The History of some Parasites and our Little Bug
As soon as the snow thawed (end of April?) Cricket started getting violent diarrhea and we took her to the first vet who didn’t know what it was. She put her on panacur powder (dewormer) and it didn’t do anything, we also put her on metronidizol. That went on for a couple of weeks and once again she was back to diarrhea. We then started dealing with the breeder who put Cricket on a diet of ground beef and rice because it would give her intestines a rest, didn’t work. Then she went to her vet who gave sulfur, more metronidizol and a stool solidifyer. Once the metronidizol ran out, diarrhea continued. Then we took Cricket to that vet, he diagnosed the problem as giardia (beaver fever) because we live on a farm with a pond where we know muskrats live and we visit a farm with a pond and a river regularly. He gave her metronidizol again in a strong dose (2 twice daily) for a week and gave her a vaccination for it, in hopes of building up the natural immunities that most dogs have to giardia. The next week, he lowered the dose to 1 tablet daily for a month and then once again she was back to diarrhea. Yesterday he gave her a dewormer, a booster for the giardia vaccination and a metronidizol. He sent us home with panacur syrop which we’re supposed to start tomorrow, and emoxicillin which she’s taking 1 twice a day. He also gave us metrodizol in case the emoxicillin doesn’t stop the diarrhea, that way we don’t have to come back if it’s not doing the trick.
Cricket is a 47.8 lb (as of yesterday) purebred golden retriever, born January 14th, 2003.
Basically we’ve come to the conclusion that she has to become immuned to these parasites, if not, she will continue to become re-infected with it. According to some web sites that I was reading yesterday, metronidizol is supposed to be a treatment for giardia, not just a temporary fix.
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