blood in dog mouth

Question
hi, I have a 14.5 year old kerry blue terrier she looks to be in good health , apart from a few lumps which our vet assures us are nothing to be worried about. Her problem is that twice in the last 3 days she has a very large amount of blood in her mouth some of the blood looked to contain small fleshy lumps .We can see no apparent wounds inside her mouth and as she is a pretty agressive dog we are worried about taking her to the vets as she does tend to bite

Answer
Hi John!

In order to get to the bottom of this problem, you may want to schedule your dog to be sedated, have her teeth cleaned and her entire mouth evaluated all at once. Less stress for her in the long run. Being almost 15 does increase the risk of anesthesia, but running bloodwork, being on IV fluids and good monitoring skills of the doctor and tech should have a smooth procedure and recovery.

Dogs and cats can get squamous cell carcinomas that are aggressive cancerous lumps that form in the mouth. She could also have small papilloma warts that can cause a problem and bleed if she bites down on them.

The only true way to find out is to have her looked at and the lumps biopsied.

Hope this helps!