My Dog is Mutating

[wraithfodder]

Yup, made a brief tweet about it, which elicited a few "icks" of sorts, so now shall post here. Anyway, was brushing dog and this dog has fur. I mean, he could be mistakened for a woolly  mammoth (Sheltland Sheepdog). However, we found what grossly enough looked like a twisted toenail growing out of his *tail*. I mean, eeeeuuuuu. My brother said, oh, he broke off the other one a while ago so maybe it grew back, which seems to be the case. Anyway, after grumbling why couldn't he have grown this icky little horn thing out of his head as then it would be great for Halloween, I went off to the internet.

Today, I hit the jackpot. Sorta. It seems this is a cutaneous horn, which dogs get, cats get, etc. etc. and even people get 'em too. There are some rather er, um, fascinating photos on the web of people who have let big ones grow on them! Anyway, he'll probably have a vet visit soon so we'll deal with it then.

Anyway, this dog groomer's site - http://www.groomers.net/discusalbum/messages/89/18618.html?1158465213 - had a whole thread on them.

I'll stick the pictures of said 'mutation' under the cut for those who have a low squick tolerance to this kind of X-File-ish stuff ;)


It's two centimeters long.

.

Comments

[bbuttercup.livejournal.com]

My Elkhound would get these. It's a build up of keratin around a hair in a hair follicle. If you wiggle it a bit at the base, it will probably pop out on it's own :o)

[wraithfodder.livejournal.com]

Ah, shall try that this weekend! Thanks!

[padfootthegrim.livejournal.com]

**waves** Merrov from Twitter here..

Just wanted to say again.. LOL I think it's kinda cool, in a weird way. Annoying though, in that it'll end up costing money to remove it. :-P

**goes to check out the groomer link**

[iamrighthere.livejournal.com]

You want gross? Check out my latest LJ post! But enough about me. This is fascinating stuff. Cutaneous horns--and how come science fiction hasn't grabbed onto these suckers (in a manner of speaking) and made a big hudu about them? Dogs, cats...and people get these things? Aaaahhhh! This is even better than polydactylism.

[wraithfodder.livejournal.com]

Whoa... yeah, read your entry. Sounds like a SyFy movie! WAit, go down there and videotape!!!

[iamrighthere.livejournal.com]

*shivers...*

[wraithfodder.livejournal.com]

Yeah, think I said something like that when I first saw it!

[jedi40.livejournal.com]

I have been a dog groomer since the early 90's and I have never seen that before.

[wraithfodder.livejournal.com]

Heh, another brave soul looks at pics. Yeah, neither have I. But, now you have and if any dog's have some strange growth, well, you can compare!

[jedi40.livejournal.com]

If I ever come up with a dog that has something like that I will.

cutaneous horn on your dog...

[(Anonymous)]

Hi..I just came across your blog here while I was searching for an answer to what could possibly be growing out of my dog. It is exactly the same thing as you have pictured here!! My question is, what did the vet say? Did the vet remove it? Is your dog ok? Please, any help you could offer would be very appreciated!!! Thanks for your time!

Re: cutaneous horn on your dog...

[wraithfodder.livejournal.com]

Hi. This was a few years ago, and I'm pretty sure we had the vet look at him and there was no problem. It fell off so there was no surgery involved. The dog was fine, although alas, he passed away last year (lung cancer) (http://wraithfodder.livejournal.com/458066.html).

If you're unsure about the growth, you should see a vet, just for peace of mind.