Gabbie is a 14 year old Spitz, and she's been slowing down over the past few years. So for the past several months, she's been getting worse. Some days she can barely walk. I've had her to the vet, and they just told me to give her glucosamine and gave me a prescription of tramadol. Well, Wednesday and Thursday, she was really bad, and that's when I noticed her nails were freaky long and strange looking. I guess I didn't notice because her feet have really long hair. Here's where it gets weird. I start to clip her nails, and notice a growth coming out of the bottom of her third toe on her right foot. It was about an inch long and it looked exactly like a second toe nail....coming out of the Bottom Of Her Toe! That's when I stop what I'm doing and take her to the vet Friday. I told them I wanted to see the vet, but they figured it was just a nail trim and some assistants were going to do it. I told them what I thought I saw, and they just looked at me like I was stupid. So they're clipping her nails, and get to the right front foot, look at the "growth", stop, and go get the vet. Long story short, it turns out she did have a second toe nail growing out of the bottom of her third toe...on both front feet! Vet said in 30 years he'd never even heard of anything like it and started taking pictures of it to show his vet buddies. It turns out that they didn't have a quick, so he was able to dremmel them down to the pad. Now she's back to her normal 14 year old self. I'll have to bring her back in every once in a while to get her re-dremmeled, but other than that, I guess she's cool.
Some weird mutation - but the fact that it would actually fully form into an actual toenail is amazing.
It could have been a toenail that split or broke off at angle at some point, and then grew out that way. It could explain why it didn't have a quick, My sister's dog had a toenail split, and it grew into two nails. One inside the other, if you looked at it from the side there were two nails, one curved inside the other. It was actually just one nail that split and looked like two nails.
Weird! Never seen anything like that and I've been around animals all my life. I'm so glad she's ok and it's an easy fix!
The only thing is that it was growing from a huge root in the bottom of her pad. Also, it was on the same toe on both front feet.
Oh... I missed the part where you said it was both feet. That's really freaky. Glad that she's doing well.
When we got out beagle Lou, the doctor noticed he had two especially well-proportioned dewclaws on his back paws. They often needed extra clipping since they weren't even with his other paws and didn't contact the ground, but they didn't bug him otherwise. This is entirely new territory, though.
c Here's a picture of a print out of a picture that the vet took. Legend: 1. Toe 2. Primary, normal, although embarrassingly long toenail. (I still feel bad for letting it get that bad without noticing it) 3. Freaky Secondary Demon Claw.
You know, looking at it, it sort of looks like the warts or some shit that get out of control on some people and they can end up having growths that look like they're made out of keratin. It's called Epidermodysplasia verruciformis.
That's exactly what I thought it was at first. But the fact that it looks so much like a claw, and there was an identical one on the same toe of her left foot makes me think Demon Claw.
The pooch is clearly the next stage in evolution towards canines with opposable thumbs who can operate can-openers, and thus represents our doom.
KJ says it might not be an actual toenail, like ed says. She's seen a similar case before, growing out of the skin by the toe.