Latest Posts

Showing posts with label dogs. Show all posts
Showing posts with label dogs. Show all posts

Kero in her "room" at the veterinary hospital with her  IV tube and cone removed during one of my visits (she's hiding her arm under her body in the hopes that we wont reconnect the IV tube.)



A few weeks ago my lovely husky, Kero, fell very sick. Initially, she seemed confused, was walking strangely, and would hardly eat anything. Kero had been on a walk with the dog walkers earlier in the week on a very hot day. I wondered if perhaps she had become dehydrated. It also occurred to me that she might have re-injured her back (broken years ago in a car accident.) Perhaps something had happened while running or playing that had caused a swelling in a disk, impacting her spinal cord.

I didn’t want to over-react, but I kept a close eye on her. At one point when she was laying down I threw a treat to her. It bounced past her. She lifted her head, looked at the treat, and then put her head back down again. This was not good. I went over and examined her. She allowed me to touch, poke, and prod her everywhere, including her feet. She never lets anyone touch her feet without a major hassle. I was very worried. It was time to go do the vet.

It was a Saturday, so our usual veterinarian wasn't there, but the vet who saw Kero was very careful and concerned. I mentioned the heat on the walk, her back, and the fact that I had fed her some raw mackerel a week earlier. After the examination the veterinarian opined that there were a couple different possibilities, but she suspected pancreatitis. Blood was drawn for a full set of tests and Kero’s back and belly were x-rayed. We were sent home to await the results, along with some pain medication in case it was a physical injury that was causing Kero distress.

The next day I got the call with the results: the x-rays showed that Kero’s back was unchanged; she still had the old damage from her earlier injury, but nothing new had happened to explain her behavior. The x-rays didn’t show anything else going on in the areas that were filmed. Her blood tests however showed significant pancreatic enzymes in her blood – clear evidence that her pancreas was damaged, presumably by pancreatitis. However, pancreatitis is normally accompanied by vomiting and diarrhea. Kero wasn’t showing those symptoms.

The following day I brought her back in for more tests and a day of IV fluids. Then again the next day, and the next. One by one they ruled out every possibility except pancreatitis through x-rays, ultrasound, and blood and urine tests. Still, there was no vomiting. They began keeping her overnight, feeding her orally with a syringe. She refused to eat on her own.

Eventually she began having diarrhea. Major, explosive, projectile diarrhea. But no vomiting. At that point I asked my vet if it was possible that she had a parasite such as giardia as well as pancreatitis. We were expecting diarrhea with the pancreatitis, but there should have been vomiting too, and timing of the diarrhea was odd. A stool sample was sent off for analysis. The result: Salmon Poisoning Disease (SPD).

I was confused. I had recently fed her raw mackerel, but definitely not salmon. I knew that raw salmon was a no-no. A couple years earlier a neighbor’s dog was dying of cancer. I commiserated with her about her dog’s condition. She wondered what would be on his “bucket list.” I said I knew what would be at the top of Kero’s list: a whole fresh salmon. After that conversation it occurred to me, why wait until your dog is dying to give them the thing you think they would like most in this world. On the other hand, I was worried about fish bones and so forth, so I went online to see if there was anything I should know before giving her such an über-treat.

I found a lot of web sites, blogs, and discussion groups that talked about feeding your dog raw food – fish or otherwise. There were many people that praised raw food as the ultimate source of canine nutrition; after all, dogs evolved from wolves. There were just as many who felt that raw food was dangerous – dogs aren’t wolves just as we aren’t chimps, and the raw ingredients we buy in grocery stores may contain all kinds of contagion that would normally be destroyed by cooking. Regardless of which side a web site or author came down on regarding raw food they all agreed on one thing: no raw salmon. In the end I decided that I would feed her some raw fish from time to time – as long as it wasn’t salmon. Kero was wildly enthusiastic about the new addition to her diet. Hence the mackerel I had fed her the week before.

Now the test results were showing positive for salmon-flukes. But I hadn’t fed her any salmon. I went online to see if there was anything wrong with feeding a dog raw mackerel. Try as I might, I couldn't find a single mention of mackerel being a problem. I wasn’t certain exactly when I had bought the fish, or where. I suspected the mackerel might be an important clue, so I went through my credit card slips to nail down the details. What I found was a surprise. I had totally forgotten - a few days earlier I had purchased a trout at a local grocery store for my dinner that night. I have no idea why I remembered the mackerel the prior week, but forgot the more recent trout.

I was sure the trout had come eviscerated – they always are. As I thought back I recalled coating it with egg wash and flour and pan frying it. But I couldn’t for the life of me remember if I had cooked it head on, or if I had removed the head and given it to Kero. Regardless, I returned to the internet to search for information on salmon flukes and trout.

