Sudden bad breath

[Ratboy]

I had a puppy with hookworms once, and this bad breath is about 5X worse than his was, but I'm thinking it's a good possibility it is some sort of worms. There are so many wild animals of every kind here, and who knows what she's eating out in the yard. I haven't seen any tapeworm segments in her turds, so I kinda doubt it. My last dog got them about every 9 months, and I always saw stuff moving when he did his bizness when he got them again. Creepy...

[pitbulliest]

yeah worms can be pretty nasty. I would definately go and check it out with a vet...don't delay as worms can get pretty bad and even difficult to get rid of it you wait a long time, not to mention..it isn't good for the dog..duh.. lol

[Ratboy]

LOL, We solved the mystery! After spending a chunk of cash on tests for worms, kidneys, etc, and everything coming up fine, I found the cause of the mystery breath yesterday.
I had just come home from the vet's where she got blood drawn and her giant toenails clipped, and Molly came over to me to get her chin rubbed. Her breath was foul, to put it mildly. I rubbed her chin and then she had enough and left. I pushed my glasses up and PHEW, my hand smelled bad. I called her over and held her while I took a close look at her teeth and on the left side of her lower lip, it was all swelled up. It was really red, and looked nasty. I took my "clean" left index finger and just kind of touched it, and took a whif. yep, that was it. She goes back to the vet this morning so they can look at it. I wonder if it's from a bite from one of the critters out back. It wasn't a skunk, but they might have gotten a Possumm or even a cat, there are tons of them around here, and come to think of it, about the time this started, they were in the back yard snarling and screaming about something, but I never saw it, and sure never smelled what it was..and thankfullly, no dead anything out there, since the last skunk was terminated.

I've had a lot of dog's with infections before, but never has it smelled like this...

Anyway, thanks for all the ideas everybody, I'm just glad she's ok.

[Renee750il]

Now what's baffling me is how on earth did the vet miss it?

You know whats good to get rid of a dogs bad breath? This is what I do. I give the dog some peppermint extract in his dog food. This give the dog minty fresh breath and also helps him with digestion. You know, kind of like an after dinner mint.

[Ratboy]

Originally Posted by Renee750il

Now what's baffling me is how on earth did the vet miss it?

Yeah, I think they were embarassed about missing it. It looks like it's a "hot spot", AKA "lip fold Dermatitis". It's easy to miss actually, I didn't see it the day before when I rubbed her chin. She and King both have a place along the bottom of their lower jaw where the skin overlaps the lips (hard to explain, easy to see), and the canine teeth "park" when they close their mouths. It was pretty nasty looking after the Vet shaved the area, the hair was covering up a lot of what was going on. King's mouth skin is much "tighter" than Molly's, so he seems to be immune.

As soon as it got shaved and washed off with Peroxide, the smell was gone!
I still can't understand why it smellled like it did, my old Beagle had a huge puncture wound on his flank, with about a thousand maggots in it, and it didn't smell one tenth as bad as her mouth did, and her hotspot was maybe the size of a nickel, in total area.

The Beagle's deal was about the size of two packs of cigarettes. One day I was rubbing his back/flank area, he really liked it, and made all kinds of grunting noises. All of a sudden, a chunk of hair/skin about the size of one cigarette pack came off in my hand!! Yikes! He never made a peep, but I sure did. I was about 10 years old, and freaked. My mom washed off the flies and maggots with peroxide and we took him to the vet's and he pulled more skin off and he put something on the "pit" that killed all the bugs and washed it off with some yelllow stuff. He had us leave it open and wash it with peroxide every day and pretty soon it grew some nice new skin and peach fuzz on it. A few months later, the only thing about it you could see of feel was the hair was coarser over it, and there was a ridge around the patch that filled back in.

That dog had some horrible things happen to it over his lifetime, come to think about it. He impaled his foot on a stick once, had a really nasty couple of fights that took a lot of stitches, and had a huge tumor of some kind, benign, but really nasty looking, and amazingly fast growing on his back when he was 5 or so. It went from the size of a dime to the size of a tennis ball in two days. We had to wait until monday to take him in to have it removed, and by then it had tripled in size. My mom started crying, she was sure it was cancer. We took him in for the surgery and the vet finally calls us, a long time after he said he would. By this time my mom was a total mess. He calls and he tells her it wasn't cancer, just a very rare type of benign tumor. It took six hours to get the "root" out, it was attached to the top of his pelvis. He had a "pit" on his back the rest of his life where it had been dug out.

His daughter had the same thing in the same place years later. Her's was huge, but came out really easy, as it was just sitting on top of her pelvis, and wasn't attached at all. Even the vet was surprised she didn't have cancer, as it grew so fast. Same vet BTW.

[Renee750il]

Some strange things happen sometimes. We've never figured out how Shiva sliced her hide all the way through at perfect right angles. Now that was a night to remember!

[Ratboy]

King dove through, and then back into a window once and managed not to get a scratch on him. We didn't know he was gone until he jumped back through and heard glass hitting the floor. He was soaking wet, so he had been out for a while. The next time he did it, he sliced his back leg slightly, and I had to chase him around for 15 minutes before he calmed down enough to come to me. The third and last time I heard the crash and glass hitting the floor and went right out and he was gone. There wasn't any sign of him, so I started walking and after about 20 minutes of panic, I see him flying across the one busy street and almost get hit. Then he dissapeared and a few minutes later, runs up to me and sits in front of me. Needless to say, the windows are lexan now, and I put drapes up to keep him from seeing much, and from slamming into the windows if he does.

[Renee750il]

Bet you didn't know whether to strangle him or hug him when he got back! Amazing, isn't it; they know how to sit there and look perfectly innocent after they've done something they absolutely KNOW is just way beyond the pale. My girls are really accomplished actresses.

[Ratboy]

Yeah, I was pretty angry with him. I never expected him to be the one that jumped through windows, he's the calm one! If Molly had done it, I wouldn't really have been shocked, after all she lunges at anything that moves and is super territorial in the back yard, as far as animals and even other dogs are concerned. She got a possumm a couple days ago, killed it in about 15 seconds. I just looked out the window and it came over the fence and she ran over and grabbed it. I'm amazed at how good she seems to be at it now.