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koalathebearNot all pounds vaccinate. Whenever you get a new dog into the house from the pound or that doesn't come from another carer, it is a really good idea to segregate from your resident dogs and from the rest of your house as much as possible. A dog could have been infected while at the pound or during transport.
Parvo can take up to 14 days to show itself so ideally, the dog should be segregated for 14 days from arrival to make sure it does not have parvo. If you get the dog from another carer who has already had the dog for 14 days, then you do not need to worry - unless the dog is unvaccinated and has been transported with dogs who may have been infected. There are also other things like kennel cough, fleas, ring worm etc. These are nowhere near as serious as parvo, but can be a real pain.
I cringe when I see photos of dogs straight from the pound up on the sofa, mingling with the resident dogs ... If the dog has parvo, you risk contaminating your WHOLE house instead of just one part of your house.
This thread tells you how to set up the 'perfect' quarantine area. Unfortunately, most of us do not have the money or space to set up the perfect quarantine and it can be really hard to segregate in a normal home - most of our houses weren't designed with quarantine in mind :)
I've included some suggestions below about how you can at least minimise risk for you, your resident dogs, your fosters and the public. These are just MY suggestions. I am so NOT an expert and other people will have ideas about what you can/should do.
When transporting the dog, try to put a bleachable surface in your car like a bleachable vinyl - this will make clean-up easier.
At home, the dogs should be segregated in an area that is bleachable e.g
1. laundry
2. spare bathroom
3. garage/shed
4. sectioned off part of the kitchen
Tiled or concrete areas are best. Make sure it's still warm though or the pups will freeze! :)
Try to pick a room that has direct access to outdoors so that you don't have to let the dog go through the house to go outside and the dog can be let outside into a segregated part of the yard.
Try to avoid letting the dog on grass and dirt. Parvo can stay in the ground for years and while you can bleach bomb - it is easier in the long run just to allow the dogs onto areas that you can bleach more easily.
If, like me, you don't have any of rooms 1-4 above available for use, there is still hope :) Bunnings will become your best friend.
Buy:
1. Compost Bin Storage Panels/Wire Mesh Panels: http://www.bunnings.com.au/wire-mesh-mini-panel-600x900mm-25x25mm-blk-21815_p3040809. Individual panels can be about $17. We have bought a LOT of these because they are so useful. They also come in different sizes with different 'gap' sizes. You join them together with cable ties and can make the pen as big or small as you want. Also any shape :) More links to wire mesh here: http://www.bunnings.com.au/our-range/garden/landscaping/wire-fencing-posts/wire-mesh. Get the hard panels not the soft ones.
2. Bleach. Make sure it's strong bleach.
3. Vinyl floor covering that come in sheets: http://www.bunnings.com.au/our-range/paint-decorating/flooring/vinyl/sheet-flooring
Make sure you buy ones that are suitable for a bathroom floor because then you can bleach them. We bought the ones that were $14 a metres and we bought 2 metres for the floor of the puppy pen. We also bought an additional 2 metres to put in the back of jeep underneath where the dog crate was going to be so that it would be easier to clean up the jeep, too.
4. Pack of those disposable gloves (come in packs of 20-50 at Reject Shop etc) that are used for food preparation
5. Lots of large garbage bags, poo bags and normal plastic bags
6. "Dog Clothes" i.e. clothes that you can wear when you are in the puppy room but take off when at 'border crossings'.
7. Different shoes/slippers that you leave at the 'border crossing' so that you do not tread parvo through your house. We bought crappy fake crocs from a $2 store for only $4. Bright pink and ugly as sin - no danger of wearing them outside the quarantine zone.
8. Hand sanitiser. Buy F10 hand gel and wet wipes from therian.com.au.
9. Painters drape sheets: $1 from your local $2 store.
For the set-up, as you do not want your dogs going near the puppies, you can do a pen within a pen like here:
Of you could set up a pen in one room and then just section off that room with Bunnings panels like so. This is what we prefer to do:
Here is an alternate example of a puppy pen set up on vinyl flooring:
Outside the puppy room, you put up even MORE Bunnings panels like so to section of an outside play and toileting area for the puppies.
