Texas A&M Veterinarians Collaborate With Rescue To Help Small Dogs

Story by Megan Bennett, VMBS Marketing & Communications

December 17, 2024

By collaborating with a dog rescue called the Pom Squad, Texas A&M’s veterinary cardiologists are providing new heart disease treatment options for dogs that are too small for traditional methods and tools.

Treating heart conditions in small dog breeds — whose hearts can be as small as a person’s thumb — is a challenge that many veterinary cardiologists have faced, including those at the Texas A&M Small Animal Teaching Hospital (SATH).

When Hazel, a teacup poodle, arrived at the SATH, the 12-week-old puppy weighed less than 2 pounds. She needed surgery for a serious heart condition called patent ductus arteriosus (PDA), which would prove fatal if not treated.

Neither Hazel’s condition, nor her situation, are unusual for dogs — PDAs are one of the most common canine congenital heart defects, and approximately 3.1 million dogs enter animal shelters nationwide each year, according to the ASPCA.

However, Hazel was fortunate to be one of hundreds of dogs rescued by a Texas animal rescue known as the Pom Squad, a Galveston-based nonprofit organization that specializes in finding homes for Pomeranians and other small dog breeds.

For more than two years, the Pom Squad has turned to the SATH for the specialized veterinary care that has saved many of their dogs’ lives. In return, caring for those dogs has also helped Aggie veterinarians develop new tools and treatment methods for heart conditions in small dogs.

In Hazel’s case, the SATH’s collaborative relationship with the Pom Squad was vital in ensuring her full recovery — and her placement in a loving home.

A Rescue With Heart

The Pom Squad was founded in 2019 by dog lover Diana DeMedio and is now co-directed by Lauren Melissari, a College Station resident.

“I have been involved in animal rescue since I was a teenager and have volunteered with numerous dog rescues, shelters, and humane societies and even engaged in independent rescue work,” Melissari said. “Diana and I met many years ago when she adopted two medically fragile senior Pomeranians from me.

“Our shared love for Pomeranians and our passion for rescuing dogs with medical needs that most owners can’t afford to care for brought us even closer,” she said. “It made perfect sense for us to combine our resources and expertise.”

Although the rescue primarily focuses on dogs in Texas, it has also accepted dogs with medical conditions from other states, largely because of Melissari’s access to Texas A&M’s veterinary specialists.

“The very first dog I brought to Texas A&M, back in my early days of rescue, around 2005, was a female Pomeranian named Sassy,” Melissari said. “I chose Texas A&M for her care, and continue to choose it for other dogs, because it’s the best specialty hospital in the state. I trust that I can bring a dog with any kind of health issue and the various departments will work together to diagnose and treat the problem effectively.”

Since she began regularly bringing Pom Squad dogs to the SATH, Melissari has visited many of the hospital’s specialty services, most frequently Cardiology, Neurology, Internal Medicine, Ophthalmology, and Emergency & Critical Care. 

“Often, the dogs I bring in need to see more than one department, and it’s so easy to have everything handled in one place,” she said. “I love that the departments work together to tackle a case as a whole.”

She also has developed a close working relationship with many clinicians at the hospital, especially veterinary cardiologists Drs. Sonya Wesselowski, an assistant professor at the College of Veterinary Medicine & Biomedical Sciences (VMBS), and Ashley Saunders, a professor at the VMBS.

Taking A New Approach

Treating heart conditions in small dogs can be challenging because their anatomy is too small for many traditional pieces of surgical equipment, even those designed for minimally invasive procedures.

Caring for the Pom Squad dogs has provided Wesselowski and Saunders with several opportunities to explore new ways to effectively treat small breeds.

“Texas A&M has been at the forefront of minimally invasive cardiology procedures for a long time,” Wesselowski said. “Our partnership with the Pom Squad is helping us be even better because they’re opening doors for us to try more.”

Over the past two and a half years, the Cardiology Service has treated 35 Pom Squad dogs for congenital heart disease, a category of conditions that includes any heart defects that have been present since birth.

The most common condition they see is PDAs, which occur when the heart has a small opening between the aorta — the main artery that sends oxygenated blood from the heart to the body — and the pulmonary artery, which carries blood from the heart to the lungs.

This opening creates an unnecessary path of circulation that makes the heart work harder to get oxygenated blood to the body, eventually leading to congestive heart failure.

