Rocky

We spent Saturday night in the ER vet... AGAIN.  Somehow, our pit bull puppy, Rocky got parvo.  Yes, he's not up to date on his shots.  They were being taken in at the very end of this month to update everything.  He's never been anywhere except to my moms house and we've never brought strange dogs into the yard.  Our vet seems to think he got it from the raccoons that frequent our backyard at night.  At first we thought he had a broken rib and possibly had some internal bleeding.  We came home and he was missing so Shawn went to find him.  He was curled up in a ball in the corner of the yard.  Shawn carried him into the house and asked me to take a look at him.  He never even wagged his tail at me.  It appeared that at least one of his ribs was broken and "floating" in his chest cavity.  He was also extremely cold to the touch.  So I said screw it... we're already in debt, let's just take him to the vet now instead of waiting till morning.  When we got him there, they accused us of having harmed him. (in an indirect way... this could have come from someone kicking him) They did this with Rodeo as well.  After we got there, he started coughing.  They decided to do some xrays.  The xrays didn't show any broken ribs but she said the rib cage was still developing and the parts we were concerned about were cartilage and wouldn't show up on an xray.  The xray did show he had fluid in his lungs and an enlarged heart.  The enlarged heart is from a previously unknown heart murmur.  The fluid was from pnuemonia.  The pnuemonia was caused by him inhaling his slobber instead of swallowing it.  Oh yes, our dog is a genius.  After that we did a test to check to make sure that it wasn't blood in his lungs and tested the amount of time it took to clotte.  (checking for rat poisoning) It was negative.  Afterwards she asked if I wanted to do a parvo test just to be sure there wasn't anything else wrong.  I said fine, do it.  Even though I had previously declined with Rodeo.  I was totally expecting the test to be negative.  It was a very light positive.  Immediately after the test he had bloody diarrhea and vomited quite a bit.  At this point of time they told me he could still go home and have care there.  We intially said we'd take him home but changed our minds afew minutes later.  It turned out to be the right choice as he is still in the vet today (our regular vet) and will continue at the vet probably through the weekend.  He's a very sick dog.  I am shocked that he's so bad because we found it as early as it could possibly be detected.  He's also on a clinical trial of Tamiflu (used for humans normally).  The other puppies are on Tamiflu as well to prevent any possibly parvo from them.  I got their shots done on Sunday morning.  They've shown no signs of illness thus far.  We really hope it'll be staying that way as our vet bill is ridiculous now. 

My senegal parrot also died suddenly the day after we had Rodeo at the vet.  We have no idea what happened.  I kept her warm most of the night trying to help her make it till morning when I could get her to the vet.  She died at 8am.  It's been a shitty month.

Tags: Rocky, ER vet, parvo, parrot