Follow or Face My Wrath

The Anal Gland Disaster

For you hardy souls that clicked the link, here's the story:

Tini was my first dog, and I inherited her from my dad, who wasn't a big dog person. I was never briefed on how to care for dogs. And as a result, I had never heard of an anal gland, and was unaware that you're supposed to periodically have them "expressed" (which, by the way, is the nastiest terminology they could have landed on, in my opinion). Tini, as I've already mentioned, wasn't the healthiest dog. I never had her anal glands expressed.

If you spend a lot of time walking a dog, you spend a lot of time staring at their ass, and you begin to notice things about it. Tini's butt always puffed out when she needed to poop, but she was always determined to find that perfect spot, so she held it as long as she possibly could (that behavior may have also been related to the way I used to punish her for pooping inside; holding it may have been a compulsive thing). I got used to Tini's butt hole being puffed out.

But one day, I noticed that her butt hole was a little swollen on one side. I didn't think anything of it; I thought it might have just been the light casting a weird shadow on her normally puffed-out butt. By the next day, it was so swollen and red the hair around it had spread out. I knew something was wrong, but I had to work. I got home late that night (technically early the next morning) and put Tini in bed with me, planning to take her to the vet the next morning.

As I've said in the main article, Tini liked to sleep between my legs or by my feet, and this night was no exception. Some time during the early morning, I rolled over, and accidentally bumped Tini with my big toe, and....

It popped.

Tini squealed and howled in pain, and immediately ran from the bed and hid in my hamper. I went to her, to see what I had done, and noticed she was frantically licking a bloody wound on her backside. The smell was...noticeable. I tried to touch her, but she growled at me, so I left her there. When I tore the sheets off my bed, I found a bloody puddle about the size of a baseball. Its odor was also noticeable. I bundled up the sheets and took them straight to the laundry room. I would have thrown them away, but I only had one set of sheets at the time.

I don't remember why I didn't go to the vet then, but the likely explanation was money, with a mixture of embarrassment. I was barely making it in those days, plus the damage was already done, and the wound just needed to heal. I checked up on Tini as often as I could, and she was always awake and seemed fine other than being wounded. She would not leave the hamper, and would not let me anywhere near her for three days. Eventually the wound healed, and she was fine. After that, I had her glands expressed on a regular basis.

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