Setter Cut His Tongue....Bloodbath!

[NEhomer]

Cripes, I was out with Whip yesterday and a section of overgrowth still has barbed wire here and there and he piled up into a section. When I called him back to me to be sure he was ok, it was like a scene in a horror movie. He managed to tear underneath his tongue somewhere and the blood loss was massive. His tongue was of course hanging out as he was panting and splashing blood everywhere. His lower jaw was pooled up with it and he had a huge swollen plum-like swell under his tongue. I was in a panic and fearing that I wouldn't get him to the vet in time losing that much blood. We were in the thickest brambles so I couldn't keep him leashed at first and the more the tongue flew around the more blood flew.

I leashed him when I could to slow him down. He was in too much pain to drink at first but then the bleeding slowed and he drank a bit which washed him off some and I could see better though I still couldn't find the actual laceration. The 500yd walk back to the truck saw the blood lessen and lessen and by the time we got there, it was nearly stopped. He rested and drank a bit more and was seeming to pull out of it. The plum swelling went down steadily on the ride home.....home was in line with the vet's office. By the time I got home he was in some discomfort but seemed fine.

I went on line and found several accounts of this exact thing and in each of them, the bleeding stopped and the pooch healed just fine. Some folks rushed to the vet and some didn't and it didn't seem to make any difference. One story was posted by a vet who said the same thing. So I just watched him and he got better throughout the day and was able to eat his supper no problem. We skipped going out this morning just to be safe and it's also raining here so he'll get some time off and he's fine now.

Man, I honestly thought my dog's life was in danger and was I freaking out. Funny, after I had leashed him a ways out of the woods I realized that in the commotion and anxiety, I had left my shotgun on the forest floor where I first assessed him so with bloody dog at hand I had to backtrack to find it and couldn't. I threw down my orange cap and started ranging out and eventually I found it.

What a fiasco but with a good ending.

[ckfowler]

Harper did this in MI as a very young dog, way back in away from any help of course. She was still bleeding when she drank the next day so we took her to the vet for stitches. Scary how red they can get!

[NEhomer]

Glad she was ok.

I posted this mosty 'cause I found all those forum posts I found from other boards to be very useful.

Whip's fine today and it looks like I dodged another $200 + visit to the vet.

It was an unbelievably bloody event!

[DougB]

I've had a few Springers that seemed to have made a hobby of cutting their tongues while running in corn fields. Always bothered me more than them.

[codym]

$200 bucks would have been awesome! I let this female GSP out of her kennel one evening to run around the yard with the other dogs before dinner. Still not sure what exactly caused it but I think her and one of the other dogs collided and when she came by she wiped me with blood. We brought her in and she was bleeding profusely from the tongue. We couldn't find it or get it stopped then she started acting woozy. We took her to an emergency vet where she got a couple stitches in her tongue and I got a $1000.00 dollar bill!

[NEhomer]

Oh man, that must have been tough!

Whip's perfectly fine now. He seemed fine by the very next day.

[codym]

Whip's perfectly fine now. He seemed fine by the very next day.

Good deal, setters are pretty tough.