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Old August 11th, 2009, 09:26 AM
smudge00 smudge00 is offline
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Exclamation Snot then Nose Bleeding

My 9 yr. old border collie started out with yellowish snot coming out of his right nostril in April. It was so much that he left small puddle of it on our bedroom floor. We took him to the vet and they treated him with meds for infection. It did not get better so they extended the medication for another two weeks and did a head xray that showed nothing. They looked up his nose too and saw nothing. Still didn’t get better. He started to snot out of both nostrils and sometimes when he sneezed, it came out red-tinged. In the midst of this nose thing, he swallowed a corn dog with the stick and had to get surgery to remove it and had to be taken off the meds for the nose problem and the snot got worse. That was when it started smelling. The vet said it smelled bacterial put him on prednisone and clavamox. One morning we discovered our dog in our basement in what looked like a murder scene of blood. Lots of it. The emergency vet gave him epinephrine to slow it. He then had another bad bleed the next day and we took him to a specialist and they did a radiograph that was clean and blood tests that showed just anemia, his blood was clotting fine. He had another small bleed a few day later and since this bleeding his snot hadn’t been coming out as much and the smell was gone. I know our next step is an endoscope with biopsy, but we are looking at our other options cause an endo is like $1650 at our specialist and we’ve already spend like $3,000 on our poor dog throughout this whole thing and we can't afford it. He so far has gone 5 days without any large or smaller bleeds, just a small trickle of blood every so often out of his right nostril and a tiny bit of snot out of his left nostril. Oh, and we noticed that he seems to start bleeding when he get’s excited, so we are trying to keep him as calm as possible- and that’s hard for a border collie.
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Old August 11th, 2009, 09:41 AM
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hazelrunpack hazelrunpack is offline
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Hi, smudge00.

Did your vet try to flush his nasal passages at all? Sometimes, grass awns or seeds can get stuck and cause recurring irritation/infection. They don't show on an xray, but sometimes a flush can dislodge it.

Recently there was a member who had a dog suffering from nosebleeds and the dog turned out to have ehrlichiosis. Are there many ticks in your area? Tick-borne diseases such as ehrlichiosis and anaplasmosis can cause bleeding anomalies. There is a snap test put out by Idexx that is relatively inexpensive (I think about $65) and will test for Lyme's, anaplasmosis and ehrlichiosis.

Meanwhile, sometimes cool compresses along the snout can stop the bleeding.

I'm sorry you're having to deal with this.

for your border collie.
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Old August 11th, 2009, 10:39 AM
smudge00 smudge00 is offline
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Quote:
Originally Posted by hazelrunpack View Post
Hi, smudge00.

Did your vet try to flush his nasal passages at all? Sometimes, grass awns or seeds can get stuck and cause recurring irritation/infection. They don't show on an xray, but sometimes a flush can dislodge it.

Recently there was a member who had a dog suffering from nosebleeds and the dog turned out to have ehrlichiosis. Are there many ticks in your area? Tick-borne diseases such as ehrlichiosis and anaplasmosis can cause bleeding anomalies. There is a snap test put out by Idexx that is relatively inexpensive (I think about $65) and will test for Lyme's, anaplasmosis and ehrlichiosis.

Meanwhile, sometimes cool compresses along the snout can stop the bleeding.

I'm sorry you're having to deal with this.

for your border collie.
No, they did not flush his nose, that is a good idea, I am surprised they didn't think of that. I will look into the test kit. We are going to call our vet later today because we only have one day of meds left and we are concerned he might get worse without it. I will ask the vet about the nose flush. Thank you for your advise!
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Old August 11th, 2009, 11:25 AM
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Dr Lee Dr Lee is offline
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As always some good ideas hazelpackrun!

The the vet does not have the snap test, then they can send the same test out to their reference laboratory. With that said, depending upon the location and exposure levels to ticks, ehrlichia may not be high on the differential list. Furthermore if the veterinarian has already run a CBC and platelets are seen to be adequate, then ehrlichia is also not a likely source for the clinical signs. Either way, it is always good to rule out or rule in a concern like ehrlichia.

Also if we are going to look at tick diseases, we might also want to look for fungal blood titers as well depending upon your geography. Fungal sinus infections can be a cause for nasal bleeding.

Another options might be to consider a longer course of an antibiotic to rule out a persistent bacterial infection. If you are concerned regarding tick diseases, the use of doxycyline might be helpful. I would also recommend some survey chest radiographs (X-Rays) as well.

Use of a humidifier can be helpful to help keep the sinus cavity moisturized.
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Old August 11th, 2009, 11:46 AM
smudge00 smudge00 is offline
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We live in Lancaster, Pennsylvania and we have a wooded area behind our house. So it is possible he got a tick. I have been putting Frontline Plus on him monthly since he was a pup though? I actually got Lymes Disease and so did my neighbor. I got it earlier this year and she got it last year. So I KNOW we have ticks here.

The vet did send of samples of snot to test for bacterial and fungal infections and they both came back negative, but they said it's a possibility the samples may have expired by the time it got tested... then what's the use of the test???

The specialist we saw at the University Of Penn Vetrinary Hospital in Philadelphia did do chest radiographs and they came back clean.

We have been occasionally putting a cold compress on his nose and I set up a humidifier for him last night.
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Old August 11th, 2009, 12:08 PM
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Quote:
Originally Posted by smudge00 View Post
The vet did send of samples of snot to test for bacterial and fungal infections and they both came back negative, but they said it's a possibility the samples may have expired by the time it got tested... then what's the use of the test???
For sinus fungal infections, blood titers might be more helpful compared to cultures. With that said, a culture is not necessarily a waste of time. If it had grown the culprit....

If we see lots of ticks, then the reference labs have PCR tick panels that are considered the gold standard.
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Old August 13th, 2009, 04:43 PM
surich surich is offline
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I was checking about my dogs dry nose that seems to be irritating her a bit...and I saw this post that may be helpful to you and your dog..Good luck
http://www.pets.ca/forum/showthread.php?p=676582

hoping my Cara does not have this....I am going to go to the vet with her and mention this possibility.
Good luck..Sue
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Old September 1st, 2009, 05:10 AM
smudge00 smudge00 is offline
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Still snotty

Well, it's been 3 1/2 weeks since we've had any sort of bleeding and we took Smudge back to the vet for a Clavamox refill and a checkup. At that point he had no bleeding as I said and his snot was very minimal and clear in color, Good news, the vet said he thinks it was just a foreign object in his nose and all the bleeding flushed it out or it dislodged and he swallowed it. The day after the vet appt. (last Thursday) Smudge started having more yellow snot coming out of both nostrils. I feel like we are back to where we started... Ugh! I just want this to end, and so does my poor Smudge!
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