In my last post, I promised to further alienate certain members of the veterinary community. It is unfortunate that I should need to do so but there is absolutely nothing more heartbreaking than to see a puppy that has been literally snatched from the jaws of death, treated and rehabilitated leave out of here, perfectly healthy, on its way to its new home and family only to be needlessly euthanized, generally within hours of its arrival, by an ignorant and/or incompetent and/or prejudiced medical practitioner. What follows is the text of part of an informational pack that my dad tries to send with all young pups:
Don’t let your vet murder this puppy!
Your new puppy has recently has one of a three-part series of standard vaccinations called DHLPP. These are commonly called “puppy shots” and are necessary for all dogs. One of the afflictions addressed in this series is canine Parvovirus and, like many vaccines, the DHLPP will shed virus particles. The intended purpose of the vaccine is to expose the subject to a weakened form of the live virus in order to encourage the formation of antibodies, as those antibodies (whose presence will, in the future, diminish but not vanish entirely) will help to protect your pet in the future. This shed virus will cause a false positive reading if this pup is tested for Parvo because the test determines the presence (or absence) of shed Parvo virus..
Occasionally, a puppy will exhibit gastric distress following a 1000+-mile trip such as the one yours just endured. Additionally, here in the south, worms (round worms, hook worms, tape worms, whip worms and more) are ever-present and multiply at a phenomenal rate. Both conditions will cause diarrhea and often, diarrhea with blood and/or mucus. Your puppy has been aggressively treated for worms but it is not unusual for infestation to occur. Prior to coming to you, he/she did not exactly have a wonderful life; the conditions from which some of these pets have been rescued would shock and disgust you. We have done our best to ensure his health but he is still recovering from a state of mistreatment and neglect (including a chronic lack of medical care).
That being said, if your pup becomes ill and you bring it to your vet (highly recommended), the doctor must be aware of the potential for a false positive on the Parvo test. If your vet is not aware of this, you need to find a competent one that is. Too often, vets are aware of the false positive potential but will not mention it to you because they harbor a good bit of prejudice, fear and sometimes-outright paranoia when it comes to dealing with rescue dogs, particularly southern rescue dogs dogs. Once again, I would go looking for a new vet, one who does not let his opinion or prejudice overrule the science in which he/she was trained. Parvo is almost always pronounced as a death sentence, it is not. In parts of the country where it is prevalent, it is a fact of life but one that can be reckoned with. Aggressive treatment will often produce survival rates of 90% or better. The great majority of dogs that die from Parvo die from dehydration secondary to diarrhea. Often, survival is achieved by merely treating for diarrhea, hydrating with either subcutaneous or iv fluids and usually the administration of antibiotics to fend off opportunistic infections such as pneumonia. Parasites, on the other hand, are much more easily treated and have a much better prognosis.
This puppy has been literally snatched from the jaws of death to come to you in what is to be the final and most important stage of its rehabilitation. Please do not let ignorance, prejudice, paranoia or apathy be the cause of its demise. If there is a problem, ask questions and get answers. Euthanasia need not be the first course of treatment. If you ask three vets and get three different answers (and that happens a lot), maybe you need to ask a lot more questions. One question you might want to ask yourself is “What if it were me?” Would you be willing to accept one man’s pronouncement as gospel or would you question it?
We have worked hard to make sure your puppy has a good chance of having a life worth living. He/she has endured much both mentally and physically. Please don’t let this life be ended callously and needlessly. Please give him a chance. We did.
