Inverted nipple OR botfly?

[lauren1209]

My dog has a small lesion on his skin on his belly, near where a nipple could be. Brown discharge with no odor, and similar to dirt, comes out when the area is squeezed. Could this be an inverted nipple or a botfly larvae?

[Cliff Redford, DVM]

Great photo Lauren, I am new to MedHelp and this is the first time a pet owner has done this...it is extremely helpful. The lesion appears to be a hyperpigmented sebaceous adenoma (whew...out of breath with that one). Sebaceous adenomas are blocked hair follicle oil glands that eventually rupture and form a cyst filled with beige to dark thick oily like material. They usually become blocked due to an in-grown hair. If they are very superficial you can squeeze them and force out the material and then clean with a little soap. Otherwise they are safe to leave alone. Inverted nipples do occur but normally are noticed early on in the dog's life (several months old). Your dog should have eight nipples in total and they should be all in pretty obvious places, directly opposite to the nipple on the other side. Lastly, there is always a small chance this is a botfly however it seems very small to be that. Assuming it is not pinful then you can also squeeze out the fly larvae and then clean the area. If it seems painful then just leave it alone and keep an eye on it.

[Cliff Redford, DVM]

It still appears to be a sebaceous cyst. Dark haired dogs will produce alot more pigment in the sebaceous oil and so it can look black. When you clean it you remove the pigmented substance but it can be formed again. If it does not bother him I would give it a good squeeze and express as much of the debris as possible and then apply polysporin on it twice a day for 3 days to keep it clean. I stil do not think it is a botfly however I cannot be sure by just looking at photos. Expressing the larvae will fix the problem if youve got the stomach for it...it is gross but kind of cool too :)
Worse case it goes through its life cycle and eventually a fly comes out and then keep it clean for the 3 days. I would not try and kill the larvae by suffocating it. I once did a surgery where we removed a mass as we were worried it was a tumour. It ended up being a dead bot larvae that had likely been in there for 6 months...so it acted like a foreign object and was painful to the dog.
Good luck.
Dr. Cliff
www.pettalk360.com (check out our internet show...)

[lauren1209]

Hey I have one more quick question. I tried cleaning the lesion like you said i could try doing and it looked pretty different after. I just wanted to post the pictures and see if you still had the same opinion. It was not painful at all for him while i was messing with it. He was actually almost falling asleep. However, after a little cleaning, I did notice that I couldn't get much more of the black stuff out, and the black circular thing would appear and then disappear. Is this just because I cleaned most of the surface and it was the harder deeper part of the lesion I could not get to?... Or does the hole look more like it could be a botfly larvae hole now? Thank you so much for your help! Your first response was so informative and I appreciate you taking the time to help me out! Please let me know what you think. I posted the new pictures in my photos as well. Also, is there anyway I could test to see if it was a botfly without hurting the potential cyst? I read online that you could put something like vaseline over the hole to suffocate it, forcing it to come up for air. This wouldn't hurt him if he did just have the cyst and not the botfly right? Or would this even be a good way to check for a botfly? Sorry for all the questions, thanks for reading!

[lauren1209]

Hey I have one more quick question. I tried cleaning the lesion like you said i could try doing and it looked pretty different after. I just wanted to post the pictures and see if you still had the same opinion. It was not painful at all for him while i was messing with it. He was actually almost falling asleep. However, after a little cleaning, I did notice that I couldn't get much more of the black stuff out, and the black circular thing would appear and then disappear. Is this just because I cleaned most of the surface and it was the harder deeper part of the lesion I could not get to?... Or does the hole look more like it could be a botfly larvae hole now? Thank you so much for your help! Your first response was so informative and I appreciate you taking the time to help me out! Please let me know what you think. I posted the new pictures in my photos as well.

[lauren1209]

Thank you so much! It was extremely helpful to get your opinion and I feel much better knowing that it is most likely not a botfly. Thanks again!

[lauren1209]

I have posted pictures of it in my photos section.  Please take a look and let me know what you think!