The Things We Do For Love...

…of hounds, that is!

Background: Miss Stella is a retired foxhound that is living with me. She has a long-term, chronic ear infection that has been treated wtih every antibiotic and other ear infection antidote known to man. It’s been cultured and treated accordingly. Numerous times. By multiple vets and multiple adopters. At this point, the only option for a permanent cure is ear surgery, which is a bit costly for a 10 or 11 year old hound. So we’re just “managing” it the best we can. She’s happy, perky, and otherwise fine–except for some drainage from the ear, and annoyance with me when I clean and treat it, which is easily remedied with a treat.

Last week, she developed a VERY large lump on the side of her face that blew up within about a 48 hour period. We notice some slight swelling one day, and within 2 days, it had swollen to the point that was clear that yet another trip to the vet was in order. My first thought was that it was related to her chronic ear infection. I took her to the vet (thank goodness that my little sister married one, and I therefore get the “family discount”!), who discovered an infected tooth. He thought that the tooth was coincidental and not related to the lump, and the lump was further back that he thought it would be if it had been directly caused by the tooth; but removed the tooth anyway, as it did need to come out. He also lanced the lump, and got some drainage, but not as much as he was expecting for a lump that size. There were a lot of white blood cells in the fluid, which would indicate infection, but he also took a couple of tissue samples and saved them in case the lump didn’t go away after the tooth extraction and a two-week course of amoxycillin. If it didn’t, we’d have the samples biopsied and checked for cancer. When she came home from the vet, Stella’s lump was smaller, but still distinct.

My husband and I were out of town for the weekend, and Stella, the Crackheads (AKA, our two Australian Shepherds), and my husband’s retired narcotics K9 were left in the capable hands of my 18 year old niece. We arrived home yesterday to find Stella’s lump MUCH less swollen–a very good sign!

Fast forward to today…So I was working at home today, and had just heated up my lunch. I heard a rustling sound in front of my desk, and peer over the edge at Miss Stella, who was laying on her fleece bed in my office, and scratching lazily at her face. I then notice that she has red fluid coming out of the incision where her lump was lanced, and it’s dripping on her bed.

So I run and get a warm rag, wipe away the thin, reddish, fluid to see that she’s scratched off the scab on the incision. I gently pressed on her lump, and was able to express a good deal more fluid out of the lump; then finally a small amount of pus. EEEWWWWWWWWWWWWW! I go rinse the rag in my husband’s bathroom sink (sshhhh…don’t tell him, he’d be grossed out), and continued to get some more fluid out of the lump and clean Stella’s face.

And then I ate my lunch…

But at least I washed my hands first! :smiley:

(Updated to add that the lump is almost all gone now–it was the first thing my husband noticed when he got home from work today!)

Yes, there is nothing like getting a good thick squirt of animal pus from your best friend. :slight_smile: I remember when I got my rescue dog, he had a deep abscess on his neck. It ruptured while he was in bed with me one night and I woke up covered in pus. Yummy (not). But we love 'em anyway.

Since we are on the topic of gross doggy stuff, I was awakened in the middle of the night last night to my favorite Aussie, Ozzie, barfing up who knows what in my bed last night. He finished hacking it up, I took the spread off and threw it in the wash and we went back to bed.
My other doggy, Kirby, is incontinent sometimes and we have to watch it or she will wet the bed if she is in it.
So we got this thing when we got our new mattress, it’s called Bed Armor. It’s a heavy duty mattress cover, the top is some kind of special fabric, and the part that’s against the mattress is lined in some sort of vinyl. This way if something nasty happens in the bed, it doesn’t soak through to the mattress. It is a wonderful thing and has made my life so much easier.
I don’t know if there is a website for them or not, I’ll look on the tag when I get home. it wasn’t cheap but way worth it when we got our new mattresses last year.

