Labrador Retriever / Ehlers Danlos Syndrome

Hey Vets! Non-emergency question here. Are any of you familiar with Ehlers Danlos syndrome in dogs? I have a two year old Charcoal lab who was had skin issues and scarring/bruising her entire life. She was tested for everything under the sun and ojr vet kept coming up stumped. Last September she had entropian surgery, and everything we went, no issues. Today she went in for a spay and a revision entropian for the left eye. The vet told me as soon as he begin cut her until he sewed her up, the bleeding was uncontrollable and it took nearly 4 hours for these two surgeries. He said he realized most of the blood was coming from her skin. When he went to do her eye, same issue, he told me he had the clamps down as hard as they could be without harming her and she still wouldn’t quit bleeding. They had to have her under anesthesia for an additional hour and half because of the bleeding. He told me he believes she has Ehler’s Danlos sydrome (excessive bleeding, skin sensitivity, bald spots from mild trauma, tissue paper like spots of skin on her stomach) Just looking for different opinions as he’s told me she is the first dog he’s seen with it in his entire career. Thanks so much for your time.

Hello!  My first comment would be not to be too concerned if your vet hasn't seen something before; there are more diseases than most vets get to see over the course of a career and the skill of being a vet is (thankfully) not in recognising everything on first sight.  This is often impossible anyway, because many diseases present in a similar way.  A GP vet might play the part of surgeon, dermatologist, heart specialist, midwife and oncologist in the course of a single morning, often to three or more different species, so all the best GPs have to say 'I don't know' occasionally.  Indeed, I would be concerned if they didn't;  a good vet does know where their knowledge ends ie what it is that they don't know, and makes the effort to find it out, usually from their network of colleagues, specialialists and pathologists.   'What is our next step in getting my dog diagnosed?'  'How long will that take?' are therefore very useful questions....  more to follow.

I have seen Ehlers-Darnlos once before.  The particular example I saw was someone else's case and had a peculiar feel to its skin.  It is a change to an animal's connective tissue, which literally is a term for those protein fibres that 'hold things together' in the body.  What has your vet proposed should happen next in order to make sure that their assessment is correct?

Thanks so very much for your reply. I really appreciate you taking the time to hell me understand. She has some peculiar spots on her stomach that look almost  see-through, and if you scratch in that area it bothers her. He didn’t suggest any follow up on it, just to try to keep an eye on her for the future if she were to get any cuts or injuries. I just wasn’t sure if there should be any follow up tests, or anything that could be done to confirm. It just made me slightly worry she may have a clotting or platelet issue, but he told me the bleeding just comes from her skin. She is healing extremely well and fast from both surgeries. Her stomach looks perfect, no broken blood vessels or bruising and we haven’t had any bleeding.