Bailey

For some dogs, the day they come to CCHS is the best day of their lives.
         -- Mary “Tief” Tiefenbrunn, Executive Director, CCHS

Yesterday, after the Lab pups were dropped off at the Champaign County Humane Society we were asked if we’d be willing to take a dog that needed a lot of work. Today we went back to CCHS and picked up Bailey, an eight-month old Shepherd mix who has been horribly neglected.

Bailey was adopted from another rescue organization in July 2010 by a young girl who, it turned out, was unable to care for her. Bailey wound up living with the girl’s mother who relinquished her to CCHS on Tuesday. When relinquished, Bailey was soaked in urine and had urine burns on her body.

The first thing you notice about Bailey is that she is horribly emaciated. For a puppy of her size, Bailey should probably weigh about 35 pounds. When she was weighed at the shelter this morning she weighed only 16.8. There is a widely used body condition scoring system to rate the amount of fat and muscle on a dog’s body. The ideal score is a 4 or 5. Bailey gets a 1.5.

When she was examined carefully by the shelter’s medical staff they discovered a laundry list of problems.

The sutures from Bailey’s spay operation in July were never removed. Because this simple procedure was neglected by Bailey’s owner, the left over suture material had caused an infection at the surgery site.
Bailey’s feet have not developed properly. This is most likely due to poor nutrition and lack of exercise. Those of you who were with us through the care of the Redbone Coonhounds will recognize this “flat footed” condition.
There are open pressure sores on all four of Bailey’s legs and on her front feet. I was told by the staff at CCHS that these types sores are usually the result of a dog being kept in a small kennel with a concrete floor. That’s consistent with her having to lay in her own urine and having urine burns.
She still has one of her baby canines. That should have been removed when her front teeth came in. She’ll need surgery to correct this problem.
She was infested with fleas and had whipworms and tapeworms.	(I’ll spare you the pictures of the number of tapeworm segments coming out of her.)

And you know what? Despite all of these problems she wants badly to be with people. Of course she’s a little cautious at first...her life has been turned upside down in the last week. But she’s warming up to us very quickly and will be acting more normally in a day or two. She’ll stay with us for a little while to finish her medication and make a smooth transition to a proper diet. We’ll also be evaluating her behavior. Watch here for updates.

Parasites. Yuck!

It’s a fact of life that puppies get infected with internal parasites. The most common internal parasites we deal with are roundworms and tapeworms. The most common external parasite is the flea.

Puppies get the roundworms from their mother, either through the uterus or via her milk. The in utero larvae are transferred from mother to puppy and live in the pup’s lungs. When they are born, the puppies cough up the larvae and swallow them. The worms then grow in the small intestines. That’s why nearly all puppies have roundworms…they are infected before they are born.

You can’t help but to be amazed at the Rube Goldberg nature of the lifecycle, but roundworms are especially bad for the pups. They live in the small intestine and absorb nutrients that should be helping the puppies grow and can actually damage the lining of the intestine. There are no outward signs of a mild infestation, but pups with a heavy load of roundworms have dull hair coats, pot bellies, and can become anemic with vomiting, diarrhea, or constipation. Sometimes people will comment on a puppy with a big belly being “cute.” It’s not cute at all. It’s a sign of a heavy load of worms.

Tapeworms are carried by fleas. At this time of year fleas are less of a problem, but if mom had fleas in the fall while she was pregnant she may have passed tapeworm eggs to the babies. Daisy had a tapeworm when she came here so it’s possible the pups will have them, too. We’ve already checked Daisy and the puppies for fleas and, thankfully, didn’t find any.

How do we know the pups had roundworms? We saw live worms in the poop. Now that the puppies are eating solid food they are moving a lot more volume through their intestines. The puppies get a growth spurt, but so do the worms. They look like spaghetti.

The treatment is very simple…half of a milliliter of Strongid liquid by mouth is all it takes to kill the adult worms. We repeat the dose in a couple of weeks.