A friend whelped a rescue Labrador litter 15 weeks ago... Pups all seemed fine.. A female went home a month ago with no issues. She had an older Labrador sister who passed away shortly after.. Not sure of the cause. Anyway, puppy is now in the hospital with extreme lethargy, high temp, fast heat rate and high BP..... Any thoughts I can share with her? She is speaking with the vet who thinks it's a severe upper respiratory infection... Puppy is very ill.... thanks for any info you may provide which could help save this precious baby...
THank you for your replies... The puppy is doing better... They had to take heroic measures, but she is better... The tentative diagnosis is a severe reaction to vaccines, which were administered less than 1 week ago.
Last evening she was unconscious, on life support, had a heart cath, transfusions, mega strong broad spectrum antibiotics, fluids..... This am she started to eat a bit, wag her tail a bit, and is eliminating... Temp and all vitals almost all normal... SCARY!
Glad the pup is doing better. Hopefully the family will consider titering. There is more information coming to light that limited vaccinations given at the right time do the most for the immune system vs. the 3 shot puppy protocol. Sometimes dogs just don't do well with an overload of shots. At 15 weeks, she may have gotten a 5 way, possibly even Lepto AND rabies. Is is possible for you to share which vaccinations the pup received before it got so sick?
I believe pup had rabies, lepto, and 4 way. : (
She is home and doing much better.. I guess I have my head in the sand. I thought pretty much all vets were giving vaccines seperately these days... What does it take ? No common sense... and Joe P trusts their vets with no questions asked... Poor baby.... Praying they skip the lepto booster and do titers on her from now on...
I believe pup had rabies, lepto, and 4 way. : (
She is home and doing much better.. I guess I have my head in the sand. I thought pretty much all vets were giving vaccines seperately these days... What does it take ? No common sense... and Joe P trusts their vets with no questions asked... Poor baby.... Praying they skip the lepto booster and do titers on her from now on...
Too many vets today still give several vaccinations at 1 time without a thought. I've gone to a vet with a litter of puppies and they already have 2 syringes filled per puppy. I explain that there is a notation on the front of our main file and all dogs, DO NOT ADMINISTER MORE THEN ONE VACCINATION PER VISIT OR EVERY FOUR WEEKS. The last time I went I decided to never return when 18 syringes were ready to go for 9 puppies at 8 weeks. This group of 3 vets are early 30's to 50's. They're not old ages, no reason for them not to recall our discussions and wording on the files.
There is no reason for a young puppy to go through that at 15 weeks poor wee one. I hope they don't return to that vet again.
Thanks for sharing the bit on the shots. Again, really glad the dog is OK, but it's a prime example of what does go wrong when you do that. I hope you can successfully share with the pup's family about the shots. We've had vets visit our kennel club meetings and talk about how hard lepto shots are on the system and how you HAVE to give them separate. They tend to be the shot that dogs have the most problems with (and if they have a reaction, they should never have that again), but when you do that molotov cocktail, you never know what the problem is. I had a pup react to rabies. If I had mixed it with his boosters, we could never have isolated the problem.
