The American Beagler Forum

This week we found a large ball like growth on my dutchess female about the size of a golf ball. It was located at the lower front rib cage. the vet looked at it and was suprised she was not running a fever.After drawing some fluid out of it with a needle she found that it was a abcess and not a tumor which I had feared. dutchess just turned four years old this week
this is a first for me, we will have t keep her down for a few weeks but the vet says she should be running this fall.

Has anyone else had anything like this before and what did you do for it.

Mike Dean

I had a female develope the same thing under her throat, the vet took fluid from it several times and in time it went away.

An abcess is quite common in animals and are usually due to some type of foreign matter penetrating the skin and or muscle tissue. Usually they are something that is not critical and they tend to burst open and drain on their own over a period of time. I've seen dogs and other animals that have had thorns, briars, rusty pieces of fence wire, nails, bailing wire etc that had punctured the skin and healed over only to have an abcess develope. This is the bodies way of fighting off the infection. If I get concerned about it I normally stick (lance) the abcess with a needle to drain the pus, then clean it out good with Hydrogen Peroxide and then apply some topical antibiotic ointment or blue spray. You could also give oral antibiotics to help prohibit further infection.