Happy Easter! We had a nice day. My daughter Mona made Xena a doggy food Easter egg :o) We had visitors over.
About 2pm the girls noticed some lumps on Xena and told me about it. As it was only a couple I put it down to a new puppy food.
She played for about an hour with the girls then they came inside for dinner. After dinner I saw her through the glass door. Xena's eyes were swollen almost closed and her lips looked fat and ragged. Her ridge was looking weird and thick and standing up. Her body covered in lumps with red weeping eyes, red swollen ears and between her toes. She looked like a very sick dog. She didn't even look like a ridgeback, but more like a rabid pit bull. My youngest daughter took one look at her through the glass door and ran to the other room saying she was 'scared to look at her.'
I called an emergency vet and put her in the car. She was gasping and making wheezy/ rasping noises on the way.
I kept trying to comfort her at each traffic light we stopped at but she seemed confused. I noticed she was licking her back paw a lot.
We arrived at the vet. The vet discovered a bee stinger in her paw and a rough spot on her inner lip (possibly a second bee sting).
Xena was given antihistamines and steroids in her neck (! I wasn't in the room at the time and injections in ridgebacks necks are a no no and the vet kind of looked embarrassed and said opps, 'I only remembered not to give it in her neck after I started doing it.')
She gave me some emergency mediation in case Xena gets stung again. Xena is very allergic to bees.
I called my partner who told me to cut down the flowering plants in the yard and we joked about how much bigger Xena will be if she's going to be taking steroids all the time for allergies!
Poor Xena came home shaky, tired and dazed. I have put her in her kennel with lots of icy water and her dinner.
The vet cost $175 as it is a public holiday. I actually thought it it would cost more.
The eye swelling should be down in an hour but she will be a sick dog for about 3 days due to the severity of the allergic reaction.
Later I spoke to my partner again. He wondered if she would need to be put down. I reassured him it will be ok.
Even later in the evening he called me up and said that he had spoken to some of the guys up there, in the mining camp, over diner and one of them told him that he had a mastiff with the same problem years ago but it lived till it was 14 and was an excellent guard dog, probably the best dog he had ever had. He told my partner that yes it happened 3-4 times when he was a younger and he had to have its balls removed because it would be in so much pain it would bite him. But it didn't bite him after that. He also told him that dog was worth ever dollar he spent in the vet fees.
I don't know how true that is but even I wasn't sure today if Xena would bite me or not. She was in a lot of pain and very disoriented. She couldn't even lift her legs to get in the car and when I lifted her she cried out in pain and whimpered a lot.
But I did want her desexed. I know Gav wanted to breed her and never pushed the issue with him. You know, we will get to that issue when we come to it. But he brought it up tonight that this guy had said it was better to have her desexed so she wouldn't be so aggressive when it got bad. Then I said to him, which was the truth, that the vet had tentatively brought it up while I was there that because of this problem it would be better to have her desexed.
He asked me why she said it, was it because it can be passed to the puppies. I said I thought maybe it was because if it happened during the pregnancy and she had to have steroid shots etc... the puppies might get damaged anyway. I really don't know though.
But it is agreed. We will have her desexed THANK YOU GOD. I will take Xena back to her normal vet in a few days and work out whats the best way to deal with this allergy etc... and book her in to be fixed.
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