Bite wound care

Archie bit Timothy in the face today... *sigh*

It's not a bad wound, just a little puncture wound. Probably about 1/8" long.

It's on his face. It didn't bleed at all, but it is open. It happened about half an hour ago. I obviously don't want it to get infected, and I can't say I've had to treat many flesh wounds on dogs before.

So, is it a vet visit, or should I apply peroxide to it, or what do you think? You can see it in the picture below.

I would give it a quick swipe with some peroxide, then put some Neosporin on it and keep an eye on it. When I was working for a doggie daycare, we had similar injuries happen quite a bit when someone got a bit too careless with their teeth when playing bitey-face and that's what we did in addition to informing the owners. They all healed up just fine and were back the next day.

I wouldn't use peroxide. It's actually damaging to the tissue. I'd just keep it clean with warm water, maybe use a little triple antibiotic ointment on it, and watch it.

Question about peroxide: I've heard two things. One is that it should only ever be used to get blood out of scrubs or off of fur, but never put on an actual wound. Then I've also heard that it's ok to use for the initial cleaning, but not after that, because it damages the newly grown tissue and retards healing.

^That's what I thought, Zoom. That it's good for only initial cleaning to kill any bacteria already on it, then cover it (in this case, with neosporin.)

Either way, Thanks guys

I use a 50/50 mix of Peroxide and Betadine for the initial cleaning and then straight Betadine for the maintenance cleaning.

For puncture wounds I try to flush the wound using a syringe but if it's on the face you obviously need to be careful to keep it away from the eyes and mucous membranes.

Peroxide will damage the new skin growth when the wound is healing which retards the healing process.

When I had the cancer spot cut out of my face , I opted to leave it a hole to heal , rather than more cutting for stitches .The doctor said it would require more care to keep it from scabbing ...thus more scar . Twice a day treatment was to clean with Qtip and then apply Vaseline . Said that antibiotic after a while actually harms the tissue around it ! Go figure !!! I healed well from inside out and I'm very pleased . I've always used neosporin !

I'm a huge believer in neosporin myself...all those random nicks and cuts and scrapes and little bites that I accumulated over the years of working with hundreds of dogs everyday and never once had an infection or needed to see a doctor.

Me too Zoom !!! That's why the surgeon surprised me !

Neosporin is awesome. To quote one of the vets I work with, talking to a client about a similar situation, "Oh certainly. Neosporin is some awesome stuff. I'm pretty sure it can cure cancer too." Joking, of course, but you get the point.

Hydrogen peroxide kills tissue, new or old. It isn't as harmful on older tissue as it is on the newer stuff but it's still not 'good' for it. If you have any chlorhexidine it'll do just as good of a job and won't harm the tissue.

But it does one hell of a job getting blood out/off of anything! My entire left hand was covered with blood once and you couldn't tell that I'd even had blood on it after cleaning it with peroxide.


Also someone said something about betadene. Also a good suggestion. When my right hand got torn up by a cat, I soaked it in betadene for 15 minutes after I got bit and then in salt water once every three hours and it never swelled or anything (quite impressive if you had seen what the cat did to me).

Then why would a world wide known Dermatologist recommend it ?? ( C. William Hanke )

What? Peroxide?

I don't know, maybe he feels that the damage done to the tissue isn't enough to justify not using it.

But it does damage the tissues in the wounds, and there are alternatives out there that work as well and don't do damage.