Puppy Update, Times 3

What? You mean I'm STILL sick?

A brief addition to the puppy saga–we took her to the vet again today.  We also took a little baggie with evidence of why we thought she was still stick.

Sure enough, after looking at her stool sample under a microscope, it was pretty clear that she STILL has giardia.  And I learned that I was wrong about the disease–it’s not bacterial, but actually caused by a protozoa.  I learned that because I was surprised when we were presented with a bottle labeled “wormex” even though the report from the vet tech clearly said there was no more evidence of worms.  Turns out the medicine was also formulated to kill off the protozoa that cause the trouble in giardia.

Read more about the disease and the protozoa that cause it.

So.  She does have another medicine, too–I think it is an antibiotic–and I may even get organized enough to type up the names of both medicines tomorrow.  For now, I’ll just note that she’ll be on one for 2 days, and the other for 3 days, and the vet thinks those really ought to finally wipe out the infection.

On the bad news side, I hear getting rid of giardia can be sort of difficult.  On the good news side, the vet is convinced that she’ll survive now–she’s just uncomfortable with the giardia infestation, so we’ll treat it until it goes away, and then she should finally be strong enough to get the vaccines she was scheduled for a month ago.