Glad to hear the pup is better! I also have a gross dog story…

When I was 17 I worked on a TB farm, broke my foot on a baby and ended up on broodmare watch from 8 pm to 6 am…my company during those hours was a lovely very pregnant dog named Brie…I had a little room to sit in with a TV and a comfy recliner…

I came to work one evening and noticed the dog was missing… sat in my comfy chair, (which suspiciously had a few folded blankets on the seat) and turned on the TV… I felt the seat getting wet, and smelled an awful smell… the farm manager showed up and proudly told me that Brie had her puppies earlier in the day in “my” chair…

I spent the rest of the night sitting on a folding chair…not real comfy with a full leg cast!

Only on a horse board could you say you broke your foot on a baby!

[QUOTE=Jaegermonster;2956238]
Only on a horse board could you say you broke your foot on a baby![/QUOTE]

Very true!!! After I typed that I wondered if I should be more specific…then said “nah, they’ll get it”! :slight_smile:

The barn cat (who just showed up, pregnant, moved into my house, drank all my beer and laid around on the couch all day) lost her mucous plug on my sofa and started having kittens.

I don’t know nuthin’ about birthin’ no babies. I ran around looking for a box while she kept popping those things out.

Jennifer - One of my hounds suffered horrible ear infections for a long time - we did everything we could for him and were about to have the ablation done on him because his ears were just so bad. We finally gave up on vets and all the meds and tried a home ear flushing kit - just kept flushing the ears out and, after drying his ears as best we could - put ear drying powder in. Daily flushing, drying and ear powder. Maybe we got lucky but his ears cleared up and he lived the rest of his days with just a weekly ear cleaning with vinegar.

Glad the hound is feeling better and that lump is down.

Two words in the Kings English that should never have been grouped together…

mucus, and plug.

I sat between two pregnant girls at work,best forum of BC ever!

W W!

[QUOTE=Jaegermonster;2956189]

So we got this thing when we got our new mattress, it’s called Bed Armor. [/QUOTE]

I found a listing - bed armour:
http://www.us-mattress.com/sealbedardee.html

ugh. Ok, that MUST be love. Nasty nasty.
But I know Stella, and Jake, and there is no more loving home than what these pups enjoy! So funny what we share and even moreso what we all can appreciate!

a

Awwww! What a cute – albeit yucky – story! I’m sure Miss Stella feels oodles better! Nothing happier than a happy hound. :slight_smile:

[QUOTE=Mudroom;2957134]
I found a listing - bed armour:
http://www.us-mattress.com/sealbedardee.html[/QUOTE]

Yep I think that’s it. We got it at the mattress place when we got our new ones a few years ago. It wasn’t cheap but it has more than earned it’s keep in saving our mattress from all sorts of nastiness.

My Giant Schnauzer used to always suffer from ear infections ( since she was about 1 yr old - she is now going on 8)… Vet could not determine the root cause… I ran out of her antibiotics one weekend and she was suffering badly… so I tried a little MTG in her ear… made her ear greasy but she has been clear of infection since (about 5 months)…

Hmmm…how long did you do the daily flushing, drying, and ear powder before you finally killed the infection? One week? Two weeks? A month?

I know that one of the bacteria (bacterium?) that Stella has is pseudomonas, which is particularly stubborn. Do you know which bacteria your dog had?

[QUOTE=gothedistance;2957573]
Awwww! What a cute – albeit yucky – story! I’m sure Miss Stella feels oodles better! Nothing happier than a happy hound. :)[/QUOTE]

That’s for sure! :slight_smile: She is definitely much perkier now that the tooth is gone and the lump is down. Although her perkiness MAY be directly attributable to the fact that she’s getting a 1/4 slice of bread with peanut butter, wrapped around her antibiotic, 3 times a day! Or 1/2 slice of american cheese does the trick, too. :smiley:

Stella LOOOOOVES her treats…she “woofs”, crouches with her front end down in play stance, and wags her tail furiously-a novelty for me, since the other house dogs are Australian Shepherds!

