"I know you probably think I'm nuts, but I swear there was something hanging out of her butt last night."That's how I started off my week yesterday. I told you when my car battery died again the week before last that it was only a matter of time before something else expensive broke. I'm sure you all thought I was just being pessimistic at the time, but I wasn't. I was speaking from experience. When one thing breaks in my life, something else tends to follow. This time the something else turned out to be my dog's butt.
Sunday night I took the dogs out for what I call "the last call of the night," i.e. the last bathroom trip before bed. Normally, it's a quick in and out trip, but it wasn't this time thanks to Bella. She was taking an unusually long time to relieve herself. My first thought was, "Great, she is either constipated or has diarrhea. Either way, I'm probably going to have to bathe her again." I had just gotten through bathing her a few hours before. I really did not want to do it again, especially at midnight.
When Bella finally came to the door, she was waddling and attempting to tuck her stub tail between her legs, a task that's not all that easy considering her tail ends a good three or four inches above her legs. Her canine impersonation of Howard the Duck only furthered my suspicions that she was suffering from some form of digestive upset. Stopping her before she could clean her dirty rear end on the carpet, I lifted up her tail, saw she had what I thought was feces still stuck to her behind, and muttered a few words that were equally as dirty. I then ordered her upstairs. After ignoring the first few "Tub! Now!" commands, Bella begrudgingly went upstairs and let me put her in the tub. (Translation: After realizing that I could see her hiding behind the toilet, she came out, stood in front of the tub, locked her legs, and growled while I lifted her up and over the side.)
That's when my stressful night truly began. The "feces" would not wash off. After about five minutes of trying to rinse Bella chasing Bella around the tub with the shower head and wetting only the walls and floor, I gave up and turned her butt around to the light. As it turns out, it wasn't a misguided turd at all; it was something red, wet, and bloody.
About six years ago, Bella had a bout of hemorrhagic gastroenteritis, which, in layman's terms, means that she started crapping what looked like strawberry jelly and had to be pumped full of fluids and antibiotics at the emergency vet. Consequently, anytime Bella has anything remotely bloody looking coming out of that end of her body, I freak out. Then I go on the Internet, read a lot of worst case scenarios, and freak out even more.
So of course I started freaking out Sunday night. I started imagining everything that could be wrong with her--hemorrhoids, an infected anal gland, colon cancer, an alien being from the planet Zircon slowly making its way out of her intestines. The more I freaked out, the more she and Bailey both glared at me. They weren't freaking out, and I don't even think Bella was in that much pain. She just wanted to go to bed, but I wouldn't let her because I was too busy examining her butt every five minutes.
When we finally did go to bed, I barely slept. I mostly alternated tossing and turning with checking the comforter for blood. As illogical as this may sound, I was scared that Bella would end up bleeding to death at the end of the bed while I slept. When morning finally rolled around, Bella was in a bad mood. I was in a bad mood, and the weird, red, bloody thing was MIA.
Which brings me to the quote at the beginning of this post. It's bad enough having to take your dog to the vet when she has something hanging out of her butt. It's even worse when you take her and the thing that was hanging out has mysteriously disappeared into thin air. Luckily for me, the vet eventually found the thing. Unluckily for Bella, the way she found it was with a latex glove and some petroleum jelly. Ouch.
Diagnosis: Bella has a polyp right at the opening to her anus. It may have to be surgically removed in a few months if it doesn't shrink on its own and sent off to a lab to be tested for cancer.
Diagnosis #2: Bella has a yeast infection all over her body, thanks to allergies from hell. The vet said that normally when she checks the slide for yeast (the slide was first rubbed against a hot spot), she is lucky if she sees one or two spots of yeast. In Bella's case, the slide was covered with yeast cells. As a result, Bella will have to take antifungal meds twice a day for a month to clear up the infection.
Diagnosis #3: Bella may be the world's first bubble dog. Okay, that wasn't the official diagnosis. The official one was more along the lines of Bella is uber-allergic, like I didn't know that one already. Per doctor's orders, I must spend the next few weeks trying various allergy meds--Claritin, Zyrtec, and Chlor-Trimeton--on Bella to see if any of them work better than Benadryl at controlling her symptoms. We tried Claritin yesterday. The vet said to give her the adult dose. I did, and it knocked her out for hours. When she finally woke up, she wobbled around and looked stoned for the rest of the day. This is your dog...This is your dog on drugs...
Today we tried half the adult dosage and, also per doctor's orders, an all-over shaving. As you can see from these pics, Bella still isn't too happy about the latter.
You can also see how inflamed her skin is. I'm supposed to give her regular baths with antibacterial shampoo until the antifungal meds run out and spray her with something called Calm Gel twice a day. If her skin hasn't improved by then, I'm looking at a big bill for allergy tests, allergy shots, and a possible move to the middle of the desert.
Diagnosis #4: Wallet-drainitis, better known as Staci will be spending a lot of money at the vet over the next few months. I think that might be the most depressing diagnosis of all.
