Day at the beach

Once Max turned 4 months, he had all his shots and now we could take him to the beach too. The first time we took Max and Maya to the beach together, Maya was a little bigger so she ran write into the water ready to swim. It was Max's first time so he was hesitant but he would follow Maya anywhere so he was swimming in no time. Maya swims faster than Max so when we threw the ball, Max would wait for Maya to come back to the shore so that he can try and take the ball from her.

Unfortunately, Max's first time at the beach almost resulted in a costly trip to the vet. While standing on the sand next to the water, a medium size dog sitting next to Max snapped and attacked him. My wife was next to Max and broke it up quick. Max was wining a bit but we did not see any damage. The other owner disciplined her dog and took her dog away. I took Max back in the water to keep him playing so that he would not be traumatized by the experience. The next day, I noticed that Max's ear was wet under the flap. I though maybe he had some discharge from ear from the sea water. I dried his ear. When my wife when play with him a while later, she said the dogs ear was wet. After further investigation, we notice a small hole in his outer ear that was leaking fluid. My wife took Max to the vet. The vet said that the dog had punctured Max's salivary gland and it was saliva coming out of his ear. She prescribed antibiotics and said that if it doesn't heal in the next two weeks, he may need surgery that would cost around $600. The vet said to keep the wound clean with iodine. After about a week it was still leaking. I put Neosporin on the whole and noticed that the Neosporin plugged the hole and stopped the draining. We kept putting Neosporin on his ear over the next few days and we noticed it was healing rapidly. So, after around 9 days, the whole had closed up. Max was perfectly fine the entire time it was just strange seeing saliva coming out of his ear.


Lesson Learned is that if your dog ever gets attacked by another dog, no matter how harmless it seems, get the owners information and the dogs name and id. Just in case.