koalathebear

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Not 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. ( Read more... )

As part of their crate training and to help transition them better when they are adopted, we moved the puppies to a different room last night. Dogs tend to cry their first night in a new home but we've found that if they're used to sleeping in different rooms (as long as they are in their crate), they will not cry and annoy their new families.

We'll also eventually split them into separate crates.

New room meant new routine though so imagine me at 2am, bleary-eyed and in my nightie racing around after these two crazy piglets trying to catch them!

They are faster so it's harder to catch them, they are rounder, fatter and heavier, so it's harder to tuck one under each arm now!!! :D

We dropped samples at the vet today and it was confirmed that not only do Nutmeg and Smudge no longer have parvo - they are no longer shedding the disease.

In sad news though, while Smudge and Nutmeg have been lucky enough to survive parvo, their sister Narla was not so fortunate. Like all of her litter-mates, she battled very long and hard against this horrific illness but today she had to be euthanised because the little thing had no more strength in her.

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Little Smudge is also home. ( Read more... )

It's been a very busy few days... On the puppies' first night, I slept in the lounge on the sofa so that I could keep an eye on them. I went out with a torch when toileting them at 2am to make sure that they didn't have blood in their stool.

They were poorly when they arrived but their stools firmed up in the short time they were with us and they also had excellent appetites and were very lively and attentive - showing no signs of illness at all. We had them vet checked upon arrival in Canberra. We had warned the vet then that they were high risk pups so made sure that we waited outside and didn't touch anything etc. They were totally fine then - good temperature, no alarming signs. We were going to wait for the weekend to pass before vaccinating to make sure they were stable.

Late on Saturday evening (29 June), without any warning, Smudge threw up four times and then lost interest in food and became listless so we took her to the vet immediately. To our horror, although not surprise, we were told that she had a very bad strain of parvo.

The vet told us that that they were both in relatively good condition for dogs with parvo because he usually only saw them when the disease was more advanced - but the prognosis still wasn't very good. ( Read more... )

We don't know which ones yet, but it will be two out of this bunch of cuties. They appear to be Border Collie x Cattle Dog with perhaps a pinch of Kelpie :)



I have been trying to prepare a list of names that aren't already overused. ( Read more... )

Doesn't he look happy in his new home? :)