For the last few days she had been rubbing her butt on the carpet, pretty typical for dogs when they have an anal gland that is becoming full. Normally dogs can evacuate the gland just through defecation, but occasionally they can get impacted, or "backed up". Well, yesterday, I noticed that the left side of Luna's butt was beginning to swell, and by the end of the day there was about a walnut-sized fluctuant knot on her bum. I've never drained an anal gland before for our dogs, and I wasn't about to start on one that was infected! If you don't know what you're doing, you can do more harm than good. As many abscesses do, this one ruptured from the pressure (last night, in our bed!), which is good and bad. It's good because that helped alleviate pain from the pressure, but bad because it was hella messy. And it didn't rupture through the natural duct opening just inside the anus; it took the path of least resistance and ruptured externally. So I called a local emergency pet clinic that keeps weekend and evening hours and they saw her immediately. They gave her some mild sedation, irrigated the gland out, and gave her an injection of pain killer and antibiotic, plus oral meds to take at home. They were so nice and compassionate there, and I am completely indebted to them for their service! The total fee was about $170 or so, but that doesn't matter. I would pay anything to take care of our dogs, especially when they're sick. I felt so guilty about the whole affair, like a bad parent, but I don't know that there's anything I could have done to prevent it from happening. Luna came home with an e-collar, but she looked miserable with it and couldn't eat or drink around it so I had to take it off. She's back to her old self tonight and knock-on-wood that something like this doesn't happen again soon!
1 comment:
Awww. She's so cute. Poor girl! I had a problem with my dog, Angel, a couple of years ago where she got blocked up and couldn't urinate. It was the 4th of July so I had to take her to the emergency vet which cost me $400 to drain her bladder but this would just alleviate the pain. I had to take her to our vet the next day. When I went to pick her up she had one of those collars on and had gotten sick in it and they didn't even clean it up. My regular vet did the surgery, gave me the antibiotics, pain medication, everything for $125. Sucks when you don't have a choice but to take them to the emergency room. Hope she's better now.
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