I tried to make the title as descriptive as possible.
Our 10 year old un-spayed bichon is bleeding more than she ever has. Usually it’s drops here and there, manageable by sequestering her into the laundry room, or putting a doggie-diaper thingy on her (a velcro harness with a Kotex pad).
Today, for the first time ever, she has quite a discharge. She’s had a bath; she’s gone through two pads, and is about to be changed into her third.
If I could put a guess on it, I’d say she’s bled about 50 - 100 ml today. She’s showing no other signs of distress. She just ate and apart from hating to wear the doggie-diaper (she just curls up on her bed and pouts) I don’t notice any other differences in her.
Like everyone else said, could be pyometra. Unaltered, unbred female dogs are at increasing risk from age 4 or 5 onwards of getting a severe internal uterine infection with every heat cycle.
I’d get her into the vet right away. Pyometra is serious and potentially fatal.
Not a vet or a dog lover, but when you say “for the first time ever”, I hear warning bells. You know what’s normal for this dog, and what is happening isn’t normal.
Another vote for getting it checked out, sooner rather than later.
We took her in to get spayed and they wouldn’t give her the anesthetic because they detected a heart arrhythmia. They suggested a $200 ultrasound and I was unemployed at the time.
We took her to a second vet with the same results. So, this was placed on the back burner and we never got back to it.
She’s still bleeding more than usual and it’s the weekend, and my wife’s in Montreal at a funeral.
Today I had a training course and was unavailable.
My wife started calling veterinarians, but then realized that today is Family Day in Ontario. Although we knew the kids were off school, we both work for the federal government which doesn’t recognize the 4 or 5 year old Family Day. Lovely.
Then my wife went to get ready for work and noticed the water heater had sprung a leak, all over the basement floor. The tank is a rental, so the appropriate people were called; but it’s Family Day in Ontario.
So, she turned off her car (heating it up) and came inside to decide what to do. She finally got a hold of someone who came and drained the tank into the sump hole. They will return tomorrow to replace the heater. In the mean time we have no hot water.
Then she decided to go to work. But, after turning the car off the battery drained. This shouldn’t happen, since the headlights are connected to the key sensor: if you remove the key the lights will go out. My guess is that the weather cycles, cold-warm-cold, caused the key sensor to stick in the on position and thereby caused her battery to go dead over a few hours.
The water tank is drained.
The car is jump started and fine.
The dog will be going to the vet tomorrow, after my second of 3 and a half days of full-time, mandatory training by a gentleman recruited from the Institute of Nuclear Power Operations in Alabama.
I hope your dog is okay, but would like to just say. Whatever the problem is, Get. The. Dog. Spayed. Even if this is nothing, the risk of health problems in an unaltered female only increases with age. Any cost now is a hedge against additional costs in the future.
Good advice. In addition to the danger of pyometra, an unspayed female is at a high risk for mammary cancer. Even though spaying at this age won’t reduce the risk of mammary cancer developing, there is some evidence that spaying can improve survival for dogs who do develop mammary cancer because many of the tumors are estrogen-sensitive.