You never know, until you know...

You never knew it was something to watch for until you were told...

our pretty lil girl

I took the dogs in for their annual shots and vet visit about a month ago and we got some interesting news about Sara Beth.  The vet was only able to find this because we had sedated her to have a dental cleaning done.  During the normal check up, she was too excited and figity for the vet to notice the bump on her neck.  However, when she was sleeping and on her side, the vet could see a golf-ball size lump in her neck.

Yup, a lump.  Darn.  Well, we had the test done on it to see if it was cancerous or something really serious.  Turns out it is what the vet thought it was.  She has a build up of saliva in her neck because either the gland or gland's duct is damaged.  The vet called it a Salivary Mucus Seal.   The lump doesn't cause her any discomfort or pain, and because a dog's neck is usually flabby anyway, it's visually not noticeable.

There is a small chance the lump could go down if the swelling is caused from an infection.  Otherwise, the lump is permanent.  The next step would be to see a specialist and decide if we wanted to do surgery to take it out as well as repair the gland/duct.  However, at the present moment we are doing what the vet referred to as "benign neglect", which is what most people do:  we're leaving it be.  Until it presents itself as a larger problem or gets really large, we will leave it be.

Who knew that this could happen to a dog?  We certainly didn't.  So, if you notice an extraordinarily large bump on your dog's neck (we're talking golf ball size at the least), you might be dealing with a similar thing.  I'm thankful for good vets and that our little princess is okay!