Bad Mama

So yesterday Angela noticed that Bluebonnet had been scratching on the right side of her head a lot. When she got home last night she went over to Blue to look where she was scratching just out of curiosity. She called me over and showed me that Blue had scratched down to the skin - the patch was about the size of a nickel. Of course, I freaked out because I didn't know what was wrong with my baby. Angela held Clementine while I laid Blue down on the floor and cleaned the dirty, matted area with peroxide then put some Benadryl cream on it so that she would hopefully stop scratching it. It looked like maybe she was bitten by something but it was a flat wound, not a bump that would indicate a bite. I had to give her big beef jerky dog chew to distract her from scratching. I showed it to Kris as soon as he got home and we gave her a pink Benadryl pill to help her sleep and stop the itching. We also bandaged up her back right paw so she couldn't scratch the wound with her nails.

Kris took her to the vet this morning and they said it was a hot spot. I've never heard of this before. Apparently she was poked or bitten by something and the blood and other secreted fluids caused the hair to get matted. She scratched and scratched til the matted hair was pulled out and thus irritated the wound. The vet gave her a cortisone shot and reprimanded us for bandaging up her paw as we did it a little tight and could have caused her paw to swell up. I was relieved to get the call from Kris on his way home from the vet. I feel like a really bad doggie mama since the web article says that hot spots could also be caused by dead hair trapped next to the skin. I haven't been brushing her us much as I should and might be the cause of her latest ailment.

Poor Bluebonnet has had it pretty rough with her constant yeast overgrowths in her ear which we've now gotten under control with frequent Novalsan flushes, that bite she had on her snout when she was a puppy, the weird bump on her paw that we had removed and the seemingly benign bump on her back. She's so young to have all these health issues come up and I blame myself for not taking better care of her.