My dog is really unwell- any thoughts?

[SirVixofVixHall]

My dog (two and a half) spend a day with a friend on Friday as we had to be in the city for the day. She had two long walks, seemed fine when she got home and yesterday morning. Early evening yesterday a friend called round with my dog's great pal, another young terrier. They played like mad and then my friend offered to take Vixdog out for a short walk with hers. While on the walk friend noticed Vixdog limping, by the time she got her back to us she was limping badly. My friend is very caring and careful, she hadn't noticed any sudden movement or squeak, or anything that might have led to the limp. At first we thought maybe she'd just had too much walking the day before, perhaps her paw was sore, perhaps her muscles etc. As the evening wore on she really looked in pain and wouldn't eat, so we took her to the OOH vet. He gave a painkiller jab, and thought she might need an x-ray on Monday. This morning her whole foot was badly swollen, and she looked really unwell and in pain- straight back to the OOH vet (we saw a different vet on call) who was baffled. She has a really high temperature, so she's had antibiotics, and more painkillers. The foot is hot and swollen, she is panting and her eyes look sticky and dull. Both vets (and DH and I) have looked gently all over the foot and there is no obvious puncture wound. It is a mystery- anyone had anything similar? We are in a rural area and she did briefly wade in the river as it runs into the sea yesterday. I wondered about Weever fish, but they are normally further out, and she surely would have squealed and swollen up right away? Vet asked if a cat could have bitten her, that is a no. An adder bite would have made her very ill very quickly. Spider? Anything else? I am really worrying, she isn't getting out of bed at all and looks very unhappy.

No advice at all but so sorry that your poor dog is still suffering , has the vet suggested an MRI or are you waiting to see how things progress ?

Wait and see. It is out-of hours today, so we will have to see how she is over the next few days. I live in a remote-ish rural area, so any scan would need to be done at a big vet hospital anyway. We have to keep her as quite as possible , avoid noise or any stimulation/excitement, and not walk her other than for a wee. She was very stressed yesterday and didn't look right when she came back from the vet, then her doggie friend came to play and she got over excited, the vet thinks it could all have just been too much and triggered the fits- but three in such a short time is very bad, obviously. I had a friend years ago who had a dog with epilepsy, and he was on very strong drugs, unhappy, doped up and brain damaged from all the fits, and I silently felt that it would have been kinder to have had him pts. Now I am terrified that we will be in that position with my beautiful
girl. She is a really clever and active dog. . I am really frightened that she will keep fitting, as we have no idea why it is happening.

Not that it probably makes any difference to the treatment but are they sure it was an adder bite and not a jelly fish , not sure how close to the sea your dog was , as there was another incident in June of a dog that had terrible sores after coming into contact with a dead jelly fish in Pembroke .

Definitely adder not jellyfish. It happened in woodland.

How is she today ?

She hasn't had another seizure yet. She isn't quite herself, in a way it's hard to put my finger on, but she is reasonably relaxed. We have to watch her constantly which is in itself horribly stressful. I keep expecting her to keel over. Yesterday I really thought she was going to die choking on her own saliva, I am still so full of adrenalin I can't calm down. It is just watch and wait now, and then talk to the vet again tomorrow. She is booked in for another bandage change on Tues, but I don't want another sedation until we know what is going on. Yet she needs bandage changes or she could get an infection. Catch 22.

Aw it must be so stressful,fir all of you x

notapizza, thank you. Am v stressed, its true. Have also posted specifically about the fitting for more traffic and in case someone has some relevent experience with seizures.

Poor dog :( hope she's ok could the fits not be a delayed thing, from the bite. As from reading it seemed like they came when the pain meds and antihistamines were stopped?

Hope pooch is feeling better today.

