Thursday, August 18, 2011

Bloody Nose

AP here:
Tuesday Tonka and I went for our morning walk and he had some blood on his right front leg so after looking all over I found some on the floor next to his red rubber nylabone. I chalked it up to a tooth or gum thing form chewing on the toy. We played a little at the park and he was prancing around.


We looked under some toadstools trying to find the toads.


When we came home we had a normal morning routine, he ate well and everything seemed fine.

In the evening we went for a early walk because we had a vet appointment to discuss his breathing, sneezing and his itchy ears. We ran into his friend Pepe and walked with him for awhile.



Then we were off to the vet. Tonka was seen by his good friend Dr. Woodburn who came back with a diagnosis of allergies and no ear infection. So Benadryl twice a day and Genesis spray for the ear flaps. So much for no more medication - now it was drops for the pre-glaucoma eye and pills and spray for the allergies.Oh well allergies we can deal with right?

Wednesday morning was just like any other until after he ate his breakfast. I heard him go out the doggie door and went down to check on him. The first thing I noticed was something liquid on the bottom of his food bowl and when I swiped my finger at it I came back with a finger covered in bright red blood. I immediately went out and found him in the yard and checked his mouth, his gums, his tongue and found -nothing. I called the vet and they suggested I come in so I grabbed his leash and out the door we went. As he was making the turn to go up the ramp in the truck he sneezed and bright red blood came running out of his nose. He licked right off and you couldn't even tell it had been there. Mystery blood solved and now I knew the blood from yesterday was not from chewing a bone! I got him up the ramp and started up the truck and called the vet on the way to tell them the origin of the blood. I then called the cardiologist to see if this could be heart related and then called the opthomologist to see if it could be caused by the new drops. the specialists all came back with a no-not likely but wanted to be get up to date with whatever the primary care vet had to say. Dr. Woodburn was in surgery so we saw Dr. Gerity whom Tonka also really likes (she took care of him when he had the heart arrhythmia). She looked up his nose, checked all his vitals and had his blood pressure taken. Since Tonka had just been there the night before and had been fine the belief is that he has allergies that have caused rhinitis of his nose and has probably broken a blood vessel and when he sneezes it breaks open and bleeds. So she added to his on going medicine list two additional drops of the same steroid that goes in his eye but these two go up his nose. I also now carry a bottle of Epinephrine to use in case the bleeding will not stop.

Thursday morning came and Tonka got up and went outside to sleep on the back porch. When I went out to check on him I found him with bloody paws and a small puddle of blood in front of him. I cleaned him up and he laid his head back down to go to sleep. He came in later and wanted to go for a walk so we started off down the street and ran into his friend Marie who was coming up the street. He decided he wanted to walk with her so he turned and we headed back up towards the house. Once we got past the house he decided that it was best if we just turned and went home so that is what we did. Hopefully the medicine will start to work and this does not turn out to be anything other than a blood vessel.



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