For those who had been following LambMetrics you’d have known that the youngest member of the (aging) sheepdog pack, Floss, hasn’t been too well lately and had had a couple of trips to the vet.
Yesterday I was really not happy with the way her temperature was stubbornly staying high despite the antibiotics and so Floss went back to the vet clinic for further investigation.
Long story short – septic pericarditis (icky infection around the heart) most likely caused by an inhaled grass seed months ago. Apparently it’s quite rare in dogs. Great. At least we got it before she collapsed….
Pretty serious stuff indeed.
So, I left her with my awesome vet while I went and checked out Merino rams and then later in the afternoon learnt they had successfully sucked out about 100ml of ‘gross icky stuff’ (not the technical term but essentially it was pus) from the outer lining of the heart and that she was going to stay at the vet clinic over the weekend hooked up to an IV of different antibiotics (designed for anaerobic bacteria, rather than the more regular aerobic ones she’d been initially treated for.)
As of this evening she has improved – her temperature has come down below 40C – and eating well.
The vet is still pretty guarded with his prognoses for her but temperature down and eating are all good things so I’m determined to be hopeful.
If you can spare a little prayer for her that would be amazing.