Please please PLEASE if your dog has chronic diarrhea (and throws up) please insist that your vet makes sure to check for whipworm. It may take up to four fecal exams to find the eggs.

Me getting Koli, her getting sick, and her ever supportive network may have saved many dogs lives. (I would have learned none of this if not for her or everyone else. The next dog i adopted could have died. I probably would have been devastated and given up on having a dog until we moved.)

She may or may not have picked it up from our yard. There were many places she's been in the past month or so.

The thing is though (and no i'm not going to beat myself up over this*, but i do have to use it as a potential warning for others...) is that King had the same symptoms. His stool looked almost identical. And not either one of them have obvious blood in their stool (besides last night Koli did but she had eaten some really sharp grass.) King only had been given a few fecal exams in his time with us, but never consecutively. He had been given wormer, but nothing that covered whipworm. Looking back I think the vets may have missed the obvious. They chalked his condition up to old age, but i think they came to that conclusion long before they said it to us. Yes he was old, but his symptoms were nearly identical to what Koli is going through. Other than the symptoms of what whipworms would have caused (chronic diarrhea, increasing throwing up and eventually not being able to hold any food down.,) his only major problem was arthritis and that was taken care of with the Elk Velvet Antler. (I'll never know, but it IS a possibility.) I mean our vet was always telling us how incredibly healthy King was and we got discounts just because of what great care we took of him (and because we're not well off.) He was amazed that King was more healthy than half the six year old patients he had. ...up until that last year when King just faded away. He never stopped being happy though and had a will to live until the injection took him.

Check what worm preventives your dogs are on. It could save your dog's life.

*There is going to be an adjustment period though while i deal with these thoughts. I'll just need a bit of time. It's like grieving the loss all over again... knowing there was a possible inexpensive solution to save King right under my nose the whole time. It hurts.

Did she get check by the BVAH?

I took in a small fecal sample and they found whipworms and a hookworm.



I had called and asked if it was necessary to bring her in and they said a fecal sample would be fine. Now if fecal samples continued to show up negative I definitely would have gotten her in there ASAP.

I had been crying because i was so stressed and not wanting her to die. Then i heard from the back "I have a whipworm." I gave a "whoo hoo!" and started crying tears of joy. We can treat the known!!! (at the same time I'm so sad because that means that now any dog that comes into our yard is in danger of getting whipworm... at least we're armed with the knowledge though.)

Because I have been fostering sooooo long and the amount of dogs that have been through, I feel that my yard is most likely saturated with worms also.. I just keep all dogs on interceptor and treat periodally with panicure when I notice changes in stools.



I dont even do fecals usually on new fosters because I treat regardless..

Well, this is all new to me. I've never personally known a dog before that was infected with whipworms. I had no idea that King may have been (later on.)

I had only ever heard positive things about Heartgard (with the exception of people who ordered it through cheap online sites.) I've heard negative things about Interceptor and Sentinel though because of drug interactions. (Looking up info i can understand why. People seem not to be warned to not use these products in conjunction with certain other chemicals.)

http://www.marvistavet.com/html/body_ivermectin.html

I really hadn't been given any reason to change my routine.

Now i have one. A big one.

The holistic part of me still sees dogs (and humans) getting worms now and then as a GOOD thing, but one has to have a way to rid the body of them also. Yup, this is now an Interceptor household too.

How was i to know that our yard may have had a problem? King lived here for five years with no problems. It's not like we can see the little buggers with the naked eye just going out there and playing with the dog or doing general yard work.



S.O. has a question. Why wouldn't spraying a yard with ivermectin work to clear an infestation?

Because it only kills the adult worms not the eggs I believe

Is this where i smack myself in the forehead and go "Durh." ? I should have been able to add 2 + 2. Thank you Sherri.



Another link i forgot to add earlier. I thought it was very helpful. http://www.veterinarypartner.com/Content.p...=1&EVetID=0