[QUOTE=Jojogalore;2958053]
…so I tried a little MTG in her ear… made her ear greasy but she has been clear of infection since (about 5 months)…[/QUOTE]

Wow, I never thought of MTG. I guess the sulfur would do the trick for some bacteria. Not sure if pseudomonas responds to sulfur, but maybe it can’t hurt?

I don’t remember what bacteria it was (he died a few years ago). :frowning: But he had ear trouble for about 8 years. It would just NOT go away permanently. (He was a Basset Hound) You would not believe the vet bills we had.

We flushed his ears every day for about 5 days or so - I remember stopping the daily flushing once I stopped getting blackened goo out of his ears - the goo was old medication and dirt and God knows what else. I think part of the problem was that all the medication the vets gave us were creams or liquids - which just trapped moisture and gunk. The ear drying powder we used had iodoform in it - so it dried out any moisture in the ear and inhibited bacterial growth as well. The first couple of times we flushed his ears you would not believe the stuff that came out. Then I’d let him shake his head as much as he wanted, then I’d dry his ear with a towel, then I applied drying powder. After a while I only flushed his ears if I noticed any irritation, head shaking, or other behavior. Otherwise, the normal routine was just to clean his ears and then apply a wee bit of drying powder weekly.

The reason I used vinegar to clean his ears (and still use it to clean my current hounds ears) is that it cuts grease better than standard ear cleaning products, and it does have anti-bacterial properties. But it’s not necessarily superior to an OTC product. I was just leery of any lingering moisture in the dogs ear - so I refused to use any creams or unguents; particularly since those hound ears are notorious for trapping moisture.

Perhaps your vet might not care for what I did so you may want to check with him/her first.

J Swan–I think that “my vet” would just be happy if I stopped annoying him with the wide range of dog, hound, and horse issues that I’ve presented to him over the years! :smiley: An emergency hound caesarean (of course, I was out of the state at the time…fortunately I was looking at a horse for HIS WIFE/my sister, so I was cut some slack for that episode), a broken leg (a poor hound that got kicked in the hunt field by a guest, which my sweet buckskin horse then packed out of the woods to the nearest barn), flea allergies in my Aussie/Corgi cross (don’t ask), a mare that leaked all of her colostrum out in the month prior to foaling, thereby necessitating not one but TWO blood transfusions from mare to foal to ensure that the foal had enough antibodies to fight off infections (hey, at least I named the horse after him!), and so forth…not to mention the normal day-to-day health maintenance on my dogs and horses, and having to put down two old dogs at home for me; thus enduring the tears of both me AND my husband (oops, don’t tell him I told you that, if you ever meet us in person!). There’s more, but you get the picture…since my vet doesn’t make any money off of me whatsoever–in fact, I’m sure that I’m actually a LIABILITY to him!–and since we are at the point where the only other option is surgery, he probably won’t mind if I try a little vinegar. :slight_smile:

Anyway, we are on day two of our vinegar rinse…

P.S. We gave up on any sort of cream or gel-based treatments before Stella even came to live with us…her previous caretakers had already determined that they weren’t reaching far enough into her ear! I’ve only been using liquids (either an antibiotic/steriod mix, or a straight antibiotic).

Well, if it helps be sure to give me full credit.

If it doesn’t, I never heard of you.:wink:

(I’m sure my vet has similar stories about me. One of these days I’ll tell you about the makeshift surgical suite we made on my kitchen table - just to neuter all the male feral kittens I’d corralled). Vets have got to be part saint to put up with their crazy clients…

[QUOTE=J Swan;2963925]
Well, if it helps be sure to give me full credit.

If it doesn’t, I never heard of you.:wink:

…Vets have got to be part saint to put up with their crazy clients…[/QUOTE]

Don’t worry…there are LOTS of people that WISH they’d never heard of me!!! :slight_smile:

Fortunately, my vet is family, and can’t get a way from me–crazy or not. Not only is he married to my sister, but he lives two houses down the road from me! :smiley: