Things that go lump in the night
Picture the scene. I'm at a dog show, I've just stacked Molly up (that's stood her properly) and she won't stand still. Now this alone should have alerted me - Molly was always as steady as a rock in the ring. Finally, I get her to settle and check all four legs are where they should be, only to look down at Mol's front leg and see a lump the size of half an egg!
Now I swear it wasn't there when I clipped her nails a few days before. So where did it come from? How fast is this thing growing? What is it?
To me it looked the size of a football, huge and frightening. That was it for the showing, concentration went out of the window, I just wanted to get home.
Next morning Mol and I were straight off to the vets to get this checked out. By now I'm convinced this is something really horrid and incurable, but Mol, just takes it all in her stride. On closer inspection at the surgery, the only clue we have is a very small, (Pepper Anne tooth sized to be exact) scar from an almost fully healed puncture wound near the lump. The vet tells me there's bone involved and looks bemused. Ok so he has seven years training and many, many years in practice but I have a hunch...
I'm convinced Pepper is behind this and we decide to x-ray to find out exactly what's going on. Strangely, Molly doesn't limp, doesn't appear to be in any pain and is happy to stand casually feet planted firmly on the floor for the vet.
The following day, the x-ray is carried out and the vet phones......
It's Osteomylitis. Osteomylitis is an infection in the bone that causes the bone to swell. My hunch was right, the small puncture wound was the result of a minor spat between my two girls some weeks earlier during which Pepper had managed to bite Molly down to the bone. Despite giving both a course of antibiotics after the spat, infection had got into the bone, had taken hold and the bone had begun to swell. Thankfully, treatment was relatively simple, a three week course of antibiotics and a week of anti-inflamatories. The bone miraculously shrank back to normal and left no trace of the lump.
Until Molly suffered Osteomylitis, I'd never heard of the condition. However a few weeks later a duck was featured on Pet Rescue suffering the same condition. Pepper was adamant that that one was not down to her!