Here is what the Merck Vet Manual has to say:
[Salmon Poisoning Disease] is caused by Neorickettsia helminthoeca and is sometimes complicated by a second agent, N elokominica , which causes EFF [Elokomin fluke fever]. The vector of both agents is a small fluke, Nanophyetus salmincola . Dogs and other animals become infected by ingesting trout, salmon, or Pacific giant salamanders that contain encysted metacercariae of the rickettsia-infected fluke. In the dog’s intestine, the larval flukes excyst, embed in the duodenal mucosa, and introduce the rickettsiae. The fluke infection itself produces little or no clinical disease.
Yup, raw trout can contain the same fluke that causes Salmon Poisoning Disease. The big problem is that the disease is known as “Salmon Poisoning Disease,” but it can be caused by ingesting any raw salmonid species. The members of the family salmonidae include salmon, trout, char, freshwater whitefish, and graylings. Though I couldn’t be certain, I must have removed the head from the trout and given it to Kero, not realizing that trout can carry SPD.

As soon as the diagnosis was made they began administering anti-parasitic drugs for the fluke and antibiotics for the associated bacteria (which is the actual agent of the disease.) Within a couple of days Kero’s fever was down, the diarrhea had stopped, and she had begun eating on her own. She came home. In just a few days she was back to her old self (though almost 25% lighter.) A few weeks later only the missing hair where she had been shaved remained as a reminder of her ordeal. A follow-up urine test showed no indication of pancreatitis.

I was surprised at how many web sites make reference to the danger of feeding dogs raw salmon, but few mention trout. Even my vet had not known that raw trout could carry the fluke that causes SPD. It is worth noting that untreated, SPD is fatal in 90% of cases. So, I hope that this blog posting might help to spread the word, and maybe, just maybe, save other dogs (and their faithful guardians) from considerable pain.

The Dogs of my Youth

One day mom brought home a puppy. We called it Honey Patch because of its markings. All I remember is that it cried all night and shat all day. It didn’t last long. At that age I’m pretty sure I did the same thing, but they didn’t get rid of me.

It was summer when King the Collie arrived. He showed up all on his own. He knew how to cross the street, I didn’t. He had no collar and no one had reported him missing. He just walked up to the front door and came inside. Orange, brown, and white with majestic flowing hair and kind brown eyes. The strong, silent type, he rarely said a word. He stayed with us for a while, but one day he decided his visit was over and moved on.

Spot was my sister’s dog. My aunt and uncle foisted him off on us when they couldn’t deal with his neuroses. They didn’t tell us that. Spot was king of the high-strung Dalmatians. He came from a long line of champions and was the most beautiful Dalmatian anyone had ever seen. His fatal flaw was that he had a little bit of pink coloration on his nose, so he couldn’t compete. Dalmatians must have completely black noses be show dogs. That was ostensibly the reason my aunt and uncle got rid of him – he couldn’t be shown or bred. I suggested we could fix him with a magic marker. His full name was “Johnny on the Spot”, but we called him either “Spot,” or “Spot on the johnny” because he liked to drink from the toilet. One day I was playing with a toy that made an annoying whizzing sound. It drove Spot crazy. After a while he couldn't take it any more, so he bit me. Perhaps it would be more accurate to say that biting me was his fatal flaw.

My first dog was Seymour. Nearly 60 pounds of torso covered in acres of smelly brown and white coat, Seymour was the biggest English basset hound our vet had ever seen. His legs were so short they were almost vestigial. In his later days he needed a push to get running… unless he spied a female German shepherd. One whiff of shepherd and Seymour was transformed into super-dog. None of us could image what he expected to do if he ever caught one. We assumed it was the legs that turned him on. Seymour lived well beyond the normal life expectancy for a Basset; based on the smell we were pretty sure he’d been dead for a long time before a car helped him on to that place in the sky where bassets endlessly frolic with shepherds.

After I moved out of my parent’s house, my Aunt and Uncle entered the picture again. They convinced my mother that she really needed a dog to keep her company and for protection. Careful study of a multitude of dog books indicated that black Labrador retrievers were the most faithful dogs. My mother found a breeder where she bought “Truffle” for a small fortune - plus kennel, food, drugs, collars, leashes, bones, beds, combs, and special doggy toothbrushes.

Truffle loved my mother. Oh did he love her. She was the apple of his eye, his sun, his moon, and his stars. He loved her with the simple, unquestioning love that only a puppy can possess. And he loved the vitamin enriched, protein fortified puppy chow. And he grew. And grew. And grew. Before long my 5-foot tall, 100-pound mother had a 75-pound puppy that loved her. Truffle would stand on his hind legs, put his front legs on my mother’s shoulders and try to lick her face. In short order he would knock her over. People would come to the house to find my mother on the ground with Truffle ecstatically licking her face.

One day Truffle chased a car. The car won. Truffle broke his left front leg, which the vet dutifully set and bound in a cast. Thereafter people coming to the house were likely to find my mother flat on her back with Truffle licking her face while simultaneously clubbing her with his cast. The breeder cheerfully accepted Truffle back, free of charge, along with the kennel, food, drugs, collars, leashes, bones, beds, combs, and special doggy toothbrushes.