This is Dusty,
our 7#, spayed, female cat.
She’s gone crazy.
This is Kasha,
our 80#, spayed, female German Shepherd dog.
Dusty periodically falls in total love with Kasha, which she demonstrates by rolling around on the floor by Kasha, sleeping in Kasha’s bed, and attacking & biting Kasha on the hind legs or butt… whenever Kasha goes into heat.
And yes, I did just say Kasha is spayed, in fact she’s been spayed twice, er, sort of. Kasha came from the fabulous Richmond ASPCA – amazing place. They said that she was spayed, but not by them – apparently they got her shaved down and then figured out she was already spayed somehow.
Last fall, Kasha was clearly in heat, with discharge, etc. I took her to the spay/neuter clinic & explained the situation, and they looked for but couldn’t find a scar (neither could we) so we all figured someone made a mistake & they said they’d spay her free.
When they opened her up, though, it was clear she had been spayed already. So, two vets had her open for over an hour and a half trying to find the problem: when an animal is spayed, they remove the ovaries, but sometimes they regrow from the “root” or something like that, and not always where you’d expect to find it. Even a tiny little bit of ovary is enough to cause the hormonal changes that cause them to go into heat, though there is no uterus for pups to grow in.
Unfortunately for us all, they weren’t able to find the itsy bit of ovarian tissue causing Kasha’s problem. At the same time, Kasha was recovering from a torn knee ligament, and then developed Lyme disease – probably from the surgery impairing her immune system, as dogs can often get & carry Lyme with no symptoms, or fight it off themselves.
She was a mess. And it took months for her huge incision to heal, the knee to stabilize, and kick the Lyme.
Kasha is continuing to go into heat periodically. And lest you think this is a super rare problem, I’d say probably not as rare as you think, given how many people on the net are asking the question “Why is my dog in heat even though she’s been spayed?”
Dusty, though, revels in it. Apparently it’s the pheromones – the scents that drive boy dogs crazy are driving Dusty crazy, too. Dusty was spayed very young, and has shown no signs of going into heat, but she loves it when Kasha does! She follows her around, sleeps in her bed, especially where Kasha might have been messy, attacks Kasha’s legs and butt, and also has been carrying around “Ducky,” Dusty’s floppy, worn, stuffed duck, while yowling a lot and then proceeds to enter a trance and knead the bed (cause she brings Ducky to me or Rhiannon) endlessly.
We assume she thinks Ducky is her baby. She’s been doing the Ducky thing a half dozen times a day, and we’re both getting a tad annoyed.
Thankfully, this heat cycle is about over. Of course, in six months or so, we’ll (all) go through it again. *sigh*
Wolfdreams.... 