Joey’s Pet of the Week – Cocoa’s Swollen Face

By Scott Lackenby | Dated November 4, 2015

Hey peeps! How are you all? What have you all been up to? It’s been busy here with ticks. Our good friends at Northside Emergency Veterinary Service even treated a goat with tick paralysis recently! I hate ticks. They are horrid little critters. I say it a lot at this time of year, but PLEASE make sure you are applying tick prevention to your pets regularly. There a quite a few different products on the market, so it’s important to get good advice on the best product for your pet. And who better to go to advice for all your pet care needs than your good friends at Gordon Vet! And when you come in you might even get to see me, Joey, the world’s greatest clinic cat!!

Did you get our latest newsletter? It was a little shorter than normal as we are playing around with a new format.The newsletters are a great way to stay up to date on what’s happening at GVH as well as getting the latest info and helpful hints about looking after your pets. If you didn’t get the email but would like to, just let us know and we will sign you up!

My star this week is the gorgeous Miss Cocoa, a 7month old Labrador who lives just up the road from us in Gordon. Cocoa came in to us with a VERY swollen face.

She had been rubbing her face a lot at home, but this had settled when she came in to us. Dr Scott Lackenby took one look at Cocoa and thought he had the wrong dog. She looked more like a Shar Pei than a Labrador! Although he couldn’t find one, Dr Scott was very sure that Cocoa had been stung by an insect and that is what had caused the dramatic swelling to Cocoa’s face. In most cases insect stings don’t cause them any major problems, just some unsightly swelling like Cocoa. However, in some cases, animals can have an nasty allergic reaction to bites and stings which can compromise their ability to breath properly. Luckily this wasn’t the case for Cocoa and an injection of an anti-inflammatory and an anti-histamine would see the swelling go down in a few hours.

Well, better go. I still have lots of sleeping to do, I mean jobs to finish. Meows for now, love Joey xoxo