Some sort of bite

Hello vets. We took our 7 yr old English Mastiff to the vet yesterday because we noticed he was licking his knee area and there was edema. Vet provided Laser Therapy Muscular Skeletal and put him on Rimadyl Chew 100mg, 1 1/2 tabs every 4 hrs & Clindamycin caps 150mg, 4 caps every 12 hrs. This morning we noticed these 2 puncture wounds higher up in his groin area. It’s hard under the skin. Obviously he’s been bitten by something. Snake? Animal? We irrigated & sprayed with anti microbial wound care and applied Mupirocin ointment 2%. Should we take him back to the vet today? It’s Saturday and his vet is closed so we would need to go to an emergent care facility. Now that we’ve seen these puncture wounds, not sure if he should be treated differently? Other than licking, he’s acting, eating, & drinking normal. Temp is 101.4. 168 lbs. We live in Maryland, USA & believe this happened on Wednesday 11-27. He’s had 2 doses of the meds but no change in swelling.

Hello and thankyou for this fascinating question. Fascinating because in the UK we would not necessarily have reached for the drug combination you mentioned due to UK antibiotic prescribing rules and conventions, which I beleive are good and evidence-based.  However, your dog is currently under someone else's care; your vet has more information about this particular case that we do (or will do as soon as you can update them with the latest development) and for these reasons is better placed than we are to assess the case and recommend an the apppropriate way forward.  We are in no legal or ethical position to give further advice on another vets' case and would therefore recommend calling them to triage (assess for urgency) themselves.  Please do let us know how you get on.

Thank you so much for your response.  We took him back to the vet yesterday and was seen by a different Dr. She felt it was in fact a snake bite. She did a round of red lazer and recommended to continue on the Rimadyl & Clindamycin and said if we don’t see an improvement on the actual wound healing to come back for culture testing to be sure we aren’t missing some sort of bacteria. He seems comfortable and still acting and eating normally. Thank you again so much for your time. It’s so worrisome when our babies are hurting especially when our Drs office is closed.   ❤️