Because dogs are part of the family too...

So love of my life, Snow, our littlest pup is a very adventurous dog. Some mornings he spends the entire time outside exploring the backyard, as if it has changed in some form in the last 12 hours. Typically, he is the hardest to come inside because he is wandering the yard looking for the best place to go potty or just being inquisitive and exploring. Well, Sunday Husby and I got home from bowling and noticed he was acting strange. He quickly went outside and took his time doing his business, but then suddenly darted inside and cowered in the kitchen with his tail wrapped around his behind. Usually this means he did something wrong (our dogs have very guilty consciences and end up ratting themselves out before we find the disaster). So I grab and notice he has a mess on his behind (which happens time to time), so I get Husby to help me since one needs to hold him down and the other needs to do clean-up. When he wipes away the poop, I realize there is blood. So now I get concerned thinking pup has bloody stools, so Husby takes him into the tub and gives him a bath to clean the area and see where the blood is coming from. After his bath, he notices a wound beside Snow's butt, and so we apply pressure hoping the blood will clot and life will be ok. The rest of the night, Snow snuggles in one of our laps and doesn't make a peep or fidget. He shakes when he cold and when he is nervous/scared/in trouble, so he does that a bit, but otherwise it looks fine. Husby takes a look at it again and thinks maybe Snow dragged his bum along the grass and got scratched by a burr or along one of the coralline rocks and scratched it, so we put him to bed. Monday, the wound is still there, still open and oozing a bit, so I wipe it off and left him go outside which he fights me on. I eventually have to stand outside for him to come out the door on his own and he quickly pees and runs back inside and to his house (usually I cannot get him to go to his house willingly, so I think something is up, but rush to leave for work). We keep cleaning it and watching it but it doesn't look too terrible and we notice Snow keeps trying to lick it and get at it, so we spend Monday evening (after getting home from our whirlwind shopping trip...post to come) keeping him distracted from it so he will let the wound heal. Tuesday morning still looks puffy and irritated but we chalk it up to him messing with it, so I don't worry too much, especially after Husby tells me not to worry, it'll be fine.

Well, yesterday when I got home, I noticed Snow was still favoring his bum and was passing up food and water and really did not want to be outside, so I picked him up to look at it and I notice it is oozing even worse today. Thinking it is still due to him disrupting and maybe it is bothering him because it is healing, I gave him a washcloth bath and cleaned up. When, Husby gets home and really gives him a bath, he realizes it the wound is now double in size and almost mimics a spider bite (We have tons of burrows that look like spider dens and we are in a residential area, but not too far from the park/preserve, so now I turn into super uneasy, worried Mom mode). Husby researches pictures of common spiders in our area and what their bites look like which leads us to think maybe he had gotten bitten by a Brown Recluse Spider (if you are interested in what a bite from these looks like, you can research it, but I will summarize your search to tell you that these bites can be serious to humans, so imagine it on a 5 lb. Chihuahua). I immediately locate an emergency clinic in our area and we rush him off to it. An hour or so later, and a $200 vet bill later, Snow had an anal gland abscess, and it ruptured. He had to get a haircut, a scrubbing and cleaning and then a shot of antibiotics and we were sent home with 7 days worth of antibiotics (2x/day) and told to clean the wound daily with antibacterial soap. So needless to say, last night was a long evening and Monday night was a long evening and tonight will be long and then my new specialist doctor's appt. is Monday and most likely a pre-op appt. and then surgery on Tuesday....so we will see how this week goes.