Osteomyelitis is a infection in the bone.  It is a painful and serious condition that can occur in any bone and in Thunder’s case, it affected his jaw bone.

If you have followed this blog, you may remember that starting about a year ago (at age 11), Thunder began having serious dental issues.  This was a surprise to us because when had had his teeth cleaned and checked under anesthesia the year before and his teeth were OK.  However, in March 2017, Thunder started having symptoms such as persistent drooling and odor in his mouth which lead us to believe that something was going on.  When I tired to look in his mouth, his back teeth were painful to the touch.  Other than that, Thunder seemed fine with the normal level of energy and he never refused to retrieve.

We scheduled a dental exam under anesthesia for him with our vet and she was shocked at the state of his teeth despite a normal dental exam less than a year earlier.  She pulled several teeth and we were told to follow-up in about three months.

Three months passed and at first Thunder’s symptoms seemed to clear, but they returned so we scheduled another dental for Thunder under anesthesia.  Upon examination, the vet saw that the issue had spread to other teeth.  Not good.

At that point, our vet felt he needed a veterinary dentist and referred us to Dr. Colmery at Dixboro Veterinary Dental.  Unfortunately, it took weeks to get an appointment.  There are only four veterinary dentists in the entire state of Michigan and they are normally booked solid because they can only do so many cases a day.

When you have a senior dog who has an ongoing medical issue, you expect complications.  Thunder is no exception.  Shortly before he was scheduled for his dental appointment, our vet was examining him and heard a heart murmur.  What?  Stop the presses.  What is going on here?  We took an x-ray just to rule out any obvious tumors or heart abnormalities.  None were visible on the x-ray so the next step was to contact Dr. Colmery and ask if he would still put Thunder under anesthesia with a possible heart murmur.  He asked about Thunder’s history and we informed him that this was a new and not an ongoing murmur and he said that he could still treat him.

We arrived at the clinic first thing on a dark, rainy and nasty morning.  It took us well over an hour and a half  in heavy traffic to get to the vet clinic.  We liked Dr. Colmery at once and more importantly, Thunder liked him too and even let him do a cursory exam of his mouth.

When you leave a senior dog with a possible heart murmur at a specialist for surgery, they usually ask you if you want to sign a “Do Not Resuscitate” order.  We have had to make that decision on a couple of occasions. On this particular occasion, based on Thunder’s age and the extent of the surgery we expected for him, we made the decision to sign it.  I should back up and say that before making the appointment with the dentist, we considered just putting Thunder down due to the extent of the problem and his age.  We knew that it would be a very painful recovery.  Should we even put him through it?

Once we met Dr. Colmery, we knew we made the right decision to pursue treatment.  He assured us that Thunder should do ok through surgery.  He did not hear a heart murmur upon examination and put a heart monitor on Thunder throughout the procedure and there was no sign of anything abnormal.  We chocked up the sudden appearance of the murmur to Thunder being in pain and just being at the vet.

Dr.  Colmery confirmed the diagnosis of Osteomyelitis and removed a lot of infected bone and many teeth.  Dr. Colmery said that Osteomyelitis happens in some retrievers for whatever reason.  It is not common.  Thunder went home with stitches, pain meds and an RX for 21 days of antibiotics.  We were told that although Thunder would probably not want to eat that evening, a retriever should want to eat the next day.

Sure enough, Thunder was more than willing to eat soft food the next morning.  I had to give him three giant capsules of Clindamycin twice a day for 21 days.  I cleaned out my local pharmacy and they had to order more to fill the entire RX.  But using the meatball method (I need to do a post on this because it has saved my bacon giving pills to a dog that does not want them), I was able to easily get Thunder to take his medication despite his sore mouth.

Since then Thunder has recovered very well.  He seems back to normal and has had no issue retrieving.  I am really glad that we followed through with this surgery for Thunder.  Of course now that he is 12, he likes his sleep.