Take it to the Max!
Created | Updated Jan 13, 2009
Back to the Vet
Max had made a good recovery after his 'tutoring' operation on the Monday, so by Saturday we felt he was able to manage a walk down to the local grassy square. It's fenced in all round so makes a great safe play area to chase balls and do some training in an outdoor environment. I threw the ball for Max, he gleefully lolloped after it, and then lay down to give it a bit of a chew. When I went to reach for the ball, I noticed two strange lumps on the side of his neck. They were a bit smaller than golf balls, and seemed slightly squidgy. We joked that it looked like he was trying to regrow his own balls, but in the wrong place - but in reality we were worried. Lumps can mean cancer, but we didn't want to panic until we'd done some research and had them checked by the vet. We went straight home where I got on the internet and Dai got on the phone to the vet. Being a Saturday night the clinic wasn't open, but there was an out of hours advice-by-phone service, as well as an emergency surgery session on the Sunday morning.
Lumps, and the Variety thereof
I wasn't having a great deal of joy with my Googling - it seemed too long at six days to have been a reaction to any medication he'd had earlier in the week, although it could have been infected stitches causing his lymph glands to swell. I posted a help message on the Weimaraner sites that I'm a member of, since I'd seen reference to fatty lumps being something that breed is susceptible to. Could he have been bitten or scratched by something? Was it a blood vessel or something swelling after the burst of exertion chasing footballs? Or was it something more serious. We tried not to panic, and made an appointment to go to the Sunday morning surgery.
Saturday night at my place was a bit of a mad-house - daughter had a few of her stage school chums staying over, so the 'bunch of Nancies' as I referred to them took our minds off things as they passed critical comment on I'd Do Anything, and ordered pizza. Sunday morning was a bit of a dash around too - I had to make a packed lunch for the Nancies, run them into Belfast in the big car, then get back in time to take Max to the vet for his 9 o'clock appointment.
The vet was very pleasant, but uttered those words you don't really want to hear: "Gosh, I wonder what that is!". He managed to extract some pus liquid from the lumps to send off for analysis, and gave poor old Maxi yet more antibiotic injections. The results came back as some sort of infection - probably from the tow path where I like to walk him. It's quite overgrown so there's lots of prickly bushes and brambles, plus it's used as a hang out by the local teenagers, who are friendly enough as we pass them, but goodness only knows what they leave behind in their litter. Hopefully as he gets older he'll be a bit more careful about what he puts in his mouth.
Colitis
The lumps disappeared over the course of a week, and we were really enjoying the sunny spring weather we were having - the local woods were carpeted in bluebells, and I was looking forward to a good long walk on the Bank Holiday. I told Max to not wake me too early! But at 1 am he was barking madly, so I had to get up to see what was wrong. As I approached the utility room where he sleeps, I could smell that something was very wrong! And it took me some time to clean up. The things we do, eh? He couldn't go back into his crate, so I slept with him on the sofa, taking him outside every time he needed to 'go', which seemed to be every two hours, and was very liquid when anything did happen. We tried the usual 'starve for 24 hours' approach, but when this didn't improve the situation it was back to our friendly vet, who pronounced the problem to be colitis. (At least he knew what it was this time, so we could research away to our hearts' content). The medication seemed to work quickly, though we took it in turns to be on rapid response duty on the sofa when he woke in the middle of the night. Touch wood he appears now to be back to his usual bouncy self - however, I haven't had much chance to work on his training - no doubt our local Dog Whisperer will tell me off in his inimitable fashion when we get back to class!
