Would you give a 5 month old puppy amoxi for kennel cough ? She has been spewing flem and nasty stuff or should I wait to see if it gets worse ?

Her sister is coming home from the hospital this evening after recovering from suspected Parvo. I'm not quite sure how I'm going to keep my kennel cough sister and our other inside dog from our recovering p arvo girl but it just never seems to end. I just though that if I gave our coughing girl amoxi, it might not turn into something worse.

Also wanted to know if anyone could recommend a good supplement to build up our 2 sister's immune system. Normally this isn't a problem in our dog family but all it takes is one nasty bug to kick a poor pup when they are down.

I am just wondering how a 5 month old got Parvo to begin with?
Don't you vaccinate?

Of course I vaccinate. She had 5 Parvo shots all together with the last one when she was around 18 weeks old..included with her 5 in 1 shot.

My vet said they have been seeing more pups and adult dogs who have been fully vaccinated coming in their clinic with Parvo. They think there is a new strain of Parvo going around so just be careful and watch for signs of explosive stools with blood in it, along with the violent vomiting. OUr girl was on death's door within 12 hours of showing first symptoms then we had her at the ER hospital and even then she was slow to respond to the IV therapy treatment.

Interesting.
Had you been to any shows in the weeks prior to her illness?
This is very scary to hear and any more info you can provide might help someone.

Also, what brand vaccines did you use?

At the vaccine seminar I went to...the Parvo thing was discussed....interestingly enough...none of the dogs with this mystery Parvo were ever actually titered to see if the Parvo vaccine ever took when given. So,the most important thing is to titer your dogs at least once (two weeks or more after they are vaccinated) to be certain that the dog took on the vaccine...some dogs do not take on the vaccine no matter how often it is given...So, even if you believe in vaccinating every year...you should always run a titer at least once to be sure your dog is successfully vaccinated.

Following every delivery of my babies, I was inoculated with the Rubella vaccine because I tested negative each time. Not only that, I had it has a child. I still test for a negative titer. Nobody knows why. I have no autoimmune problems, but I have no titer for rubella. How many people do you know who have had chickenpox twice? It happens. Vaccine failure, immunity failures -- nature doesn't always play by the rules. I too lost a five month old to parvo. The siblings I kept were fine, and didn't get it. We never did discover why she had vaccine failure.

I lost three pups at 6 months to Parvo here in Spain a rare and potent strength of Parvo and yes they were properly vaccinated!

Read an article recently that said we are seeing the original parvo that was going around in the 70s before we had a vaccine. We are now vaccinating against type 2 parvo, but the type 1 has made a comeback. In answer to the op- please follow Jean Dodds vaccine protocol- don't use the 5 in 1s- don't use combo vaccines at all if you can help it. Astragalus is a good supplement that helps rebuild the immune system. Make sure they have lots of fresh foods, raw treats, not overprocessed commercial foods that tax the immune system. No corn, wheat, soy or ethoxyquin. Read some good books on Natural Animal Care- like Dr. Richard Pitcairn. It will change your way of doing things forever. Good luck. See if a friend can take your parvo baby for a week.

Canine parvo virus type 1 is the "Minute virus" and is unrelated to CPV type 2.

I would take the 5 month old to the vet ASAP.

We did take our little 5 month old girl to the ER to the tune of $1000.00 that first 24 hours then we transfered her to a wonderful clinic/Hospital in Mr Vernon, WA for an additional 2 days. It took us 3 hours drive in rush hour traffic but we now have our little girl home with us as of last night. It's good to see our little " Fire Cracker " light up a room and feel good again. It's amazing how much better she did at the new clinic we transferred her to, once they started treating her more aggressively as far as her IV and meds go.

Our protocal for the past couple years has been to give our 5 week old pups the " Neopar " vaccination only. Then when the pups are 7 weeks old we give the 5 in 1 Intervet Pro Guard 5 every 3 weeks . This has always worked good for us and never have we had a case of parvo in 12 years.

No, we didn't take the dogs to dog shows, just walks around the neighborhood. She did have surgery a couple weeks prior so maybe her immune system was down a bit.

The vets up at the Mr Vernon Clinic did tell us that they have been treating alot of Parvo cases on dogs who have already been fully vaccinated. They are sure there is a new strain of Parvo going around from what other veterinary colleges are saying.

I am not one who feels safe in giving my dogs minimal vaccines such as only Parvo by the time they are 8 weeks old. They need distemper and the basics in that 5 in 1 vaccine by the time they leave our home. It's what happens to the pups once the familie's new vets gets ahold of them that worries me. Families are telling me that their vets are lumping Leptosporosis, Bordatella and Rabies with the pup's regular vaccines as they come in every 3 weeks to finish up the puppy series. Is it any wonder dogs and cats develop auto immune problems ? Even though I instruct the families not to let their vets lump all those diseases in each vaccine, they let their vet do whatever they want anyway. People tend to listen to their own vets once they take the puppy home. It's very frustrating to say the least.

Did they test for Parvo, or could it perhaps be another virus? Just wondering since it sounds like this puppy should have been protected and thought your original post said suspected Parvo. Just thinking perhaps it is another virus you are dealing with.