Note - the panels are best for puppies. If your dog is boisterous/big - it may knock the panels down so you will have to look at something sturdier like baby gates/proper fencing.
When we wanted to dry the puppies off after a bath, we use even more panels to set up a mini pen for them and put the heater outside the small pen
We cable tie a wire crate to the pen. Here is Hoover, gatecrashing the pen
To better supervise the puppies, we set up babygates next to the study where we spend most of our time. Secured the pen to the baby gates and also secured the crate to the pen, to give them maximum space. As they were better behaved, they were allowed out of the pen to hang out with us to learn to chill out eg. over here. It's important that they aren't penned all the time because they won't learn how to relax and chill out around people.
Clean up their poo as quickly as you can and do NOT let your resident dogs anywhere near their poo if possible.
At our house, when the puppies are in the outdoor play pen, the dogs are in the house and vice versa. If that's not practicable, you can put a further barrier around your outdoor play pen to keep the dogs separate - but that might just encourage barking.
If your dog has parvo, even after they recover, they will still be infectious for 2-4 weeks so you you should still maintain 'quarantine' if possible until your vet does a stool sample to confirm that they are no longer shedding
Your resident vaccinated dogs can get parvo, but this is unlikely. The issue is that even though they are less likely to get sick and show symptoms, they still shed it with every stool they produce and can shed it with their fur as well.
Some vets advise topping up current dogs' vaccination status with a Parvac shot. In our case, we will be keeping our resident dogs (together with the foster puppies) at home for at least 2-4 weeks to reduce any possibility of spreading it around the neighbourhood/dog club/dog park via their stools.
Extra prudent people will put a dish of bleach outside the door so that they can dip their shoes in it. We are going to use a spray bottle instead.
Once the 4 weeks lockdown is done - bleach bomb the hell out of everything :) There is actually little point in bleach bombing too much before the end of lockdown because the puppies and dogs will still be infectious.
The above set-up won't help with kennel cough because that is air-borne, but just try to keep your resident dogs away from the fosters as much as possible until quarantine is over.
*
Above all - don't panic. Absolutely nothing you do will be able to remove all risk of infection. You can only do what you can do but at least the above will minimise risk.
Parvo can take up to 14 days to show itself so ideally, the dog should be segregated for 14 days from arrival to make sure it does not have parvo. If you get the dog from another carer who has already had the dog for 14 days, then you do not need to worry - unless the dog is unvaccinated and has been transported with dogs who may have been infected. There are also other things like kennel cough, fleas, ring worm etc. These are nowhere near as serious as parvo, but can be a real pain.
I cringe when I see photos of dogs straight from the pound up on the sofa, mingling with the resident dogs ... If the dog has parvo, you risk contaminating your WHOLE house instead of just one part of your house.
This thread tells you how to set up the 'perfect' quarantine area. Unfortunately, most of us do not have the money or space to set up the perfect quarantine and it can be really hard to segregate in a normal home - most of our houses weren't designed with quarantine in mind :)
I've included some suggestions below about how you can at least minimise risk for you, your resident dogs, your fosters and the public. These are just MY suggestions. I am so NOT an expert and other people will have ideas about what you can/should do.
When transporting the dog, try to put a bleachable surface in your car like a bleachable vinyl - this will make clean-up easier.
At home, the dogs should be segregated in an area that is bleachable e.g
1. laundry
2. spare bathroom
3. garage/shed
4. sectioned off part of the kitchen
Tiled or concrete areas are best. Make sure it's still warm though or the pups will freeze! :)
Try to pick a room that has direct access to outdoors so that you don't have to let the dog go through the house to go outside and the dog can be let outside into a segregated part of the yard.
Try to avoid letting the dog on grass and dirt. Parvo can stay in the ground for years and while you can bleach bomb - it is easier in the long run just to allow the dogs onto areas that you can bleach more easily.
If, like me, you don't have any of rooms 1-4 above available for use, there is still hope :) Bunnings will become your best friend.
