# massive hair loss after spay? long hair chi



## lilpolkadot (Feb 5, 2013)

Sakura was spayed at exactly 2 weeks after turning 1 yr old. She is a chocolate long hair. Other than the trauma we both suffered with the really crappy spay and sloppy sutures, with infection, she came through it all ok. The spay was done in a vet's office, and I had a free certificate because I had been doing foster care for a local rescue. I paid for the full panel of optional blood work, which seemed fine. 
When she was maybe 3 months old, she went into that really awkward puppy stage where her neck was bald, her tail plume grew really long, and she started getting a really really long butt tuft, and her hair around face started to resemble a mane of a lion. She had started to fill out nicely as she approached 1 year old.
Now its been two months since spay, and guess what? my baby is back to being bald on neck, her tail looks long yet sparse and scraggly, most of the long hair around her neck and ears is gone!!! I have not changed her diet, and they only gave her three doses of metacam for pain. When green puss oozed from the contorted lumpy bloody incision, she got anti biotics, more metacam, and tramadol. 
She is back to her normal loving self, plays a great deal with her sister...everything is pretty much back to normal, other than her losing so much of her fur...I do not mean like bald patches other than on her neck, (she does not wear collar, and when and if we take her outside, its in carrier with harness) Her coat is just shorter and thinner...all her long hair is pretty much gone~ It is so noticeable that my clients see her and look shocked and ask what happened to the beautiful lil doggy? oh and one last thing, they totally shaved her belly, which left a rash and cuts on her, and they had cut/trimmed her 4 inch long butt tufts down to about 1/4 an inch, and it is not growing back either. 
has any one else experienced this? is it normal for long hairs? could it be the hormones being gone, as she had gone through one heat cycle? will she fill back out? If I had known this would happen, I would have never had her altered. I had a mini pom for 16 yrs and never had her spayed.but after doing a rescue myself of a chi who had been living as a backyard breeder in a milk crate all her life, there was no way in heck i could bear to think of her ever being lost and being used for breeding....




this is pic of 5 day old spay incision..

Thanks in advance for any help you can give....Tracy


----------



## omguthrie (Oct 13, 2009)

If she had gone through a heat cycle then she may just be going through the normal coat "blowing" that intact females do after their heats, she is just spayed now. Intact females blow out their coats when it would be time for them to wean a litter if they had been bred on that heat cycle (even if they have not been) and they can look very scraggly for a while until their coats grow back in. It's a normal cycle. Could the timing be right for this? 

I know my intact female border collie blows coat like none other after her heat cycles and looks sad with a scraggly tail and butt feathers and mane but it does grow back nice and lush. I always know it's about time for her to come into heat when I start thinking she looks really really pretty, about time for a heat so she can lose all that nice coat in a couple of months.


----------



## Jayda (Jun 15, 2012)

I remember my breeder saying that hair loss after a spay is not unusual (she breeds long coats). My newest was spayed about two months ago now and her belly fur is just starting to "peach fuzz" back in. I remember it took my other female longer than I expected to get her belly fur back.


----------



## susan davis (Mar 25, 2011)

That incision really looks like a 'student' did the spay!! I wouldn't worry too much about the hair---it will grow back. It is probably hormonal. Just keep brushing, and soon you will have something to brush.


----------



## lilpolkadot (Feb 5, 2013)

my son had done an internship in a vet's office in high school, he kept telling me something did not look right about the incisions. (both Sakura and Peony's looks very rough like the one in pic) I had only seen one spay scar, and that was of the rescue i did this summer, and let me tell you, it was seemless, white, and unraised at all. So the incisions on my dogs sure did look like some one had done it with a rusty razor blade! Darn sure wont be back to that vet, yet am so afraid for those dogs that are from the humane society and rescues that are going there for the free spay program. I was also told that they are put up for adoption the next day.


----------

