Thank you, Sponsors!

Thanks to a gift in memory of Mickey, Tess and all of the puppies have been fully sponsored. The sponsorships raised $1,002 to go toward the medical bills of this family. The $2 is from a little boy who gave his mother two one dollar bills to enclose with her check. Isn’t that great? We appreciate the show of support. The sponsorships really make a difference and today we have a very good example.

This morning the pups went to the shelter to see Dr. Stone for their fortnightly checkup. Overall the puppies are improving. They are all gaining weight. Donald and Daisy’s carpal joints are straightening. Their skin looks better and they’re getting hair. However, the skin scraping showed that there are still live demodectic mites. The conventional treatment for demodectic mange is to use a drug called Ivermectin over a long period of time to kill the mites and a series of baths, one every three days, for the duration of the treatment. This is a time-tested treatment plan for cases like these. Ivermectin is a relatively inexpensive drug and the pups have been on this therapy for a month. It works, but it’s slow and labor intensive.

There’s a drug called ProMeris^® that has been approved for the treatment of demodectic mange and would probably work faster than Ivermectin. The problem is that ProMeris is expensive—too expensive for the Shelter to buy it on a regular basis. But because of the sponsorships we were able to buy the doses we need to treat all four pups as well as their mother. Thanks to Caring Hands Animal Hospital in Urbana, CCHS was able to buy the doses they needed at the lowest price.

Sponsors, you can be proud that your generosity has made a difference to these animals. They’d give you all a lick on the nose if they could! Thank you.

Meet Mom

While we were at the Shelter for our puppies’ appointment with Dr. Stone we had a chance to meet Tess, their mother. Tess is a beautiful dog. She has a mild case of demodex (you can see the hair loss on her neck in the picture above). The demodex is being treated and Tess is scheduled to be spayed today.

The bad news is that Tess is heartworm positive. After she is spayed CCHS will treat her for heartworm disease and then put her up for adoption.

Hound Pups Update

The pups spent most of the day at CCHS. Dr. Stone, the Shelter’s veterinarian, looked the pups over and came up with a plan for the next few days.

A skin scraping confirmed that the mites causing the demodex are dying. That means the medication the pups have been given is working. However, it looks like they have skin infections that are contributing to many of the other problems. The decision was made to attack the skin infection aggressively to see if we can start clearing up some of the issues.

We’ll be changing the bathing protocol to include two different types of shampoo. One fights the infection and the other helps with the inflammation. The pups will start getting daily vitamins to help boost their overall nutrition level.  And we’ll start an antibiotic to attack the skin infection. We also have daily meds to kill the rest of the mites, ear cleanings and overall evaluation. They’re not eating well so Harriett is supplementing their kibble with wet food as well as NutriCal, a high calorie supplement.

On Sunday the pups will be examined by a veterinarian who specializes in orthopedics. She’s going to be looking at the problems with the hyperextended carpals and check the status of their other joints. A specialist in canine physical rehabilitation (who happens to be a friend and fellow foster parent for CCHS) will stop by to figure out how to wrap the puppies’ feet to give them support until their muscles can start developing normally.

I hope you can tell by reading this that these foster projects are not solo efforts. You’re only reading about the things Harriett and I do, but we do not have the expertise to figure out what’s wrong and determine the best course of action. The Shelter’s management, vet and medical staff are our main support. But there are a bunch of people who volunteer their expertise and offer guidance and advice behind the scenes to help with this case including three private vets and two specialists and a rehab specialist from the UI Veterinary Teaching Hospital. They all deserve our thanks.

Donald, Pluto & Daisy: Not A Pretty Sight

Today Harriett picked up three, 3-month old Redbone Hound pups from the Champaign County Humane Society. The puppies are from a group of five and are being treated for demodectic mange (aka “demodex”). Donald, Pluto, and Daisy have a severe form of demodex and will be with us for at least a few weeks.

To be honest, I had reservations about putting these three in the blog for two reasons:

1. They look terrible and pictures might be disturbing to some people.

2. These three pups have a very bad case of demodex and there is no guarantee that they will recover and be able to go up for adoption.

I decided to go ahead with the blog posts because I think it’s important that people are aware of the fact that cases like this come to the shelter on a regular basis. As an open admissions shelter, CCHS takes all comers, including pups like this who are very sick. So with the blessing of CCHS Executive Director “Tief” and Shelter Manager Michelle, we’ll follow these guys here, come what may.

The skin of every dog contains the mites that cause demodectic mange. Normally the dog’s immune system keeps the mites in check, but if the immune system is impaired the mites get out of control. Minor cases of demodectic mange usually do not cause much itching but might cause pustules on the dog's skin, redness, scaling, hair loss, or any combination of these. In the severe form that you see in these three pups, hair loss occurs in patches all over the body and can be accompanied by crusting, pain, enlarged lymph nodes, and deep skin infections. These pups do, in fact, have enlarged lymph nodes and we’ll be keeping a close watch for signs of infection.

Demodectic mange is not contagious to people, and because all dogs already have these mites, it’s not contagious to other dogs. These mites are transferred from mother to puppies by direct body contact. Signs of mange usually appear on the pup’s face and head first because that’s what’s pressed against the mom while the pup is nursing.

Our job is to get rid of the mites until the puppies’ immune systems matures enough to be able to fight them off itself. The pups get medication every day and get bathed in benzoyl peroxide twice a week. The big question is whether or not their immune systems are permanently impaired or just slow to mature. Only time will tell.

Our puppy room is being redecorated so we’re keeping the pups in an X-pen with a kennel attached. These guys won’t be on PuppyCam because we only have the puppy room itself wired for the camera. I will post pictures every now and then so you can check their progress here.