My Puppy Helga is a 3 m/o doberman. She is very active and got her head caught in a lattice. I think she put her head in to grab hold of some thing, but it would not come out. The lattice is just a series of squares that act as a fence between my dogs and my vegetable garden.

She must have struggled to pull her head out for a while and some how freed herself. I am guessing this by the scars on both her ear's back side.

Anyway, the top of her head right down to where her neck joins her shoulder blades was swollen up and I took her to the vet. The vet gave some anti inflamatory shots and we waited for 2 days. Swelling did not go down by much.

My vet put a syringe into the bump and drew out two syringe full of clear bloody fluid. The swelling went down marginally.

a few more days pass, I call my vet and she says it might take a long time to go down. Not satisfied I took her to an other vet and he gave her a shot right in the bump afer drawing out some more fluid. I think the shot was called thrombophob (not sure). The bump goes down a bit more.

A few more days pass, and I take her to the government veternary research institute to have her head xrayed/scanned. Result, NO Boney Leision involved. That is good news as my 2nd vet suspected Osteomalities (spelling???) .

Right now the situation is that she has a bump on her head , much smaller than what it was. But there is a bump and it is not going down.

My puppy is active as ever, eats well, plays well and even puts her head into the same lattice. We have shut it up with wire mesh since.

My questions are

1) Is it normal for such bumps to take so long to go down
2) Any of you have experience with bumps like that
3) What further action would you suggest


Ram

How about a picture if you can?

In my limited experiences with being hit on the noggin it can take weeks to sometimes years depending on the severity. My ex had a rather interesting head lump for at least 8 years after his little sister hit him with a bar stool.

My inherited dog I had years ago had a lump for his entire life after he got clipped in the head by a sledge as a 4 month old. That head injury nearly killed him though. I'm thinking your puppy's isn't in that bad of shape.

Hi Ram-

The head has tremendous blood supply, good for healing. Plus the puppy is young at 12 wks, in a few months she will have remodeled her entire body, be almost an entirely new dog, just in the process of growing.
"Tincture of time", in other words just wait, I suspect it will all resolve.

Here are some pictures. Hope this helps in seeing the problem. the last one with Kaiser was taken a month back when she did not hurt herself.

http://img409.imageshack.us/i/img1202.jpg/
http://img256.imageshack.us/i/img1201wl.jpg/
http://img256.imageshack.us/i/img1200kw.jpg/
http://img409.imageshack.us/i/img1139.jpg/

There isn't really any treatment that I know of -- and every time someone sticks a needle in there, you have the possibility of injecting bacteria under the skin and causing an abcess.
The young heal so very fast, I suspect you'll have a good outcome with this.

Ramachandran,I really don't know about these things, but what came to mind was warm compress, to ease the blood flow. I see boxer and even us when we get a bump we put cold an is in ice, to stop it from swelling, after that we treat the area with warm compress. Good luck, Dan

Dan has a great idea IMO

The doctors finally diagnosed it as brusitis (spelling??) and no malformation of the skull . They said that it could be removed surgically. I was a bit hesitant as my puppy is too young . So decided to wait and see for a week. The doctor also said that it is not a life threatning situation and we can wait and watch.

VERY HAPPY to report that the swelling is going down with medicines.

Will kepp you posted . Thanks for the support

Ram