Your email address will not be published. Save my name, email, and website in this browser for the next time I comment. Definitely a great purchase at the MVMA convention! I look forward to more CEs.
Anal gland impaction in dogs: treatment & prevention
They're not the stuff of dinner party conversations, but knowing how to spot a problem could save your dog a lot of misery. Picture the scene. You've just washed your dog from top to tail using the finest shampoo and conditioner money can buy, but even after drying him, the same horrible fishy odour you noticed pre-groom is still lingering in your poor nostrils. Sound familiar? Anal glands or anal sacs are relatively small glands found on either side of your dog's anal opening. Not present in humans, they are paired sacs located precisely just below the surface of the skin between the external and internal sphincter muscles, employed by nature to produce a particularly thick, foul smelling, oily liquid secreted by glandular tissue for identification and territory marking.
The lining of these sacs produce a smelly secretion. Each time a stool is passed it presses gently on these sacs and they empty through a duct onto the stool. In the wild they are used as territory markers nowadays they have no useful function.
Anal glands in dogs and cats secrete a liquid substance, which is held inside of the sac until the animal defecates. In dogs and cats with normal anal glands, this liquid is normally expressed from the glands along with the bowel movement. Many animals will also express the contents of these glands when they become frightened, nervous, or excited. This expression will result in a foul smelling, dark colored liquid substance being seen near the rectum of the animal, under the tail, or on the floor or ground near the pet.