Oh my poor baby

KitEKats4Eva!

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The other night the doggies were asleep on the lounge room floor, and all of a sudden Chester jumped up and yelped, and started limping around madly. We grabbed him and had a look at his leg, and there didn't seem to be anything wrong, he calmed down quickly and soon settled back to sleep.

Ten minutes later the exact same thing happened. This time we combed the blankets, lounge and floor and examined his leg minutely to see what was wrong - it was clear he had been bitten by something. We found an ant, squashed it, and he went happily back to sleep - with us watching like hawks to see if anything went wrong with his breathing etc - we were so paranoid!!

Well, he seemed fine but we noticed that for a day or so he was really licking at his front paw, and that Ruby was licking at it too. Clearly there was something wrong so we had a look, flexed his claws and the nail bed of one of his claws was swollen, and caked with pus etc. We hadn't noticed because he is black and it was only when we flexed the paw that the nail bed was exposed and we could see the infection.

We took him straight to the vet, who said he had dermatitis, but she also found a huge prickle and little stone that were embedded so deep into one of his paw pads that you couldn't see it at all unless you looked really closely. It took her ages to get it out and he was being such a good boy - but he was whimpering and trying to get his paw away from her. It was bruised and sore underneath, but because he'd made no sign of being in any pain we had no idea how long it had been there!


He had to have two injections (antibiotics and cortisone) and is now on a course of antibiotics for five days.

My poor little baby! We feel miserable that we didn't see it before now, but he was such a brave little boy.
 

menagerie mama

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Oh, how sad...poor guy! It was kinda funny that you thought it was the ant though!

I'm glad you found the sore area. It's so hard to see stuff like that sometimes!
 

stampit3d

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Get well soon Chester! I`m sorry you have an "owie"....but I`m glad you have good human parents who love you enough to investigate and have found the problem for you. (It really is hard sometimes to not be able to "talk human", huh?)
Linda
 
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KitEKats4Eva!

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He's MUCH better today. He is normally such a laid back, quiet little pup and he was a bit agitated the last few days - nothing like Ruby who is a mad crazy lunatic - but we thought he was just getting a bit more boisterous as he got older. But no, it was the ouchie paw


He keeps giving me kisses - his kisses are like real nudges, he sticks his nose right in your face, hard, and then gives you a little lick. Sweet boy.

We took them for their first swim at the river yesterday, and they loved it!! Ruby especially. They both just stood there in the water for ages and Ruby tried a little swim. Unfortunately some idiot in a speed boat went by way too fast and created a lot of waves - all of which hit Chester in the head before we could get him back up the stairs and away from the water. Left him a bit spooked but you could NOT get Ruby out of there!! We kept them in the water until the waves died down and reassured them in the water, so that they would leave thinking it was a good place, not a scary place. Plus the vet had said the salt water would do him good so we wanted him in there for a little while at least. They were SO cute standing there all unsure and wet!


When they are more used to it we'll take them to the doggie beach - they go there now but they just haven't had the courage to get in the water yet!
 
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