Persistent Seroma?

[stori]

Around two to three weeks ago my boyfriend and I acquired a second dog from an uncle who is going through some tough times. We took her in to care for her until he can get back on his feet. She (Summer) is a 6-7 year old full size Akita. I also have another dog who is much younger. She (Autumn) is 9-10 month old miniature sheltie mix.

The first night that we had both dogs we got careless for single moment and Autumn slipped out of our sight. In any case we had an incident where Summer went after Autumn. She followed her into the bedroom and then put her mouth to her back and picked her up off the ground. It all happened so fast we weren't sure how it all happened. But after the incident we saw that Autumn was bleeding from both her shoulder and her neck. She had one very small puncture wound on her neck and a larger one on her right shoulder just below her shoulder blade. We immediately took her to the vet where they cleaned, shaved, and provided medication.

We watched the wound until it closed up, but a few days later a ball began to protrude on her shoulder. We took her back to the vet. They drained it and said that it was not infected and were not sure exactly what was going on. They just told us to watch it and if it comes back to bring her back to the vet. We waited some time to see if the medication would work but alas, it hasn't.

Once again, the very next morning it was back and bigger than it was before. We took her to the vet a third time and at this point they deemed it as a Seroma. They drained it prescribed more antibiotics and anti inflammatory.

It has now been another week of medication and the bump is still there (about the size of a golf ball). It does not hurt her at all. What I am concerned most about is that she now has what feels like another bump forming on her other shoulder in the same place but much much smaller. It is not hard and just feels like it is fluid.

What im wondering is if there is any chance that this could resolve on its own? We have exasperated so much money the past few weeks trying to get this fixed and am really looking for more answers. Everytime we have taken her to the vet they have just drained it and prescribed the same medication again. It doesn't seem to bother her at all. She's running around and playing like she always has. I'm just very worried that this could be something more serious with the second bump appearing.

[minimomma]

My dog had the same thing. When they drained the bump- what came out? Blood came out of my dogs lump it was from a blood vessel that had a hard time closing. You can tell your vet to put tubes in this helps the process. Our bump went away after a couple of weeks. Our bump started out the size of a grapefruit.

[bendyfoot]

Jaida had a bigtime seroma issue after her surgery last summer. We tried treating it by draining it (either with a syringe/needle or manually through an opening in the stitches) and also by keeping a pressure bandage on the area for about a week and a half. It helped, but didn't fully resolve the problem. We ended up having to insert a drain, and it healed up a few days later. You don't want it to last too long...warm, wet areas like that are great places for bacteria to grow. I've heard that applying warm compresses to the area can also help, but I'd check with your vet first. Glad he's on antibiotics.