Swollen, originally uploaded by punquin.
It’s always something! About a month ago, Benny had two trips to the vet over a yeast infection in his ear. The second one was to switch medicines – the first one caused a lot of irritation.
This weekend, some pink on Benny’s lip caught my eye. He’s always had black lips. Sunday morning it caught my eye again and I took a closer look. His upper lip was swelling and cracking apart to show pink, sore flesh. By evening, it was swollen to the point that his teeth were catching on it and making it bleed. I called the vet this morning and got an appointment set up for when I usually head in to work.
The vet agreed with my guess – he is having an allergic reaction. But, we can’t figure out what is causing it. He didn’t eat anything but his food this weekend. Because of the storm, he didn’t have any unsupervised outdoor time – just leashed walks. Hmm. It was slightly less swollen than the night before because he was asleep and not messing with it. But, it’s still bad. The vet gave him a shot of allergy meds and gave mesome prescription allergy meds to give him.
I also mentioned that his ears were still smelling yeasty and that I was loosing the battle at keeping them clean. Turns out he now has yeast infections in BOTH ears. Great. So, he has a new medicine that he gets in his ears 2 times a day and we have to go back for a re-check in 10 days. If they are not 100% clear, we’ll need to treat them with a more aggressive medicine. He has such heavy, floppy ears that stay really warm inside. Combine that with the humid, swampy weather and you have yeast heaven.
He is supposed to be tired from the shot, but I don’t think it’s really kicked in yet.
Owww – Yeasty ears AND painful lips. Poor puppy.
Hope he gets better soon.
I seem to remember from working at the clinic that allergies and ear infections in dogs are commonly related… did that by any chance come up?
Yep. We are going to see if both things are cleared up with treatment. If not, then we have to look into his food or other possible allergens. I hope I don’t have to change his food! Almost everything makes him sick.
DOOOOOOD!! your dog is like a lemon or something, take him back and get your money back!! heh. All kidding aside, you are right “it is always something”, I dont think I’ve known him to go for more than a 2 month period without having anything pop up and cause some sort of illness. I hope he gets well soon.