Jessica's close call

We wanted to share our experience with everyone especially with breeders and would-be breeders and hope no-one ever experiences anything similar. Please, please read our story and please check your bitch's glands religiously until every bit of milk has dried up. My vet in his 20 years of veterinary practice had seen toxic mastitis before but never on a bitch that had weaned her pups weeks previous, she was definitely unique.

When Jessica's puppies were 9 weeks old and everyone seemed settled in their new homes, we all breathed a sigh of relief. After losing Gemma, it took a great deal of courage to ever breed off our beautiful Jessica but supportive friends carried us through and we thought we had eventually clambered a huge hurdle.

On the 15 & 16 December I had a lovely judging appointment in Woking and enjoyed a thoroughly relaxing weekend away courtesy of Sue Bird! Arriving home on the Sunday evening I was met with a rather quiet Jessica who was very much out-of-sorts. She rolled over on her side and I noticed her rear mammary gland was very hot, very red and hard as rock, obviously it was mastitis but she seemed just a little too quiet for me, I rang the vet who was rather worried that her puppies were well gone and thought it was best she should see her - thank god she did. On examination it was discovered she had a temperature of 107.5, she gave her a huge syringe of antibiotics and a painkiller and sent her home til the next day. She saw a different vet the following morning who was rather worried about her temperature being nearly 104, I remarked 'oh good, it has come down loads', I got that look, you know the look, ... err I'm sure it couldn't have been much higher than that yesterday .... until she re-read the on-call vet's notes that indeed confirmed it had been 107.5 the previous evening. She made the decision to take her in for the day and put her on an intravenous drip and also to carry out some liver/kidney function tests, fortunately they proved to be ok. She came home a little brighter that night and continued to improve albeit very, very slowly, we spoilt her rotten and admittedly she slept in our bed! Over the next couple of days her mammary gland went black, disintegrated and literally dropped apart leaving the workings of the gland open and the whole thing looking quite desperate. We made the decision to allow the vet to operate and clean up the wound to enable the healing process to quicken, now my close friends that know me will tell you that I totally drop to pieces at the thought of a General Anaesthetic, so Linda thankfully stepped in and took me off to the Metro Centre for some 'retail therapy' to try and keep my mind distracted. She came through the operation well and had only a slight setback with a small secondary infection, Jessica now appears to be well on the road to recovery.

We wanted to highlight this experience to ensure everyone who has a litter or is planning one, is sure to keep checking the glands, our vet assures us that this is a very unusual case, it would usually happen within the first few weeks whilst the bitch was still nursing, but Jessica is living proof that it can happen a lot later when you think you're well out of the woods. We hope this will never happen to anyone else so please be vigilant.

May we thank all our friends especially Linda and Liz for their support, their phone calls and for being strong when I very definitely was NOT! Jessica proudly has 2 shaved legs, neck and tummy as a reminder of her close call but is thoroughly enjoying the excessive sympathy she is receiving from all the family!