a lot of pressure in here um but you don't wanna to be overly painful so the dog is really reacting really vocalizing it seems super painful we want to stop because that's not a normal reaction so i'm just again using my thumb to brace my finger pushing forward and we're actually getting quite a bit of material out of here of course we're pretty full we want to make sure that we're squeezing until all of that material has come out and as sort of gross as this sounds you want to really examine this material so we're looking at color we're looking at consistency and we're looking at a mount so it's really important that we're assessing this typical anal gland fluid is usually anywhere from light brown to dark brown and it should be pretty liquidy but it's not uncommon to see it thicken so as these dogs are not able to express their anal glands that substance will thicken so that's pretty normal if we see some thickened but we don't want to see any blood we don't want to see any purulent material those are signs of a pretty serious infection so she's clear on that side so i'm going to start again on the other side um you can use the same hand but i find it easier to switch hands especially for penny i know that her her first one was slightly hard to express so i just want to make sure that i'm getting a good grip and we're going to do the same thing going towards the most cranial aspect of the gland pushing forward that one was a very full one so again we're getting some pretty pretty thick material but nothing that i'm overly concerned about with her and it is important that we are emptying these fully we don't want to leave any material in there i'm going to take a little bit of gauze and just kind of clean up the mess that i made i'm going to take off these gloves because they do have anal wind material on and then i'm going to clean her up because we express both sides so we're going to clean her up just a little spritz wipe her down and we should be notating in her record again fullness of each size of the gland the amount of material we got out consistency color and smell it's really important that we're notating this so we can know what's normal for that dog and be able to look back and see if there's any changes that we're seeing because sometimes if we have to do this over and over again it's going to get more difficult and you'll start to see changes in the material so it's important that we're documenting that in her file but that's pretty much it for expressing anal glands on a dog thank you evan thank you penny

Channel: atDove

Views: 2,019,898

Keywords: anal glands, anal gland, dogs anal glands, dog anal glands, dog gland, cat anal glands, anal sacs, anal sac, dog anal sacs, dogs anal sacs, how to express dog glands, how to express dog anal glands, how to express anal glands, anal glands in pets, anal glands at home, express anal glands, cat glands, emptying dogs anal glands, empty dog glands, express dog glands, veterinary, veterinary medicine, how to, express dog anal glands, express pets anal glands, pet anal glands

Id: krId3XJCV_c

Length: 8min 27sec (507 seconds)

Published: Thu Jan 07 2021