Hi All
I am new here, I have been reading your boards and this seems like a really friendly forum with lots of advice so thought it might be worth asking regarding my 6 year old neutered Female Bengal Esme.
Last year towards the end of summer/beginning of autumn she started licking a bald patch on her thigh. We thought this was because the house we are attached to, which was previously empty/silent started to get renovated and this was possibly stressing her. We treated her for parasites, got the pet remedy out, increased her play sessions and started to leave the radio on when we went out. We kept an eye on it but she never broke the skin or and the patch never got any bigger so we weren't too concerned (this may or may not be relevant to the below).
Then in mid October a wound appeared on both of her hocks, her right worse then her left. We are not sure how the wound occurred if she created it or it was as a result of hard floors in the ? Or something else. This happened once when she was about a year old, the breeder told us it was relatively common so we kept an eye on it and it cleared up by itself. So we kept an eye on them. However it soon became clear due to her licky state of mind that she wasn't going to leave them alone so we took her to the vets.
She is a very sensitive soul and we wanted to go down the least intrusive route so she got a buster collar. She hated it, but eventually got used to it.
Nearly two months passed and the wound on the left healed OK, but the right one remained a never changing large scab. We were about to book to take her back to the vets, when the scab split and there was blood all over her collar (from trying to itch her ear). So we took her back asap between Christmas and new year.
The vet was able to gently pull back the scab (Esme was incredibly tolerant) and he said it was a crator behind and didn't look very healthy at all. We had the wound swabbed and she was booked in to have it debrided (all the dead material removed) under sedation.
The swab came back and the wound contained five types of bacteria, three of which were quite highly resistant. So our vet chose Veraflox antibiotics as it covered all of the bacteria and she has been on that since. as well as Metacam for the pain.
Since the deriding we have been going back every 3-4 days for dressing changes and this had been going on for nearly 4-5 weeks. At this point our vet was really happy with the condition of the wound and felt there was enough skin/movement to attempt stitching it up. That was maybe two weeks ago.
I was away last week for two days with work, my partner was looking after her. I came home on the Tuesday night and she was obviously not herself. Wednesday we made the decision to take her back early and on opening her dressing we were absolutely gutted, all of the stitches had popped and the wound was open again
she also had a temperature.
We have since run bloods which all seems fine and she is currently at North Downs Specialist Referrals till Monday being looked at by a soft tissue specialist (it breaks my heart having her away from home as she is so sensitive and such a worrier).
My question is, has anyone else has experience of similar? Any advice?
I have been reading about how Neuropathy in Bengals can cause wounds to not heal? But she doesn't seem to have any of the other symptoms, although she has always been a bit clumsy.
Thoughts, opinions and positive vibes are all welcome and thank you for reading my essay
Emily xx