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| A Siberian Husky guarding the warm dryer in the Mud Room ? I don't think so. |
For those of you who follow the happenings with our large number of dogs who were the devotion of our youngest son, before his sudden passing five years ago, this is an update on the situation with Jared, our beloved Siberian Husky.
http://lifeaftertherescues.blogspot.com/2013/12/updates-on-jared.html
6 comments:
I hope everything turns out OK, I'd never heard of that problem before. He's a very handsome dog! I will say something happened to the male cats around here last summer with extreme weight loss and nothing turning up as far as parasites. We gave wormer nonetheless and they recovered. The vet did say that some parasites are very difficult to see even with a microscope.
He is a great looking dog ! Thank you. We rescued him at six months of age about an hour before our county pound was to euthanize him. He had been adopted about four times and been returned for behavioral issues He has been a great pal to our family and our youngest son adored him. We feel very lucky to have him.
Our farm vet has us administer liquid fenbendazole twice a year to our dogs (based on weight) to decrease the number of parasites they might get. However, shigella is not prevented by this. Shigella is a bacterial infection which can be eradicated by certain antibiotics. I knew that shigella was a problem here because one of my friends, a physician, got shigella when camping near here.
Additionally, a family from Scotland came to our farm before the 1850s and lost all of their children to a diarrheal illness of uncertain cause. ( On a neighboring piece of land to what is now our farm, there are numerous child and infant graves with a large quartz stone by the head and a smaller stone where the feet would be.) When one of my children developed ulcerative colitis after moving here, we did a lot of research as to what had afflicted the earlier settlers here. Eventually, the educated guesses were that shigella had contaminated their watersource, and that this was likely what killed all of their children one by one.
There are many other potential parasites, here and everywhere else. We just knew that shigella can be an issue in the area. Thanks for your post.
Jane,
I'm sending prayers for Jared that he totally recovers from this Shigella. He's a beautiful dog!!!
I appreciate you educating your readers on these parasites, most wouldn't know what to look for or question when going to a Vet. Give Jared a scratch behind his ears for me.
Your intelligence scares me. You are a formidable adversary for every doctor and I applaud your tenacity. I fold like a cheap suit and probably could have a better quality of life if I was able to retain any of the vast amounts of information that you have collected through your lifetime. Your animals are the luckiest of all creatures and I wouldn't mind being housed in your barn anytime.
Sandy, Thank you for all the kind wishes. I will give Jared your extra scratch behind the ears this morning. Thanks for the kind words. Fondly,
Lotta Joy, I would like to think that I am not an adversary to a physician, but a helpful cooperative partner in the quest to get the animal patient well again. We use several teams of veterinarians. We have a farm vet group who comes here for alpacas if they need it, but they do not see dogs or horses. We have equine specialists who travel a distance to see the horses when they need it. (I do the vet directed immunizations on the alpacas and the horses, and a few of the routine things on the dogs.) However, the dogs travel to a wonderful rural/suburban vet group who are really knowledgable, and also have amazing surgical skills. They once amputated the leg of a bunny for us, and successfully treated breast cancer in my beloved Golden Retriever girl who lived many years afterward. However, since they don't come out to us as the others do, and they are primarily a cat and dog, they don't see that Jared will drink from almost any body of water as well as his own dish.
Thanks for your kind words. I really try to run the mile for our animals because they are unconditionally loving and would and occasionally do, risk their lives for us. It doesn't seem a fair exchange to simply give them lifetime care with medical, for all they do for us.
I don't know that you'd want to live in the barn today, as it's pretty cold following the ice storm, but normally they do have radio, and one of the rooms has tv for sick animals who need distraction. LOL
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