We went to a lovely barbecue on Saturday at my friend Christina's house. We had a fabulous time, and left later than we had planned, which meant that I had to visit some kitties later than I had planned, but it was all good because we had a fabulous time.
We arrived home around 12:30 to find some drops of some weird substance on the floor. It kinda looked like.....pudding? Except kind of chunky and light brown/marroon colored. It was not poo, too thick and brown to be blood, didn't smell. A mystery substance. With drops all over the place. There was also some brownish spots on our ~white~ duvet. SB took Gabby out for her walk because she is old and he likes to walk her first quickly then take Charlie for a longer walk.
While he was gone I did some investigating, and lo and behold, Charlie's neck had exploded.
Let's back this up a bit.
A few years ago we took Charlie to the vet because he had always had this little lump on his neck, but within a space of a few weeks it had seemed to double in size. The vet poked it and said it seemed like some sort of benign something that was surrounded by infection (the infection which made it double in size) so we did a round of antibiotics and it shrank. She told us that if we noticed it grow again, to come back.
It's been a few years, and I guess it's been growing at such a slow pace that we didn't even notice his neck was full of pestulant disease until it EXPLODED ALL OVER OUR HOUSE.
The lump is probably the size of a golfball, and the hole that ended up in it is about the diameter of a pencil. I spent a couple of minutes squeezing out grossness until I almost vomitted, and then SB came in and I told him about the EXPLODING NECK and then he took over cleaning.
Of course it was Saturday night, and Sunday none of our regular vets are even open, so we had to take him to the emergency clinic. SB called and the wait time was about half an hour, so rather than wait for daytime Sunday, which is probably what a lot of people would do if their dog's neck exploded in the middle of the night, we decided to get it over with while the getting was relatively quick. Because Gabby is a whining old lady, I didn't want to leave her alone in the middle of the night to wake all of our neighbors just because she felt left out, so SB took Charlie alone.
Now we have a twice daily washing and medication regimen which seems okay but is still totally gross because the wound is healing. Charlie totally doesn't seem to care at all about the whole situation, except that his meds make his poo soft.
I had noticed the past week or so he had been really grumpy, and he bit me in the foot last week. I guess I would be grumpy too if my neck was fixing to explode.
3 comments:
that WAS extra fun, thanks!
That actually just happened to my cat (who has become my parents' cat) about a month ago. She had this lump that was fine, and then all of a sudden it wasn't.
Gross.
My cat got in a fight and had a hole in his chest that was oozing, and that's definitely the grossest thing I personally have dealt with.
My favorite part is that when I was telling my mother how gross it was she (a nurse) was just like "well, it's only pus".
Only pus.
like a litre of it, but just some infectious matter oozing out of your dog's neck. No worries.
Ugh.
He's doing much better now - it has shrunken up a lot, but the wound is still healing. Blech.
Ok, I have tried to comment on this post twice now and it disappears. The first timne I wrote this really long and witty comment (or at least I thought it was) and the second time I just alluded to the witty comment because I couldn't actually remember what I'd orginally written. Rambling...but I had to tell you I laughed hysterically at this post and told the story to everyone I know. And I'm glad the pup is ok!
Jill
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