I present to you, Bumble. The toothless Australian Shepard.
We got Bumble about four years ago. She was brought into my Mom's vet clinic as a puppy because her little face was just getting fatter and fatter and none of her teeth were coming in. My mom had x-rays done on her and found that the stem cells which were supposed to form her teeth had exploded before their formation. This means that she had hundreds of shards of little teeth all throughout her gums that were not coming through the surface. The condition was called Quadruple Odontoma, and Bumble was the first known case of this happening in all four parts of her mouth. It required four surgeries to remove all of the teeth shards and most of her gums. The surgeries were spread out every few weeks over the first two months of her life and were all very experimental. We knew going in that this might not be something that could work, my mom warned us not to get to attached to her when we first brought her home. There was even a K9 Dentist who agreed to do all the oral surgeries for free in order to attach his name to such a revolutionary case (They would have cost upwards of 20,00 dollars otherwise.). Bumble triumphed through the four massive surgeries and now lives a full and happy life with my parents. She headlines in medical journals and gets brought up in veterinary conferences regularly, they even teach other vets classes about her. Her tongue hangs out all the time, she swallows regular dog food whole, and we never taught her not to bite (since she didn't have teeth to hurt anyone with) so she regularly slimes people by attempting to clamp down on their arms. It's funny, but pretty gross. She is my favorite little dog in the whole world!
Can anyone think of where her name might have come from?
