97 Tips for Raising Labs
Following are approximately 97 questions readers of BigYellowDog.com submitted in recent years. They were answered by a licensed veterinarian on the site as a general service to all Lab owners. This information is for general reference only. Always consult your veterinarian for any questions about your Lab's health. We hope this information is somewhat helpful. At this time, we are not accepting any more questions.
Question
My Lab is 6 1/2 years old, and we noticed that his face was drooping on the left side. He is drooling on this side as well. We also noticed that his mouth quivers on the left side, and it appears that he has difficulty closing his mouth. His "lip", for lack of a better word, on the left side seems to stick unclosed over the teeth. Because of all this, the dog opens and closes his mouth repeatedly, all the while experiencing this "quivering" on the left side of his mouth. We thought he possibly had a dental problem, but the vet disagreed. Ultimately, the vet decided to treat this as an early ear infection, even though he didn't see any redness or definite indication of this. The dog is no longer on antibiotics or eardrops and still the problem remains. I wondered what we should do now. We paid a lot of money and the dog is still experiencing these odd symptoms. Could this be the result of nerve involvement or a stroke?
Answer
I would be very concerned with these symptoms because it sounds from your description that your dog is experiencing some neurological problems. My best advice would be to take your dog to a specialty veterinarian hospital or a veterinarian teaching university in your area where some neurological tests can be run on your dog. Causes might be tumor- or disease-related, but it is hard to know for sure without a physical exam and more data. Again, my best advice would be to seek a second opinion from one of the institutions I mentioned above.
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