“If it’s not identified and treated, most dogs with a PDA are in heart failure by the time they’re about 1 year old,” Wesselowski said. “But if we diagnose and treat it, they can have a normal lifespan.”

PDAs are treated by closing the problematic opening, either by tying it off during an open chest procedure or using the minimally invasive approach of placing a device inside the opening to block blood flow.

“This partnership has been such a good opportunity for us and has provided lots of benefits, in that we get to do more procedures and our veterinary residents get to see new innovations. But that’s not why we do it; that’s just an added benefit. The reason we do it is to help the dogs.”

Dr. Ashley Saunders

“The problem with the minimally invasive approach is that we usually go through the femoral artery, which is the big artery in the back leg. For a lot of these very small dogs, that artery isn’t big enough, so minimally invasive isn’t an option,” Wesselowski said. “What we were able to try in some of these Pom Squad dogs is a transvenous approach — instead of going through the artery in their back leg, we went through the larger vein in their neck and were able to deploy some different devices.

“The dogs leave with a teeny tiny incision instead of a thoracotomy, which is where you have to open their chest,” she said. “If we can offer that option for more small dogs, that’s a big benefit to our clients.”

Enhanced Opportunities

The large number of Pom Squad dogs seen in the Cardiology Service has also allowed the veterinarians to develop and verify a new tool for PDA procedures.

A transesophageal echocardiogram (TEE) imaging probe is a small device used to see the anatomy inside a heart. It’s used to determine if a patient is a candidate for a minimally invasive PDA procedure and what size device would be needed as well as for monitoring during the procedure.

The standard tool is already small, but it’s still too large to use in tiny dog breeds, so Saunders and Wesselowski did a study on a new TEE microprobe developed for human babies, proving it to be a good solution for small dogs as well. 

More than half of the dogs that contributed to their study were brought in through the Pom Squad.

“Making sure that a device actually fits the way we think it should is really important,” Wesselowski said. “This new tool gives us another opportunity to do procedures that are safer for these really little dogs and helps us feel confident about making the right decisions for them.”

In addition to the innovations developed with the help of the Pom Squad, another benefit is increased learning opportunities for veterinary students, interns, and residents at the SATH.

“Some dogs with PDAs weigh only 1 pound, so there’s nothing we can do for them that’s minimally invasive because they’re just too small. We can still treat them with surgery, and that provides great experience for our surgery residents,” Wesselowski said. “Most surgery residents at other universities do not get to finish their programs having had the breadth of experience with PDA surgeries that ours do.”

A New Leash On Life

While the relationship with the Pom Squad has many benefits, the main motivation for everyone involved is saving the lives of dogs that otherwise would not survive.

“One reason I keep coming back to the SATH is their willingness to perform new procedures for dogs that are deemed untreatable elsewhere,” Melissari said. “The hospital’s commitment to innovative treatments and research has given many of our rescue dogs a chance at life when other options were exhausted.”

The Pom Squad works hard to ensure that each dog saved goes on to live a long, happy life with its new family. A few times, that new family has even been found with one of the SATH residents or veterinarians involved in the dog’s care.

Hazel, for example, was adopted by Saunders after the SATH saved the tiny puppy’s life.

“She came in right before Christmas and then needed someone to take care of her post-operatively, since she was battling some low blood sugar issues,” Saunders said. “I took her home and my family and I got very attached to her, so we ended up keeping her. She is so sweet and just wants to be with her people all the time.”

Now, a year and a half after her procedure, Hazel is thriving, has grown to her full-size weight of 4 pounds, and has been nicknamed “Happy Hazel” by her family.

“This partnership has been such a good opportunity for us and has provided lots of benefits, in that we get to do more procedures and our veterinary residents get to see new innovations,” Saunders said. “But that’s just an added benefit. The reason we do it is to help the dogs.”

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This story originally appeared in the Fall 2024 issue of VMBS Today.

For more information about the Texas A&M College of Veterinary Medicine & Biomedical Sciences, please visit our website at vetmed.tamu.edu or join us on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter.

Contact Information: Jennifer Gauntt, Director of VMBS Communications, Texas A&M College of Veterinary Medicine & Biomedical Sciences, jgauntt@cvm.tamu.edu, 979-862-4216

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