by Emily
Our dog Leon, an 11-month-old male Rhodesian Ridgeback, has has a wart on his right ear for about three months now. A friend of mine first noticed it in the park one day and I took one look and said, “Oh, that’s nothing. It’s just a bud or seed of some sort.” At that point I reached to pluck it out of his ear and realized that it was attached. The wart was about the size of a small flower bud.
About a week later, I took him to the vet to get it checked out. She informed me that it was a wart, that it was nothing to worry about, and that it would fall off on its own in a couple months.
Well, since then, it has grown significantly in size. Actually, it’s huge! I was trying to think of some fruit to compare it to, but there’s not a good comparison, so i just measured…It’s 1.5 inches long, 1 inch wide, and 1 inch deep.
It started off all skin color and then began to turn black on the edges.
It doesn’t seem to bother him, but sometimes he scratches it and it bleeds. The area of skin around it is very red and irritated.
I can’t tell if the base of it, the part that is attached to him, is getting smaller, or it’s just getting bigger. Actually, it does seem to be getting bigger. Just today I noticed a few more skin-colored “tentacles” creeping up around the side.
I also noticed today that he seems to have another wart that has just begin to grow on his mouth. (You can see this in the picture as well.)
He is also losing hair in his front “led pits” and on his back legs. I’m pretty sure that the front leg hair loss is from the harness we use n him (which I’ve now wrapped in fleece so it doesn’t irritate his skin so much), but I don’t know what to make of the bag leg hair loss. Could it be related?
Anyway, my question is…do you think this wart in his ear (and the other) could be malignant? Do I need to take him to the vet again and possibly get it removed?
Thank you in advance for your time!
Sincerely,
Emily