Buy:
1. Compost Bin Storage Panels/Wire Mesh Panels: http://www.bunnings.com.au/wire-mesh-mini-panel-600x900mm-25x25mm-blk-21815_p3040809. Individual panels can be about $17. We have bought a LOT of these because they are so useful. They also come in different sizes with different 'gap' sizes. You join them together with cable ties and can make the pen as big or small as you want. Also any shape :) More links to wire mesh here: http://www.bunnings.com.au/our-range/garden/landscaping/wire-fencing-posts/wire-mesh. Get the hard panels not the soft ones.
2. Bleach. Make sure it's strong bleach.
3. Vinyl floor covering that come in sheets: http://www.bunnings.com.au/our-range/paint-decorating/flooring/vinyl/sheet-flooring
Make sure you buy ones that are suitable for a bathroom floor because then you can bleach them. We bought the ones that were $14 a metres and we bought 2 metres for the floor of the puppy pen. We also bought an additional 2 metres to put in the back of jeep underneath where the dog crate was going to be so that it would be easier to clean up the jeep, too.
4. Pack of those disposable gloves (come in packs of 20-50 at Reject Shop etc) that are used for food preparation
5. Lots of large garbage bags, poo bags and normal plastic bags
6. "Dog Clothes" i.e. clothes that you can wear when you are in the puppy room but take off when at 'border crossings'.
7. Different shoes/slippers that you leave at the 'border crossing' so that you do not tread parvo through your house. We bought crappy fake crocs from a $2 store for only $4. Bright pink and ugly as sin - no danger of wearing them outside the quarantine zone.
8. Hand sanitiser. Buy F10 hand gel and wet wipes from therian.com.au.
9. Painters drape sheets: $1 from your local $2 store.
For the set-up, as you do not want your dogs going near the puppies, you can do a pen within a pen like here:
Of you could set up a pen in one room and then just section off that room with Bunnings panels like so. This is what we prefer to do:
Here is an alternate example of a puppy pen set up on vinyl flooring:
Outside the puppy room, you put up even MORE Bunnings panels like so to section of an outside play and toileting area for the puppies.
Note - the panels are best for puppies. If your dog is boisterous/big - it may knock the panels down so you will have to look at something sturdier like baby gates/proper fencing.
When we wanted to dry the puppies off after a bath, we use even more panels to set up a mini pen for them and put the heater outside the small pen
We cable tie a wire crate to the pen. Here is Hoover, gatecrashing the pen
To better supervise the puppies, we set up babygates next to the study where we spend most of our time. Secured the pen to the baby gates and also secured the crate to the pen, to give them maximum space. As they were better behaved, they were allowed out of the pen to hang out with us to learn to chill out eg. over here. It's important that they aren't penned all the time because they won't learn how to relax and chill out around people.
Clean up their poo as quickly as you can and do NOT let your resident dogs anywhere near their poo if possible.
At our house, when the puppies are in the outdoor play pen, the dogs are in the house and vice versa. If that's not practicable, you can put a further barrier around your outdoor play pen to keep the dogs separate - but that might just encourage barking.
If your dog has parvo, even after they recover, they will still be infectious for 2-4 weeks so you you should still maintain 'quarantine' if possible until your vet does a stool sample to confirm that they are no longer shedding
Your resident vaccinated dogs can get parvo, but this is unlikely. The issue is that even though they are less likely to get sick and show symptoms, they still shed it with every stool they produce and can shed it with their fur as well.
Some vets advise topping up current dogs' vaccination status with a Parvac shot. In our case, we will be keeping our resident dogs (together with the foster puppies) at home for at least 2-4 weeks to reduce any possibility of spreading it around the neighbourhood/dog club/dog park via their stools.
Extra prudent people will put a dish of bleach outside the door so that they can dip their shoes in it. We are going to use a spray bottle instead.
Once the 4 weeks lockdown is done - bleach bomb the hell out of everything :) There is actually little point in bleach bombing too much before the end of lockdown because the puppies and dogs will still be infectious.
The above set-up won't help with kennel cough because that is air-borne, but just try to keep your resident dogs away from the fosters as much as possible until quarantine is over.
*
Above all - don't panic. Absolutely nothing you do will be able to remove all risk of infection. You can only do what you can do but at least the above will minimise risk.