To explain a little better how this all works, when you take a pet to the vet to screen for Parvo (and an unbelievable number of vets have already jumped to the conclusion that because the dog came from a rescue and/ or the south, then it has Parvo) they generally employ what is referred to as an ELISA test (Enzyme-linked Immunosorbent Assay) to test for the presence of Parvo virus. This is usually a good screening test but it has it’s limitations, first and foremost of which is that it cannot differentiate from virus shed by the vaccine (most modern vaccines use live, attenuated virus) and virus shed by the actually malady. Given the fact that you’re dealing with a puppy that has ,more than likely, recently had one of the 3 part DHLPP series (and the fact that the puppy has a medical record stating that it has), there is a 100% chance that it will test positive on the Elisa (generally for about 2 weeks following the last administration of the DHLPP). The test is picking up on the presence of virus shed from the vaccine itself. It is usually at this point that the tearful owner is informed that the puppy must be put down based on this incomplete diagnosis. For the sake of accuracy here, the Elisa has a few other quirks such as false positives and false negatives, that is why it is used as a screening test.. Usually all that is necessary to confirm a positive Elisa is to do a white blood cell count, a simple and inexpensive procedure. Parvo attacks the bone marrow and destroys the white blood cell count so if you have a pup that screens positive and whose white blood cell count has tanked, there’s about a 97% certainty that the pup actually has Parvo. Further testing, such as biopsies are usually contraindicated due to the invasiveness of the procedure and the minimal chances of the pup surviving the procedure. If your vet tells you he/she must kill your dog for you because of a positive Elisa test, he/she is in the wrong business! Mostly, it doesn’t seem to be ignorance that causes them to do this but prejudice that causes them to blithely ignore the science they were (hopefully) taught when they obtained their degree. In my mind, that’s even worse than ignorance.
Okay, let’s say that your pup has tested positive on the Elisa and also has a severely diminished white blood cell count. We can safely make the assumption here that it does actually have Parvo (dogs can actually contract Parvo from the vaccine itself, not to mention that the vaccines are not always effective depending on the mother’s titre level which varies from dog to dog and even litter to litter). Like I said in my last post, euthanasia will certainly knock out that nasty old Parvo but most dogs can be saved short of killing them and we have a flock of them here to prove it. I’d also said earlier that Parvo is much trickier to deal with given its propensity for spreading to the environment and thus other dogs. Unless you’re trained in the use of universal precautions, have appropriate facilities for treatment and are knowledgeable as to limiting fomite transmission, we wouldn’t recommend home treatment. A competent vet, however, has all of this. There’s a real good chance that your puppy can be saved and go on to lead a normal, healthy life. If your vet is unwilling to even discuss treatment options, walk away! Go find yourself a vet that actually cares about saving pets. As a worst case scenario, and not one we recommend, we know of several Parvo pups that have been saved at home with nothing more than Pepto Bismol and Gatorade administered orally.
My dad always puts it this way. If you went to the doc and he told you that you have cancer, go lay down and wait to die, Is that what you’d do? Wouldn’t you, before the day was even out, contact other doctors and even cancer specialists to see what, if any, other options existed? Go online and do a bit of research yourself that might, hopefully, help to save your life? Of course you would! Why do less for that furry little bundle of joy that’s just waiting for the chance to be your best friend in the world?
I’ve included a couple of good links for anyone interested in getting more detail on this subject. I wouldn’t want you to take my word for it on something so serious and I don’t want you thinking that this is just one dog’s opinion, this is Science, not conjecture.
http://bakerinstitute.vet.cornell.edu/animalhealth/page.php?id=1089
http://www.marvistavet.com/html/body_diagnosis_of_parvovirus.htmll
This second link doesn't seem to work when you click on it but if you go to marvistavet.com and go to their "Vaccine Mezzanine" and look under diseases, you'll find the articles on Parvo. While you're there, there's a lot of good info available on their site as a whole. Generally, we prefer the Baker Institute (part of Cornell University) as they seem to be the ultimate authority that everyone else references. There is also a lot of other good information besides this on the web. The point is, before you make a bad decision, or allow one to be made for you, delve into the facts of the matter and make an educated decision. Do you have any idea how hard it is for us to tell an already devastated caller that their puppy was killed needlessly? We worked hard to save that puppy and you found the love in your heart to take him in, don't let someone's ignorance and/or predjudice sabotage that.
No comments:
Post a Comment