Chihuahua People, Talk to Me!

[PineBurrowPeeps]

So I have had my little boy for about 3 weeks and he has fast become my best friend, baby, constant companion, etc.
I have never felt this way about a dog before. I work with him a lot, training him and he is so smart.

Anyway, last evening I took him out of his crate to go potty and noticed 3 dime sized bright red welts on his tummy and penis area, bright red rings with tiny little bites in the middle. They caused him no pain to touch and he's not itching them. They are not swollen.
The only thing I can think happened is that yesterday morning I took him outside with me and tied him up to a tree with his harness and a 10 foot or so tie down while I did some yard work a couple of feet away and fed the chooks. He LOVES ants and will "hunt" them in the ground, head to the side, ears cocked, looking for ants and then trying to eat them. This is a new behavior that he has only developed in the last week.
I am wondering if he didn't bite some bug that bit him back!
I watch him for hours after I discover the bites and notice he's acting perfectly normal. As the night goes on they start to fade somewhat and today they are a dull dusky pink color. I combed through all of his fur and found no other bites than the ones on his belly area.
Last night about midnight DH and I are watching a movie and Max starts snorting and doing that whole reversed sneeze thing that Chi's do for about 10 minutes on and off. I rub his throat and give him a drink and he's fine and goes back to sleep. Doesn't happen again all night.
This morning, my DH and kids bring me breakfast in bed for Mother's Day and just as my husband puts the tray down on the bed we hear this retching coming from under the blanket where the puppy was sleeping and I fling back the blanket to find he had vomited all over the sheets and himself. Into the tub he went to get cleaned up.
He has no fever or anything but he's been doing the snorting thing on and off throughout the day, nowhere near like it was last night. Very mild.

I have no idea if the bites and the snorting/vomiting are connected.
My husband and I have scoured the internet looking of pics of what the welts/bites look like but can't find anything that looks like it.

Any ideas?

 

[Epona142]

They sound like ant bites. My little Luna managed to get herself into fire ants when she was young and now has a bald spot on her chest because of how bad they got her. (We went to the vet because they had bitten her so much!)

As for the vomiting, what did it look like? That can tell a lot. They'll puke for a large number of reasons, for example, a friend's will puke if he doesn't get dinner on time. Weirdo.

When a dog pukes, the first thing I usually look at is their food.

As for the "reversed sneezing", which is actually his trachea collapsing making it difficult to breeze, try blowing in his face. Sometimes that can help them out, otherwise, I just hold them quietly and try to get them to be calm.

 

[bigkford]

My chihuahua does the snorting once in awhile when she is vey excited, and sometimes it irritates her stomach and she pukes. Not very often ut does sometimes happen.

Good luck Kim

 

[chicken_china_mom]

I have 3 chihuahua kids and two of my kids I sometimes wonder if when God was making them, did he forget to give them a complete fur coat, cause they are nearly hairless, lol. Sweet Pea, my tiniest was the first born of a little of 3 nearly 2 years ago. I kept all 3 because I fell in love with all of them (I'm a sucker when it comes to dogs!). Sweet Pea weights in at about 3 3/4 pounds and classifies as a tea cup, though there is nothing "teacup" about her, lol. She is the alpha dog in the house and will actually make my lab and my chow/sheepdog mix wait to eat until she AND her brother and sister have had their fill. The second pup in the litter, Angel (we call her Angie) is huge compared to her sister. She weights in at 9 lbs. Then there is my baby boy Cooper. He's 6 lbs. He is a spoiled brat and I admit it. He's the one I posted in another thread because he thinks I brought the chickens home to be his friends. Silly dog. We have problems with SweetPea because she is Hypoglycemic and her blood sugar dips from time to time. He have a vitamin paste that we keep on hand at all times in case that happens. Hypoglycemia and full fledged diabetes (with need of insulin shots, the whole 9 yards) are typical of the breed as well as luxating patellas (knee caps that slide out of place and need surgery to fix). We've had no problem with their knees, and neither of my other two have problems with their blood sugars. I do not feed my dogs any table food for two reasons. One, I just don't do it. Bad experiences from my childhood made me against it, and also giving table scraps can throw off the delicate sugar balances and cause her sugars to dip and need either her paste or an emergency trip to the vet for a shot. We had a really scary experience at the end of winter, beginning of spring. I sleep with all three of my chi's and one night I was woken up by the strangest noises under my blankets. I pulled back the covers to find that Cooper had thrown up- ON ME. So, I got up in time to grab a towel as he continued to empty the contents of his stomach. I got him cleaned up, me cleaned up, all the bedding changed, got back in bed, and about a half hour later he gave me a repeat performance.

This went on all night and I ended up moving him into the kennel which he thought was proof that I was abandoning him, and he vomited all through the next day and into day two. He started with diarrhea too, and then Sweet Pea started vomiting. I swear it felt like all those times when my kids were tiny and would get the flu. They both lost weight and it messed so badly with Sweet Pea's blood sugar that I was forced to give her the paste so much that I actually ran out. I got them both in to the vet and the vet said they had to have ingested something and caught a virus. He said it was the dog version of the flu and that I just had to wait for it to run it's course. Cooper lost a full pound and Sweet Pea lost nearly a pound. I got a new tube of the vitamin paste from the vet and brought them home. That night Angie threw up. I swear, I've never washed the bedding so much in my life! But after nearly a week, it was through and they were all better. None of my other dogs caught it which I thought was strange. I guess what I am trying to say is that dogs can catch viruses too, and I do a combo of tying my dogs out and also putting them into this little mini run. I put Cooper, Sweet Pea and our Dachshund Kendall into the run cause Angie will dig to get out. I watch them closely because they sometimes eat things out there. They hunt bugs too, everything from flies to ants, to bees, you name it. What's gross is that my neighbor's cats are outdoor cats and she doesn't treat them for parasites and they LOVE to poop in my yard. Sometimes they poop where I tie my dogs out. It's a big reason why I make sure my dogs get treated for internal parasites too. But being out in the country we get raccoons, opossums, skunks, etc, and they leave their scat all over, and I can't be sure that my dogs are never going to get into icky stuff like that. I know that if they manage to get into my cats litterpans here inside the house, they often do throw up. Dogs throw up sometimes if they get too much air in their stomachs too, and it sounds like your pup might have with his gasping for air the night before. Sweet Pea does that. She also burps loudly on occasion when her trachea collapses like that. I had wondered what that was exactly. I always thought it was asthma and I just pat her on the side when it happens. I'll have to try to blow in her face next time it happens. She gets very excited and it happens to her a lot. I personally don't think the ant bites are related. Where do you live? What kind of ants do you have there? Here we'd have to worry more about spider bites than ant bites, and even the spiders aren't much to worry about. Also, have you changed his food at all, or introduced something new, anything like that? It can mess with a sensitive tummy too. I'd only worry if the vomiting keeps up. In that case I would say get him into a vet as fast as possible. Good luck with your new baby, and welcome to chihuahua motherhood!