She is stable, still not had another fit. I don't know about a delayed reaction- I'll talk to the vet about that. I feel very bad about it as before the first episode a friend had called in with her very bouncy young dog who is VixDog's good pal. They were playing but then had a little spat, I could see Vix dog was still not right from the anaesthetic, and I should have asked my friend to leave but I didn't want to be rude. The vet felt that maybe it had all been too much, all that stimulation and the stress of the quarrel, while she was still not fully over being anaesthatised. I now feel so guilty that I didn't just say to my friend that it wasn't a great time to call in. Vixdog hadn't seen any of her friends for weeks and I suppose I half thought it might cheer her up. We are going to talk to our more senior vet today and see what she thinks, and try and get hold of someone with a lot of experience of snake bites. I think DH might call the Royal Vet College and see if they can suggest anyone else we or our vet should talk to. I don't want to have her put under again tomorrow until we have some idea what could have been the trigger.

Is there no way of doing the dressing without sedation or just a bit of diazepam to relax her .

We will ask, but last time they tried it she got so terribly distressed that the next time they had to knock her out again. I think the raw bits are very painful, and she is a highly sensitive sort of dog who hates being messed with anyway, and so panics, flails about and screams. The huge amount of stress it would cause her to not sedate her might be equivalent to the stress of sedation. So hard to judge. Two years ago, when she was a smallish puppy, she started drooling excessively and frothing, after a sedation. They haven't given her that specific drug since, but the one she's been having is a related drug. Although she has had it many times now over the past few weeks and Friday was the first seizure. We are still waiting to speak to our vet, she's busy doing a surgery.

How did it go today ?

Better than expected thank you Floral. DH stayed with her, we normally leave her there, but the vet wanted to try without sedation so he was able to be with her. The vet tried some accupuncture which really seemed to help calm her down just enough for the bandages to be re-done. She was certainly far better coming home, her normal self, which she hadn't been on Friday. We are still all very anxious about the possibility of another seizure, but she seems much her normal self at the moment so we're just keeping her quiet and calm.

That's good then , is the wound looking better ?

There are lots of different wounded areas, she had areas die off on her leg, so although the bite was on her toes, she has raw patches on the top of her foot and on the leg. I've only seen the ones on the foot, and they look like raw meat, they are bloody rather than dry. They have a looser dressing on them this time to allow more air flow. I think they are another few weeks off being alright. Such a long time for one small bite. It is all a bit of a shock. She can't have her normal walks or anything.

Just seen this Vix, and wanted to share our experience. We have a Golden Retriever who was bitten (we believe adder bite too) about 4 years ago. No where near as severe a reaction as youve had, possibly due to the size of dog, but his leg was huge, he was generally unwell and it took about 2 months for the wound to start healing properly. However, the fitting thing happened with us too and started about a month or so after the bite.
Our vet couldnt come to a clear conclusion as to what caused the fitting, but we do think it was a combination of drugs and possibly a conflicting reaction to his rabies vaccination which hed had only a few weeks prior to the bite. (Hes passported and has travelled extensively!)

Our Goldie had irregular fits for around 9 months. There were no specific triggers (stress, exercise, diet etc) and we do wonder if we missed a few during the night as he sleeps in the kitchen. But we would get a 3 minute warning one was about to happen as hed come flying into the room to be near us and tuck himself up against our legs and then the fit would start. He was terrified poor thing and occasionally hed defacate during the seizure.

The vet didnt want to start him on anti seizure medication until he was having several fits a week on a regular basis. They then stopped as randomly as they started, and he hasnt had one for 3 years. I think it will always remain a mystery. It went on too long to be a direct result of the bite, but they can be easily overloaded with drugs and we do tend to over vaccinate our animals compared to other countries. So we do think it was a drug interaction of one sort or another.

Hes absolutely fine now. No long term damage/effects whatsoever and I m just carefull to ensure his rabies vaccination is done at the max distance, 6 months, from his normal annual vaccinations. If we didnt travel so much, I may have cut down on vaccines, but he has been fine since his last one.

