Young Willie Female with Abscess (Need Advice)

[Chief 9]

People I need to pick your BRAIN! I have a young female that has had an abscess for about 3 months. When it first appeared I gave her pnc. shots for about a week and soaked it with epsom salt, it started to drain but swelled back up quickly. I then took her to my vet and we agreed she had some foriegn object inside her chest so he operated and found nothing. She spent the next 6 weeks at the vets on several different medications and getting flushed out daily. I finally got to take her home, still on medication for 2 weeks, still draining but no abscess. The vet told me that if she still was draining after the antibiotics we would just wait and see. She has been off the antibiotics for about 3 weeks and yesterday she abscessed again but it was further up her chest than before, about the size of a baseball. Since I brought her home from the vet I have been cleaning the area with peroxide and putting neosporin on her, twice a day. Would appreciate some good advice on what I can do for this female before I have to put her down.

[JesandDeb]

Did vet do a biopsy? I have seen breast cancer in beagles many times. Just a thought....

[yellowdog]

i had to have cancer cut out of a hound about 4 years agao..i would reccomend a biopsy just to make sure...hows the rest of the crew doin?..pm me your address too please...tracy

[warddog]

If this is draining puss then it probably is not a cancer tumor. Is this abcess actually in the females chest or on one of her breast? Is it a hard knot or kind of spongey? Did the Vet lance it to drain or did it eventually burst open and drain on it's own.

[Chuck Terry]

There is a product called Granulex V that really seems to work well on open wounds. Spray it one to two times a day. It "boils" like peroxide but does not irritate the surounding tissue and really seems to aid healing. It is probably healing from the outside in and creating a pocket which encourages infection. Have you or the vet tried packing the wound with a "wick" and removing an inch or so per day as it heals (from the inside out)? Of course, the penicillin (or other antibotic) probably needs to be continued until the wound closes. I definitely would not put her down yet - even if it means a second vet lancing or whatever. Good luck and best wishes!

[Chief 9]

Wardog, this is in the middle of her chest, about 4" long about the size of a baseball. It is hard all around and soft in the middle. MRI has showed infection in the Breast Bones, can't find any antibiotics to cure it. Vet says there is a foriegn object inside he can't locate. Today she is having trouble walking, alot of pain. I have been dealing with this for 3 months, back again using epsom salt and pnc. trying to get it to bust open. Wondering if it will ever heal doing this or is there something else I can do?

[warddog]

I asked the questions to see if we were actually talking about an abcess or a tumor and if it was in the breast itself and not mastitis in a teat. It appears by how you explain it that it is an abcess that keeps coming back so there has to be some type of foriegn object stuck there somewhere. I had a Plott coon/bear hound that I got off my uncle in Michigan numerous years ago that loved porcupines and would quit any track he was on to kill one. He had an abcess that would reoccur like that. This abcess was right above his left eye and ear that would swell up the size of a softball, I'd lance it to drain it, heal it up only to have it come back over and over again. I took this dog to the Vet numerous times but he could not find the problem. The last time I took him the Vet said lets keep him and do surgery so we can open this area up completely to see if we can find what is causing thios to happen. Well when he did he found a piece of a porcupine quill that had embedded into the skull bone that was causing the infection. My uncle had told me about him LOVING the porkies and how he would come back into them so full of quills he looked like he had one in his mouth. I figured he should be a great coon hound as we had no bear or porcupines in Indiana to run and I wouldn't have any problems with quills. Your dog may have something lodged into the breast bone that is causing the area to abcess and not allowing it to totally get rid of the source of the infection.

[JCM]

A piece of wood, like a broke off stick, or a thorn, usually won't show up in an X-ray. It sounds to me like she ran something deep into the chest cavity. I agree with wardog, that probably the only way to find the problem is exploratory surgery. There must be something in there causing the continual infection. In our area, Honey Locust thorns get buried sometimes and cause problems like this. Good luck with this. It sounds to me like a big vet bill at best.

[beagle_rescue_guy]

If this is draining puss then it probably is not a cancer tumor. Is this abcess actually in the females chest or on one of her breast? Is it a hard knot or kind of spongey? Did the Vet lance it to drain or did it eventually burst open and drain on it's own.

I know this is old, but it's useful information as your response is not entirely true. As a tumor grows, it releases hormones that develop local blood supplies to nourish the cancerous tissue. If the tissue is growing faster than the blood supply is developing, it is not uncommon to develop a hard exterior with a puss filled center. What the abscess is, is actually the original tissue of the tumor, which did not have enough nourishment to stay healthy. It has died and created a necrotic center that is basically just the body's way of decomposing the old tissue.

I do hope your dog ended up doing ok.