Wound care...advice?

[Deleted]

My 60-lb shep mix has a surface wound--like a dime-sized burst blister--on the outside of her thigh. I took her to the vet, who gave her an anti-inflammatory, and it's clearly not infected...but she keeps licking it.

I want to do everything I can to keep her from having to wear one of those radar collars, since she's the type to get stuck or simply knock everything over. Plus, they're so uncomfortable. I've tried bitter apple, doesn't work.

Any homespun and tried/true recipes for keeping the dog from licking the wound?

Thanks...

[bbird]

That's a toughy, because some dogs just lick lick lick! Can you spray some blue coat on it? That way even if she licks, the spray will stay on, and heal the wound? We use that antibiotic spray for all our animals and works great. From hog castration, to scratches on cats/dogs, we even had a chicken that tangled with some animal and its whole neck was open to the bone. We sprayed it down and left it to survive and it did! Of course went around looking like a blue chicken for a couple months but it works, lol.

[Deleted]

Let her lick it. She's keeping it clean and it will heal without any help from us hooomans. ;D I wouldn't put anything on it that I wouldn't want her to ingest, and you can't wrap her thigh, so just leave it alone. It'll be OK, honest.

My dogs have had their fair share of scrapes, cuts and gashes, and my first reaction is to try to doctor them, too, but it never works. They lick it until it's healed. I'm finally resigned to the fact that they really don't need my help with something like that, unless it's somewhere they can't reach - then I'll put wound salve on it.

~Lannie

[Deleted]

P.S. Not to say that there's anything wrong with the Blue Kote, Deb, 'cause I've never tried that. I assume it's okay to take internally? But I'd just let her deal with it and not worry about it.

~Lannie

[Kathy]

One thing to watch for is if you let her continue licking it she can develop what's called a licking granuloma. My beautiful, sweet Springer/Pointer mix developed a wound on the top of her front paw due to catching it on the barbed wire fence.

No infection, a number of vets visits and no way to keep her from licking it. It took almost 2 yrs but the wound got bigger and bigger until it affected the muscles and she became lame. This monsterous wound now was oozing and bleeding.
That just made matters worse and sadly the discussion between 3 vets who all knew this dog since she was 12 yrs old was she would not get better & the suggestion was to euthanize her.
We gave it another couple of months and a lot of herbal/holistic attempts but it was too far gone. September 19, 2004 we had her euthanized.

So licking to a point is ok, but watch that it doesn't get out of control.

[Deleted]

Thanks Deb, Lannie and Kathy (and congrats on the pup, Deb!)

We're thinking it might be a granuloma, but since that wound popped up a large tag mole she's always had is suddenly three times the size, and engorged with blood. My dog is springing leaks everywhere. And, upon inspection, I found a bump that feels nothing like a bug bite, and I think she needs one more check by the vet.

I picked up a collar for her, and I think I am going to pick up some Blue Kote (handy to have anyway). Poor baby's miserable.