Problems at the pointy end
Hooter, beak, schnoze, snorer? There can be a few bright red ones around at this time of year – I’m talking about noses.
Dogs’ and cats’ noses are said to be a thousand times more sensitive than our own. They seem to be able to find an open rubbish bag pretty easily and dogs are now used for all sorts of scent work, including search and rescue, drug detection, customs searches and law enforcement.
A common question at the hospital is: ‘‘Is my dog or cat unwell if his nose is dry?’’ The answer is: The dampness of their nose really has no relevance to their health.
But we do see lots of problems associated with that little pointy end and young Evo was a good example of one such problem this week.
Evo is a hyperactive 3-yearold male weimaraner, a reddy, grey sleek hunting dog notorious for escaping from any previously Alcatra-like dog-proof enclosure.
These guys use their nose every second of their waking day and are on alert all the time, but when he came to see me last Saturday he wasn’t at all happy about his nose. He was sneezing persistently and had a nastycoloured discharge from one nostril.
The sneezing had developed since Mark, his owner, had taken him hunting during the week and the discharge had only developed in the past 24 hours.
Sneezing and nasal discharge can be caused be a multitude of different things, but the answer to several basic questions will narrow the possibilities.
❚ Is the discharge from both or only one nostril?
❚ Is the discharge coloured, for example, green or yellow?
❚ Is there any involvement of the eyes, for example, weepy eyes with swollen lids?
❚ Is their any bleeding from either or both nostrils?
Evo is a particularly inquisitive dog and Mark also remembered hearing him yelp at one point during their time in the bush, and when he came back to him he was pawing at his face.
We had a suspicion and needed to look up poor Evo’s hooter and he understandably wasn’t going to sit quietly for that, so we admitted him and soon had him sound asleep in the surgery and connected to all his monitors.
It soon became obvious what the problem was after I had a look up his nostril with our endoscope. Looking back at me was a solid brown object firmly wedged up his nostril.
Luckily, a long pair of forceps was able to reach the object and we carefully pulled a 4-centimetre-long thick piece of stick out of his nose followed by a gush of unmentionable gunge. We all gasped and couldn’t believe the length of the stick. What a relief for Evo.
After a day of further sneezing in the hospital Evo is, amazingly, back to searching for some escape from his back yard.
Bleeding from the nose can be more serious, as this can indicate a problem with the ability to clot blood. Some breeds, like dobermans, are at particular risk from this type of disease as they can have an inherited bleeding disorder.
But the next story is a real lesson in not assuming the obvious, ie doberman with a nose bleed has a bleeding disorder, and wishing our patients could talk.
When I worked in Australia, a doberman had been coming to the practice for several months with recurring episodes of bleeding from either nostril and we had done every test and X-ray to find the cause with no result.
But one day the owner came in with the dog to tell us he had found the cause – the next-door neighbour’s children had been caught poking the dog through the fence with a stick.
Dogs get their noses in to all sorts of problems – from scratches from their feline housemate to bee stings.
Cats also have a lot of problems with their noses, but not usually as a result of being too inquisitive, like their canine counterparts. The most common nose problems in cats relate to sneezing, especially at this time of year with lots of kittens around, or sunburn.
Enjoy the holidays and have a great Christmas, from the crew at Anderson’s.