My dog, "Petey", stopped eating on Friday, April 11, 2008. You might think this is no big deal, that pets sometimes have an upset stomach and don't feel like eating. There were a couple of reasons why this disturbed me. First, Petey always eats. He plays ball continually and burns calories like crazy. He's a lean, mean, muscle bound dog. Second, and more importantly, my concern stemmed from the fact that my ex-husband's dog died from the Parvo Virus the same day.
Parvo is a viral disease, which attacks the intestinal tract and immune system of an animal. Parvo can cause vomiting, diarrhea, lethargy, depression, dehydration, high fever and sudden death. It is often deadly and strikes suddenly, causing puppies to become extremely ill. Without treatment, puppies can die within a few days. Parvo is hard to kill and is shed in large numbers though feces by infected dogs. One ounce of feces can carry millions of particles of the virus. Dehydration is the number one cause of death with the Parvo Virus. Puppies can pass away from loss of blood, major organ failure, infection and low blood sugar as well.
Even though Petey wasn't in direct contact with my ex-husband's dog, my kids had just spent the weekend with him. After finding out his dog died from Parvo, I started doing research about the virus. I didn't think adult dogs could get ill from it, especially if they weren't directly around the infected dog, but after conducting more research, I found out it was highly contagious and that there were some cases of adult dogs that had gotten the virus. The virus can be spread on human clothes or shoes, other animals - even birds -can contract the virus from coming in contact with the feces of an infected animal. Knowing this information was why the red flag went up when Petey stopped eating.
That's when I ordered herbal remedy products. I immediately started feeding Petey yogurt and Pedialyte in a syringe several times on Saturday. I repeated his yogurt feedings and Pedialyte servings all day on Sunday. When Petey continued to worsen drastically over the weekend, I took him to the vet on Monday morning to find out exactly what was going on. At this point, he wasn't vomiting too much, but he had been having terrible diarrhea and was now bleeding profusely from his rectum.
When I called the vet's office to set up an appointment, I specifically requested that Petey be tested for Parvo, as another dog had just died from it. Once I entered the vet's office - without Petey, as I didn't want to take the chance of infecting other dogs - I discussed bringing him through another entrance as a safety precaution for other pets. In other words, I was so confident that he was infected, I was taking every measure to contain the virus and expected the vet to do the same. When I told the vet and his staff that Petey was almost three years old, it appeared that they immediately dismissed Parvo. However, they went ahead and administered the test at my request.
The Parvo test came back negative. They then had to run the whole gamut of tests; worms, heartworms, blood cells, organ functions, etc. My vet bill was very high, however, I didn't care at that point, I just wanted to find out what was wrong with Petey. The vet basically didn't know what was wrong with him. He thought it was a bacterial infection but couldn't tell me any more than that. All of his organs appeared to be functioning just fine, and he was very well hydrated (because of the Pedialyte I had been administering all weekend). The vet seemed confused because he only found two strange things. One was that Petey's white blood cell count was very low and it should be very high while fighting off an infection. The red blood cell count was very high, which again, should be reversed. He didn't know what was causing this. However, I had read that Parvo attacks the white bloods cells and that would explain this if the Parvo test had shown positive. I didn't say anything to the vet about reading that information. He seemed comfortable with the fact that the Parvo test result was accurate.
He wanted me to admit Petey into the hospital that day, but I didn't want to do that. The vet's office would only try to keep the fluid levels up - which I could continue doing at home - and they would try different antibiotics until one showed signs of working. They still didn't know what they would be treating. Petey is also a fairly high strung dog, I didn't want to take the chance that he would be over-stressed in that environment. The vet gave Petey some antibiotics at the office in the form of a shot, along with medicine to comfort his digestive tract. I also brought more antibiotics home that I had to give him twice a day for the next two days. However, he said if Petey didn't show any improvement by the following morning, that I needed to bring him back and have him admitted to the hospital immediately. If his condition became any worse, I needed to bring him in immediately. We didn't have time to waste with the condition that Petey was in.
