Meet Lil' Mikey!

17 Days until Christmas!

Meet Lil' Mikey!

I haven't been posting much about him because I really wanted to get his allergies under control before we worked to find him a home, and in the meantime we made finding Eddie's home a top priority.

But here he is!

When we first took in Eddie and Mikey, Mikey was a mess. He has a nasty rash on his tummy, across his ribcage, and the rash extended into his groin regions where we also found some mean open sores. His poor little toes were swollen and bright red, his ears were swollen and also red, he was scratching non stop at his poor ears, and licking his feet constantly which of course wasn't helping the matter. His eyes were full of a mucousy goop...poor pup was miserable! On a good note though his personality has been just adorable.

Cleaning and massaging his ears.

His first week with us, we cleaned his ears with a peroxide/water solution and doctored his open scratch wounds with neosporin, attacked his tummy with coconut oil massages, and with my vets recommendation we picked up a very specific eye wash to try clearing his eyes up. We also put him on Benadryl to ease his itching, and he began eating the high quality grain free salmon diet I feed my dogs.

Our goal with our at home remedies was to see if it was just a food allergy that we could quickly get under control on our own.

Well after a couple weeks we definitely saw improvement, his tummy cleared up, his sores closed and looked much better, one ear was healed, but his other ear got worse, his paws didn't improve and his eyes were just as yucky as when we had started so off to the vet we went!

Turns out he had a bacterial infection! Our vet said we did awesome though with his home treatments, but prescribed a foamy wash for his rash, special meds for his ears, and special medication for his eyes. Her best guess is that his allergy went untreated for so long that it worsened and became a bacterial infection, or he picked something up from the kennel at our local human society, but our bets on his allergy was never treated based on what we have learned about his deceased owner.

Time to clean his eyes!

He's been awesome to work with though, and he's used to the handling at this point so I can medicate and clean him up twice a day on my own if I need to. Although having a helper for his eyes makes that portion easier! You try telling him to keep his eyes open! He at least holds still with massive amounts of cheesy bribery.

Cleaning out the gunk!

Washing his feet with the medicated foam.

After a week now of the vet prescribed meds, foot wipings, and daily benadryl I can now say we have a happy little bulldog! He'll be off of his ear meds soon, and we're going to keep wiping his feet but i'm going to talk to the vet about taking him off the benadryl, it'll be a little more trial and error to figure out if he has a grass or a food allergy but at least we're on the right track!

Mikey looks 100% better the only thing that hasn't improved is his eyes...so we're heading back to the vet tomorrow to try something else.  But his rash is gone, his feet are no longer swollen and bright red - they're a healthy pink! And his ears no longer seem to be bothering him!

We just started looking for a family for Mikey because we feel like his allergies are under control, wish us luck! He's such a doll, that i'm half tempted to keep him myself!

If you know anyone, here's a link to our adoptable dogs page with more info!  

Adoptable Mikey & Eddie HERE.