Do hope your boy is doing well, hes really been through it hasnt he, so am sending loads of good wishes.

PS We're experts on ticks! We get loads of them every year in France and on the whole theres never been any adverse reaction, just a small swelling where the bite is. The first time we experienced them, we took the dog to a local french vet to remove it as we didnt have a clue as to what we should do, and he was great. Showed us a technique using olive oil, (you cover the whole tick and it then cant breathe through its body so releases its grip a tad to pop its head out) and gave us a tool to twist and remove. We ve now removed loads ourselves and honestly a normal harmless tick bite should only leave the tiniest of swellings. Any larger swelling or spreading of swelling, or whats called a bullseye reaction (thats a red circle surrounding the bite) should seek veterinary help as soon as possible (days, not neccesarily hours). The same with humans. Any adverse swelling, spreading or bullseye reaction, please see a GP asap. Lymes disease can be easily treated by antibiotics if picked up within the first week or so after the bite.

Chris that is very interesting. The same time scale of fits starting. The venom can cause neurological problems, so I wonder if the combination of the effects of venom plus the effects of many drugs at once including, in our case, multiple sedations, could just be too much. Or possibly it is simply an effect of the venom, which takes time to resolve? Thank you for posting your experience, it is heartening to know that your dog is well now. I am terrified of losing our dog, she is so young , and so lively . Just a darling. So it is helpful to hear that your dog had regular fits for a while but has been fine.
oh re ticks- if there is Lyme disease is your area, then the current advice is not to use the established method of suffocating the tick in oil or vaseline. The key thing is to avoid any stressor on the tick, as under stress they regurgitate their stomach contents and this massively increases the risk of them passing on the bacteria that cause Lyme. So using a tick card, or very carefully grasping the tick firmly at the neck with tweezers, is the way to avoid this. There is a short film you can watch that is helpful, I'll try and find the link. ( We have Lyme here, and a friend's daughter has it, and has been badly affected, so I am absolutely paranoid about ticks!!).

Wow, thanks for that Vix, Im certainly going to lay off the olive oil now, I really didnt know that. Gosh.

Hope vixdog is doing ok this week, just going back to the seizures. Our vet at the time said he would probably have them for life, and they would possibly just get more and more frequent and thats when you weigh up the balance between frequency and seizure medication which is powerful stuff.

He just stopped having them. No rhyme nor reason to it. We didnt change diet or anything else about his routine/care, they just stopped. Keeping my fingers crossed for you, the wound care at the dirty end of the dog is a nightmare, will he let you wrap a plastic bag round it to go out toileting etc?

Yes, she's in a plastic bag to go for walks outside. She has damaged area on the top of her toes, and then running up the leg. She has a very loose bandage now, to allow air to get to the damage, the ones on the toes are looking better than a few days ago, the ones on the leg are larger, and look worse than the patches on the toes. DH and I managed to re-bandage her at home last night, without a squeak of protest, it involved many small cubes of cheese!! She saw the vet this morning for a general check-over. The vet said that she might not have another seizure, although it is early days and as we don't know for sure what the trigger was, there is no way of knowing. We have to carry on not leaving her alone etc -She's hardly ever at home alone anyway, but she does normally sleep in the sitting room, so DH is still going to sleep in there with her.

As her wounds improve there is a plethora of boots and the like that you can spend your money on. I know from bitter experience with my accident prone spaniel.

Chris that makes such sad reading about your dog and his seizures. Glad he has made a full recovery.

Boots- I'm hoping she won't need one, as it looks as though the foot will heal before the leg. She is very much missing her walks but she mustn't get sand or mud into the damaged areas obv.

I've posted on my other, seizure specific thread too- Update, no seizures all week, and then suddenly two more this morning, the second one worse than the first, much like last weekend. She was hyper for a while but has calmed down somewhat, although not as calm as you might imagine given that she's had two doses of Diazepam over the morning.