Tumbleweed's BIG OUCH!

My poor POOH BEAR!
On Friday I came home from work and noticed a quatersize HOT SPOT on my dogs Tail! AHHH! She has very sensetive skin and come summer time when it is warm out (and BOY! it has be HOT HOT HOT! lately) she some times licks her legs and leave little dime size sores on her, which I can quickly heal with a little anitbiotic/neosporin cream and dry banages for a couple days...but NEVER has she done this to her tail... so we decided to put a cone on her head Friday night (AKA an Elizabethen Collar) to try to prevent it from worsening... Well by Sunday night it had grown to about the size of half a dollar bill or bigger.... AHHH! I was freaking out all weekend and she was just oh so miserable - I felt so bad for her - we all did (the family was over visiting all weekend) I tried to just comfort her and get her to drink lots of water...

So yesterday when I got Tumbleweed to the vet they shaved off about 6 inches of her tail and scrubbed it 3 times with Antiseptics and then put iodine on it and then they gave her a HUGE shot in her back of Cortisone and then put Hydro. cream on it and gave her Antibiotic shot and gave her Antibiotics to take home (2 a day) and cream to put on her (3 x’s a day) and benedril and showed me how to wrap a FULL size towel around her neck and THEN put a cone on her so she can’t get around the cone – he said because of her shape she was sneaking around her cone all weekend- AHHHH! - when I wasn’t looking of course – BAD SNEAKY GIRL! (or should I say SMART GIRL) So that is why it got so bad so quick– I ran threw all the things I was doing for her this weekend to make it better and dry it out, I couldn't understand why it kept ozing and bleeding - UGH! Her Doctor said I was being a good parent and did all the right things but she was undermining me…BAD GIRL! 186.00 dollars later we got to go home.... he told us that with the Cortisone shot (which will last about a week) she would be feeling better in about 4 hours - we left about 5:40 and by 8:30 she was smilling and beginning to wag her tail a little bit - that is the calmest and happiest I have seen her in about a week.... OH WHAT A RELIEF! I feel soooo much better now, know she feels a little better, I can now consentrate again... now I can only hope for a speedy recovery.

HOT SPOTS (defined by Dr Paulson) : begins with an ich that just doesn't go away - Like a BAD mosiquito bite on humans... the dog iches and scratches and chews never finding releif... the heat and humidity worsens and agravates it more... Heat and moisture also inables bacteria to grow...
HIS ADVISE FOR THE FUTURE: if your dog begins on one of these the best bet is to clean it, dry it well and put some cortaid (not neosporin- although that is good for cuts/scraps on your pup) on it and dry bandage it once or twice a day - or EVEN better keep nothing on it so it can air dry....over the counter benedril helps relieve the ich too....