In my line of work, there are some funny things that people sometimes ask me that when I put it into context-it’s always worth a good laugh.
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One example would be belly buttons. Even cats and dogs have belly buttons. They just don’t quite look like a human belly button and they’re surrounded by fur so we only noticed it if, for some reason, our pet is scratching in that area or licking or something.
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Where is the belly button located? While ours is fairly well centered in the middle of our abdomen between the end of our sternum and our pubic bone , the belly button of a dog or a cat is right under the sternum. So for a male dog, it would be located in front of the penis.
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Some deep chested dogs actually have bad aim when they urinate and can saturate this area with urine. (Or maybe they like the smell? Ha ha. Male goats are quite proud of their odor and intentionally urinate on themselves.) If your dog is urinating across his chest and then you’re washing him, all of a sudden you just might discover that he does in fact have a belly button.
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Here is some other funny anatomy:
And this is simply something we don’t think about- just as human women have breasts and human men have nonfunctioning nipples, but they are still present, cats and dogs are very similar. Both males and females have nipples. Usually, we never see them, unless the female comes into heat, or is breeding.
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Dogs tend to have 8 to 10 pairs of nipples. Cats -it’s usually 6 to 8. Sometimes they have odd numbers of nipples.
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Interesting times when we discover nipples: on a male dog, we might see nipples along the sides of the penis.
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Sometimes, when there’s a skin infection, “goo“ will develop around a nipple that is in its cave. This “goo” will actually have to be cleaned out. Just like when we all discovered our belly buttons at three years old and discovered if we didn’t clean our own human belly button it would build up all kinds of nasty goo and get smelly.
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Unless you’re in the habit of shaving your cat’s abdomen, it will be very difficult to discover nipples hiding under that lush fur. Some cats lick their abdomen excessively (which is a medical issue), and then that is when all of a sudden, you’ll see the hidden nipples.
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It’s just a couple of fun things. Funny too. Hopefully worth a laugh.
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Still seeing patients in Tampa, Clearwater, and virtually.