Hey all, first time here.
I'm concerned about my new dog that I rescued from a shelter. I know I should be taking her to the vet immediately, and I'm going to try and do that later this morning, but I could really use any peace of mind I can get; I'm starting to worry myself sick about her.
I adopted her last Thursday (the 17th) but the shelter here has a 'pick dogs up from the vet post spay/neutering' policy, so I didn't get her until Friday afternoon when she was one of the last dogs treated.
Everything was going fine, I couldn't ask for a better behaved new dog. The shelter told me she's around 8 months old, she was signed away by her owner along with her cell mate (who I'd like to take but don't have a back yard, she sleeps in my room with me and I take her out for walks frequently) because the owner couldn't keep the dogs contained. They apparently had 8 or so calls about the dogs running loose and eventually the City took them away.
Anyway, I found her on dogsindanger.com, and called the only vet that would honor the $50 Spaying voucher and get her in sooner than a week or two away. She seemed miserable at the shelter, a nervous wreck around all the other dogs aside from the one she came with, and they seemed like pretty miserable conditions, so I wanted to get her home as quickly as I could.
The vet charged me a $25 dollar fee for her being in heat when they operated on her (I didn't know it before hand, there weren't any signs that I could tell for the hour I got to spend with her) so I went ahead and paid it, along with a heart worms test and a rabies shot, so a grand total of $126 dollars in all for her adoption fee, operation, and shots.
So when they released her, they told me that I didn't really need to clean the area, I really just needed to make sure she didn't bother it for the next 7 to 10 days, and then I at that point, if the stitches were still in tact, I should take her in and have them removed. Well, 5 or 6 days passed, everything looked fine down there, and she was very good about not bothering the area, so I didn't check it as frequently as I should have after that point (my mistake and I feel awful about it, I should have kept a better watch) .
Anyway, it's been around 8 or 9 days now, and I decided to check on her stitches, and I noticed it was a little puffy, and scabbed and hard. There was actually a bit of a protrusion, more than there had been two days before. The protrusion is kind of hard, and has some dried blood/scabs around it, and it has a small bit of pus on it, which really made me start worrying. She hasn't shown any signs of pain, she's happy as can be and energetic still, but she's got some nasal discharge that has a greenish color and a little bit of a cough now, which I think is just her having allergies, maybe a sinus infection. I talked to my mom about the allergies because that was my biggest concern.
See, I think she's had a litter of puppies, so she's a little saggy down there and the incision area is often covered up. She doesn't roll on her back like some other dogs do, so no one - my girlfriend, myself, my mother, or my girlfriends parents have noticed this until just now. She seems to have a difficult time reaching that are to lick it anyway, and I've kept a careful eye on her to make sure she doesn't lick the area.
My main concern is that she has been around a lot of other dogs. Her first weekend we had her, I kept her at my girlfriend's parents house where there are 4 other dogs for her to play with (she really likes other dogs), and then kept her at my place during the week, and then took a trip down to Austin to visit my mother where she played with my dogs there (4 of them there as well). I'm not so worried that
she has been licking it or messing with it so much as the other dogs she has been around with; I didn't see anything suspicious the time I spent around her and the other dogs, but I can't say for sure that they haven't messed around with her.
My roommate doesn't think I should be too worried since we've caught on to this early on, but I can't find any pictures on the internet that compare to her potential "infection". I'm going to attempt to attach some pictures to this post, and hope someone can offer advice. Like I said, I'm going to call the Vet and see if I can get her in in the morning (a different vet than the one she went to, this one has nothing but positive feedback on the internet, the other one was a 2.5 out of 5 rating, which I should have looked in to first) but I really love this little doggy and really could use some peace of mind.
Does anyone have any advice? I put a little bit of iodine around the incision area to try and keep it clean before I get her in to the vet, I didn't think that would hurt anything since I know they use it on dogs during surgery sometimes.
Beyond her allergies (she does the weird snorting noise that my beagle does, as well as my girlfriend's
Boston terrier) and sneezes when she is outside, so I think that might just be allergies and not some sort of infection that has spread. Also, she received her Parvo and
Kennel Cough shot prior to being put in the kennel where I adopted her from, so I don't think she has either of those.
Anyway, thanks in advance for the help, I'll try and post some pictures, though I know some forums don't allow it due to spammers and such.
-Perry
