Quinn Diagnosed - Oral Papillomas

My poor girl. *sigh*

Hubby took her to the vet yesterday to find out what the growths on her lips could possibly be.

The diagnosis was surprising - Oral Papillomas - a benign tumor caused by a Papilloma virus. It’s actually supposed to target young dogs (6 months to 4 years) but because she is older her immune system is more vulnerable to things like this. They’re sort of like warts but bigger.

It could have come from Bullet, our foster dog, who is 10 months old, but we haven’t seen any signs of oral growths on her. Though it is hard to get her to sit still and examine her. My suspicion is that she picked it up on her visit to the farm with us last week for agility. We took her, Kodiak, and Bullet to play in the neighboring field while Trooper and I trained.

The treatment is surgical removal or “benign neglect” as the book says. I’m going with neglect in this case. The lesions do not affect her ability to breath, eat, sleep, or do any other normal activity. I’d rather save the money it would cost to do electrosurgery. Plus I don’t really want to put her under anesthesia again.

So the plan is to monitor her and see if they go away on their own. It could take up to 24 months according to the print off the vet gave us, but should be between one and five months.

I would worry about our other dogs because it is apparently very contagious but since none of them show any signs it seems that they are immune. I hope so because the last thing I want to deal with is separating all my dogs for five months. Sheesh.