Never had this happen before...anyone else?

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Margo_C-T

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I have a 6 lb., older Maltese(spayed female.) I keep her clipped, doing it myself...she is about 1 1/4" coat length right now, having grown out a bit since I last clipped her(I use an 8 1/2 blade, and go with the direction of hair growth...don't care if it looks 'professional',but I have a good eye and she doesn't look 'chopped up' when I finish!

Anyway...she likes to go out and lie in my back yard...which, because I no longer have enough well capacity so can't water, is basically now 'dirt', after years of drought...lots of bare area, interspersed w/ scattered clumps of mostly native grasses.

I have never had issues with either ticks or fleas here, even when I DID have some backyard grass, Once in the 31 years I've been here, I found 13 fleas on this same little dog, all in a group over one eyebrow...I carefully removed them, and since, regularly check the dogs thoroughly, but have never found another flea, or a tick, or any other signs of either(and I don't use 'Frontline' or such, because I've never seen a need.) About 10 days ago, my daughter who was here for the weekend, mentioned that Angel had a bloody spot on her back.When I inspected her, there was a small round wound; since Angel has some skin tags, I thought perhaps she'd just torn one off wallowing, which she occasionally enjoys doing. I cleaned it up, put a bit of antibiotic ointment on it...and just kept checking it. After the first day, it seemed to be trying to be an abcess; seemed to be 'filling' under the skin between checks...but I just kept the 'hole' open, gently manipulating it to get accumulating serum/occasional pus to come out; not letting the wound/'hole' scab over for long, and keeping it clean...and the 'enlargement, which I'd taken to be an abcess, began to shrink. Today when I removed the latest scab and began gently manipulating the 'engorged' area, what appeared to be some pus emerged...the something solid appeared, and a GRUB emerged! UGH!! It was about 1/3-1/2" long, very tapered at BOTH ends, white but with a dark 'interior' visible. It WAS still moving...but not for long! I dropped it into a little container of rubbing alcohol, which killed it immediately(of course, I don't have formaldehyde, so just used what was at hand!)I hope it will preserve it so I can show it to someone who might know WHAT KIND of critter it 'intended' to be?!

Now, I've seen grubs on cattles's backs, and believe there are ones that will get on horses(maybe the same ones that prey on cattle?), but never heard of or seen such on a dog of any size or breed! We do not generally have many 'nasty' insect varieties here; it is just too hot and DRY most of the time(and this thing appeared before we'd had ANY rain for months and months); I certainly haven't seen any kind of flying or crawling critter that might account for something like this!!

Has anyone ever seen this on dogs, or know what might have caused it? I am now limiting the hours that the dogs can go and 'hang out' in the yard, which is just as well in the heat of summer(beats me why they'd even WANT to be lying around out there; there IS a big shade tree, but they don't necessarily use it!)--and looking them over even more often.Through it all, Angel has seemed herself, eating, drinking, and carrying on her usual activities, such as they are...thank goodness!

Margo, grossed out in NM
 
Sounds like a warble or cutebra and they can be deadly. You have to really disinfect the area once you remove it or the infection can kill them. Might not be a bad idea to call your vet and see if the dog needs antibiotics

They attach on cats, dogs, squirrels from blades of grass

Warning pic in this link is graphic

warble pic
 
ICK!!!!
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There aren't enough gross-out smilies in the world to cover that.

Leia
 
Sounds like a warble or cutebra and they can be deadly. You have to really disinfect the area once you remove it or the infection can kill them. Might not be a bad idea to call your vet and see if the dog needs antibiotics

They attach on cats, dogs, squirrels from blades of grass

Warning pic in this link is graphic

warble pic
We had 2 cats get this years ago, lost one, saved one. I agree, check with the vet right away. The first one we lost, the second we knew to get to the vet, and were able to save her.
 
Yep. A Cuterebra. We bought our Shepherd at 7 years of age and she had open holes (from ones that had left or died in there) that filled with sebaceous stuff (not exactly pus....). We just left them alone. They'll fill in and/or just keep filling with "stuff". They never got infected. Nasty, though...
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She was just euthanised a couple of weeks ago and still had the one hole that never really closed; never bothered her. Didn't advertise on here that she was put down (due to severe arthritis/old age...); a very hard time and I miss her like crazy...
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I know Lei isnt that the grossest thing! I never heard of them till we moved to Ohio. My gf lost a cat to having this.
 
Guess I'll hold off on my ham and cheese on rye till later. SUPER GROSS OUT

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When we lived in CA we had show rabbits that we would let down on the ground when it was very hot. They got warbles. You can not show a rabbit that has warbles or open holes. We would clean them up, Pull out the nasty little thing and dress the wound every day until it was healed. I have not seen them here in Nevada. Nor have I seen any fleas or ticks. Just lucky I guess.
 
I am not even going to look because years ago on the ranch we had a horse get a warble.. OMG!!! I could still
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just thinking about it and that was 30 years ago! I had no idea that small animals got them too- DISGUSTING
 
Thanks for the responses! I'd heard of 'warbles', but the term had slipped my mind until my neighbors mentioned it yesterday when I told them about Angel's experience. I now did some research on both terms...'warble' and 'cubebara'(sp?). I do have plenty of wild cottontails around here, and they do get into my backyard through the chain link, though no burrows are there. However, there has been some gopher activity, and some of their holes are 'open' back there. So...I will do some remedial 'hole filling' in the yard, AND continue to limit the dogs' 'lying around' in the DIRT of the backyard...AND, keep my eye out for the 'bee-like' rabbit bot fly! UGH...as if HORSE bot flies aren't bad enough(and I haven't had a SINGLE one of them around here in years now, and have been so pleased!) Just goes to show, there's always another 'nasty critter' waiting to be a problem when you keep animals...case in point---prairie dogs have 'suddenly' appeared(I suspect some 'hug a vermin' group may have released them in my area??), and went right to digging burrows out in front of my house on my land. So, I've been 'pro-active' in 'discouraging' them from trying to live HERE, and so far, my efforts appear successful(wasp spray was involved).When we moved here 31 years ago, the pasture across the road was THICK w/ prairie dogs and their burrows; several years later, when we noticed we weren't seeing/hearing them nearly as much,on a hunch we called the state Environmental Health dep't, who came out and dusted the burrows...and sure enough, they found PLAGUE-carrying fleas! Killed all the pd's off eventually, and hadn't seen them here again until just recently. Sure don't need the PLAGUE threat around again!!

Angel is looking well. I had kept the 'wound' clean all along, didn't 'fracture' the warble getting it out, cleaned the wound area up afterward, and continue to keep it clean and under close watch and using triple antibiotic ointment.

Margo
 
You're going to think I'm a nut, but after reading this post and clicking on the link to see what a "warble" looked like, I'm a little afraid of going on the Back Porch. Because, you know, there might be one online... and it might get me.
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Great...something else to be afraid of other than spiders...
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I guess this critter is not something that taking heart worm medicene can kill?

What a mine of information here! Hope I never see one in real life, but it would be good to be able to recognize it.
 

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