Red lump in the fold of my dog's leg

Most importantly, keep disinfecting it until it’s healed

🙂

Plus, with an abscess, there are headaches.

It's best not to leave it like that for too long.

Hi there, if it’s an abscess—and it certainly looks like one in the photo—you’ll need to have it lanced by the vet.

By 'foreign bodies', we mean that a bit of debris, like a thorn or a wood splinter, has worked its way under the skin and into the tissue. This causes an infection, pus builds up, and so on – resulting in an abscess.

An abscess can grow and become very large, which is both dangerous and a real problem. Getting it lanced by a vet and properly disinfected is a must.

For example, one of my cats once came home with an abscess. We’d seen her two days before, but then she stayed out (she’s an outdoor cat) and was clearly avoiding us. When we finally caught her, we realised she had an abscess the size of a large grapefruit – which is massive for a cat. The skin had actually started to die off because she’d been trying to open it herself by licking it. It was a trip to the emergency vet, surgery to remove the necrotic tissue, and a lot of follow-up care.

She’s doing fine now, but my point is that even if an abscess looks small at first, it can turn into a total nightmare – tissue death, blood poisoning, and so on.

Good evening,

Did this "red lump" appear suddenly or gradually? Looking at the photo, it looks as though there might be some pus coming away from it; is that the case? It could be caused by several things, such as an abscess, a foreign body, or an ingrown hair... A grass seed, for example, is a type of foreign body that gets stuck in a dog's skin during walks and can then migrate further up under the skin (in which case, it needs to be removed urgently). It would be best to have a vet examine the lesion more closely.

Good evening,

Marthe