My friend sent me this email about her dog...I have never heard of this has anyone else?? I think the dog is a golden!
We took Hope to the vet yesterday to get spayed. The vet called me around lunchtime to tell me that during the pre-op procedures that he found an "interesting reason" for why she's had her swelling issues, etc. He discovered that Hope is a hermaphrodite. (Please feel free to laugh hysterically, it's what I did all afternoon yesterday.) He continued with the procedure and basically had to do 2 surgeries at once. First to remove the undescended testicle he discovered (keep laughing) and then to open her abdomen to search for her female "bits". He found no uterus but did find a small amount of ovarian tissue, which he removed. He also examined her other internal organs which all looked fine. She's recovering just fine now and is happy to be home, but there's still lots more to find out. The vet took pictures, called other vets and specialists for input and we've paid to send out the tissue he did remove for further testing. She may still need more surgery, we'll see. For now she seems otherwise healthy, but as this is a major birth defect, the vet was honest and said she very well may develop other defects as she gets older, again, time will tell. In the meantime we're hoping to talk to our breeder and hopefully get some or all of the money we paid for her back to help cover the medical costs that we have and will continue to pay.