Veterinary Teaching Hospital saves towel-eating donkey and her ailing mother

Towels don't fit through donkey bowels.

That was Harper's problem when the 3-month-old miniature donkey filly decided to chow down on cloth. 

Harper was brought to the Veterinary Teaching Hospital by Lexi Tarpy of Concord, stable manager of Stone Ridge Stables, which 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 when the filly developed a fever and showed signs of colic.

"We brought her in here because our vet said it was an emergency situation," Tarpy said. "Come to find out when they went in for surgery, she ate a towel — an entire towel." 

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.

Removing foreign bodies from the digestive tract of an equine like a horse or donkey is uncommon, said Elaine Claffey, assistant clinical professor of large animal surgery. 

"They're usually pretty good at sticking to the things that they should normally eat," Claffey said. "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."

While Harper's condition rapidly improved after the towel removal, the overall situation was about to get more complicated once Harper's mother, Daisy, was brought to the hospital. 

"Her mom arrived the day after surgery to allow her to nurse and put them back together," Claffey said. "But her mom, over the course of being here, developed a couple of fevers and had some medical issues, developed a little bit of enteritis, which is inflammation in the intestines. 

“The mom initially arrived to the surgery service to be cared for with the baby, but when we recognized she had these additional illnesses, our internal medicine team took over and took primary care for her case, which was great, because we really needed their expertise for her." 

Following biosecurity protocol, Daisy was separated from the rest of the hospital's large animal residents because of the possibility of communicable diseases. Daisy was closely monitored and treated by the internal medicine team with IV fluids, antibiotics and anti-inflammatory medications. 

Daisy and Harper both fully recovered, and Tarpy returned to take them back to the farm two hours' drive away east of Lynchburg. 

"They've been great and very helpful, transparent with everything for us," Tarpy said of her experience with the teaching hospital. "It's just been hard because we can't come up and see Harper and Daisy so often. But they were in great hands, and we're ready for them to come home."