Giardia is a pain. Tell her to clean clean clean.. Id personally have her to wait awhile. its a short lived thing BUT very easy for puppy to catch. It will stay in the other dogs stool for awhile, 4 weeks i think my vet said, after the dog is off the meds and not showing signs. Ask your vet, its been a few years back since i bought a puppy that had it. it was VERY costly, treating every dog, etc. Better safe than sorry. its a nasty thing for a puppy to have.
Treatment for giardia is not very costly. It's simply metronidazole (flagyl) for 5 days. You can get a prescription from your vet, or a lot of people buy the fish version (Fish-Zole) and use that. I would just have them treat the pup for 5 days when he gets there prophylactively. I had a pup come to me whose sister was diagnosed with giardia, and that's what we did with her even though she wasn't showing any symptoms.
Giardia is MORE than a pain - it is expensive and invasive. Once you have it, it can live in the soil - everywhere. I have found, through the forum, that the only way I could get rid of it was to treat with both metronidizole and panacure for 7 days on, 5 days off and 5 days on. For just 2 dogs the bill for the meds was over $100. The fecals for Giardia are often false negative to add to the problem.
Hope this info helps.
Alexandra
There is an antigen test available for Giardia. Costs more than a fecal, but as previously posted, false negatives are common on wet prep and fecal concentration methods. If one fecal is positive for the antigen test, it's in your environment. Gives you the knowledge to take action, is rarely false negative or positive, and it's run on stool of which we all have an unlimited supply!:-)
we have in Mexico,a product named secnidazol(secnidal), dose: 30 mgs/kg per day, is very effective, not expensive, and a one day treatment, no side effects. since I have been using it, I dont need anymore the metronidazol.
Well, I can't help that your vet took you for $100 to treat 2 dogs for giardia. You can buy metronidazole as Fish-zole and also the fenbendazole(Panacur) as Safeguard for much, much cheaper. These are available at just about any online vet supply place. Look into it next time you need to treat.
