The Importance of Dog Vaccinations

I’ve never made any secret about being an animal lover. I like animals of all types. I also have a soft spot for them as well. In a lot of ways, I view them as being as equally deserving of a good quality of life as people are. Me and my significant other believe this so much that we’ve adopted 2 rescue dogs and took in a feral cat.

Now, I know that rescues don’t always have the best means to take care of animals. They’re largely volunteer run and also largely depend on donations. I like to help out rescues because what they’re doing is important in saving dogs from either being homeless or from situations that are truly inhuman (like puppy mills).

o, why am I writing this diatribe about animal rescues?

There is a method to this madness.

On Sunday my significant other and I made a trip to pick up a rescue puppy. The puppy is adorable. When we picked up the puppy, the volunteer said that she liked to rescue Parvo dogs. For those that don’t know anything about Parvo, it’s a highly contagious disease that effects the dog’s digestive tract. It can be fatal… especially to puppies who have not been vaccinated. I specifically asked if the dog had been checked by a vet and was healthy. She said yes. He had been given his first round of vaccinations.

We get him home and start getting things settled for him… And he gets sick.

Now, this is not our first puppy. We have a 14 month old dog. We know that stress can make puppies sick.

Then two days roll by. He has bad diarrhea and is vomiting up anything he ingests, including water. It really started getting bad last night. So, we rush the dog to the vet. He’s still pretty reactive but definitely weak. The vet tests him… and he’s positive for Parvo.

The puppy is now hospitalized and being treated.

Personally, I’m trying to take things one moment at a time. The hospitalization should take 3 days… but it’s going to be a nerve wracking 3 days. Puppies can make it through the illness. We’re hoping that he hasn’t given up. From the look in his eyes that I saw when we took him to the vet last night, I think he wants to still be here to play with his new friend and big brother.

The most heartbreaking part of last night was how the older puppy is coping with this. He whined quite a bit before we took him to the vet. He kept bringing toys to the playpen we were keeping the puppy in. After we hospitalized the younger puppy and were leaving he was so upset that he was barking angrily at the vet hospital. He spent a good portion of last night barking before falling asleep. He’s really hurting.

We all are.

More then anything, I’m angry. I’m angry because if you’re running an animal rescue that rescues parvo dogs you need to know how highly contagious Parvo is. If you’re going to rescue parvo dogs, you need to keep the healthy puppies separate from the sick dogs. I don’t understand how anyone can think that it’s OK to keep both together since the puppies aren’t necessarily going to have any antibodies to combat the virus.

So, now we wait. It’s all we can do. We’re hoping for the best, but at this stage in the game it really is a day where we take it moment to moment. I hope that the little puppy will make it through.