Yes, the first hospital we took our girl to did a Parvo in house test and it came back negative but at one point the Dr said she thought our girl had Distemper from all her symptoms. Of course she had her series of Distemper shots to. She said our girl's stools smelled just like Parvo then when we transferred her to the clinic up north, those 2 vets said our girl most likely has parvo but the in house tests can sometimes come back false negative. They treated her as if she had Parvo because for all intense purposes, she showed all the signs of classic Parvo.
I actually took her to my regular vet up the road in the morning once I realized she was throwing up and loose stools and my vet only did Sub Q fluids and nothing else. She said, " Oh it's just a simple flu bug so don't worry too much " and sent us home after 10 minutes of Sub Q fluids.
I no sooner walked in the door with our sick girl and she started exploding with bloody liquid in large amounts. I guess my intuitive, motherly nature kicked in and I knew I wasn't going back to my regular vet since she didn't think I knew what I was talking about the first time when I knew something was not right with our girl. Then when the Seattle Veterinary Hospital blew us off as if our girl only had a weird stomach bug, as we are watching her fade away into near death, laying on their stainless steal table, we decided to do some homework and find another hospital who would take our girl's illness more seriously. One of our puppy buyers referred us to the Animal Hospital of Mount Vernon, a smaller hospital clinic, no frills equipment and fancy Latte Machines like the Seattle Hospital but that didn't matter to us. All we needed was a dr who would keep an open mind and treat out girl more aggressively to stop her bloody stools and get her electrolyes straightened out. At one point while our girl was still at the Seattle Hospital, she had a small seizure. Ok, I guess they figured this was from her insignificant run of the mill stomach flu she had and didn't think much of it.
I'm so appreciative of those 2 Vets who had the intelligence to realize that not all of these in house tests are 100 % and ran on their 35 years of experience to properly treat our girl.
Here is something to think about..the one vet at the Mt Vernon clinic told us when she was going to vet school, they were told that Parvo doesn't have an odor to it. It wasn't until she and other graduating vets started taking care of Parvo puppies and dogs that there most certainly is a distinct smell to it. I know I will never forget that nasty retchid smell as long as I live. All the years I have taken care of sick dogs, I have never smelled anything like it.

Good luck. Pups, like kids, can have seizures from fevers and weird electrolytes. However,

bad stools + cough + seizure - distemper, sometimes.

A thought would be to have the parvo/distemper titer tests run, by someone who knows the difference between which test to order close to vaccination, which can cause a false positive titer. Maybe Dr. Dodds at Hemopet? She might be available on emergency call after sundown in CA tonight (religious reasons) if she is at home. I am so sorry that you are going through this. I too had vaccinated yearlings and then the other adults get parvo years ago--the dog and little pups vaccinated with high titer vaccines, including the Progard, didn't even get clinically sick, although everybody else did. We brought it home from handling class. The other thing, besides type of vacine titer, is that some of the vaccinations were given after swabbing skin with alcohol, which later I was told can cause a vaccine to fail. Back in 1999-2000, the one vet had always swabbed first. The other components in a 5 way vaccine can also interfere with the body developing adequate immunity by depressing the system for a while. The vaccines don't really prevent sickness, but they prevent most of the vaccinated pups from breaking with the clinical symptoms your pup had. This is all very scary. I would have felt safe with Neopar and Progard. Distemper and parvo are street viruses, almost always out there in some wildlife.

same thing happened to me over 20 years ago. i had a 5 month old doberman puppy. all fully vaccinated. one day she was fine, next day diarrhea/vomiting. went to two hospitals who thought she had a "stomach bug" also. however, turned out she had parvo and distemper and we had to ultimately put her down. she was exposed to a friends puppy she had gotten from the pound, this pup was recently vaccinated. i often wonder if she was never exposed to this puppy if none of this would have happened. or if she never gotten immunity in the first place or was it another strain? i will never know. but do know this... that vaccines are never 100% and we have to go with our gut about what we think it is... glad you did! and so happy you have your baby back at home and recovering.

I went through parvo with two litters last year.
one litter was 8 weeks old and had received, one parvo only at 6 weeks and 5 way at 8 weeks from vets.
one litter was 6 weeks, had received parvo only at 6 weeks.

I lost two 5 month old pups that had just received full schedule of vaccines by the vet, Ft Dodge. They got it the worse my vet says she is seeing more and more older pups getting parvo. They are talking about a new strain :O(

Just got through a litter OK, Neopar at 4 and 6 weeks old, you bet this is what I will do from now on.

I had puppy buyer with fully vaccinated 9 month old and Parvo. She survived but barely. Their Vet said that Black and Tan breeds (Rottie/Dobs) have been immune to vacine for a long time and now crossing to black labs. Curious - were these black labs that had the Parvo?

I had a chocolate boy years ago that had what seemed to be Parvo at 9 mos. Was sure treated as that and fluids all week end to save him. So happy he made it we never really questioned it again. Had all shots of course. Best of luck with your girls. Thank goodness you kept being persistant.

I would expect that if it were parvo, they'd still be shedding in in their stool, (that and a blood test combined were how my case of it years ago was diagnosed). And the important thing was to keep the recovered dog/puppy from pooping around the others for about a month, as they can keep shedding it up to 30 days.

Good luck with this scary situation.