Poor Lily's abscess

After Lily had been sheared it was pretty obvious she was sporting a pretty large abscess on her right jaw. We felt so bad that we had not noticed it before, but were pleased we go down the route of "all off" during the shearing process, whereas some breeders like to keep a fuller fleecy face, in which case goodness knows when we would have spotted it. First trip was our main stop in Montoro, Andres the vet. He was happy for us to treat it ourselves having contacted a few good friends on the web, that have dealt with the same problem. It's great we can always help each other out when need be, with advice and words of comfort, and also exactly what prescription and dose you will need.

We began all precisely, measuring the abscess so we could see if it was growing. However after aproximatley three days the abscess had already burst. The injections were awful for her. Lily has a bit of a mite problem and is very used to being handled, and I think secretly rather enjoys it. She does little sighs as Alan puts cream on the backs of her legs, although gives him a little airey spit when he touches up her eye brows! She is not so keen on that. The fluid in the injections was rather thick, so we had to use a thicker needle that we would have prefered, it was so difficult to push through the syringe, it was really upsetting her, poor Lily. After a few days we began penning her into a smaller area to help her feel more secure and stop her leaping about quite so much, which it did help a little.

So aproximately three days after the treatment started, we noticed blood on her face, so we knew immediatly the abscess had burst, we then had to ensure all the horrible stuff was out. This was rather like a scene from the TV show Embarrasing illnesses, which is not to be watched whilst eating dinner. As we had read about, the abscess was full of a cream cheese type of matter. Good ole Alan is not queasy about anything like that, well strangely enough, apart from dog poo haha. He set about squeezing, whilst I cuddled, I cuddled Lily that is, not Alan, just to clear that up in your mind. Well Alan squeezed and pressed, and Lily was a star, I guess she was already starting to feel better! We had to then flush out the "hole" with betadine, then apply an antibiotic cream, and finally spray her with an insecticide. The last thing we needed were flies to strike in there. Well the treatment went completely to plan, thank goodness, and now a few weeks on you can hardly see a mark on here. Thank goodness, we shall certainly be more vigilant in looking for lumps and bumps in future!

Lily before treatment, and on the mend!