Ignorance and pet-keeping
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Fleas might not seem like a major problem, but in young and vulnerable animals, they can be a killer
AS I WROTE last week, my poodle-pup Wan-Wan has started limping, especially on her front legs. This normally active dog even asks me to carry her everywhere.
The limp could be the result of anything, from a sprain to some internal problem. I take her to the vet’s for X-rays and blood tests.
Of course, the vet doesn’t see any limp. Wan is too busy dancing around, greeting staff and charming clients.
With a smile, my vet shakes her head. She knows me. I’m always bringing an animal in with a diagnosis that’s usually wrong. Before the X-ray is taken, though, she gently runs her hands down the dog’s back. Wan lets out a little cry and then starts licking the vet’s hand.
“Oh,” says the vet. “Wan has an abscess between her shoulders.”
As I touch the area, my dog cries again and licks my hand.
That area between her shoulders simply feels like hardened skin to me, not an abscess. My vet knows better. Somehow, Wan was injured there, the skin healed, but the injury went “underground”, under her skin, where her body has been fighting an unseen infection.
No wonder she’s had problems walking. Any kind of movement would have been painful – but she hid her pain, except for a few minutes when she couldn’t hide it from me.
Now, she’s taking antibiotics, and when this wound softens up, the vet will be able to use a needle to remove all the blood and dead cells inside.
How did she get the wound in that unusual place? I guess one of the cats (probably old man Phantom) scratched her.
If I had recognised the injury, of course I would have taken Wan to the vet’s much sooner. Call me ignorant, but at least Wan’s injury can be treated. Sometimes ignorance can cause much more tragic results.
One of my animal-rescuer friends rushes to the house of a family who adopted two of her rescued puppies. There they lie, side by side on a blanket. Barely three months old, one pup has just died. His brother is near death.
Before she let the family have the two, she warned them that the pups needed to be treated for fleas. She had had the pups only a day and hadn’t had the time to do it herself.
Fleas are such tiny animals. You wouldn’t think they could do too much damage, would you? I suppose the family thought that the pups could wait a few weeks before they were treated for fleas.
So they waited.
The babies weren’t strong enough to handle the loss of blood from all the fleas. They grew weaker, and then one died.
Now, the surviving brother isn’t much better off. His eyes have become infected, probably from the poisons the fleas discharged as they drank his blood.
The vet cannot save one of the pup’s eyes. It has to be removed urgently so that the infection won’t affect the other eye.
Too late. The other eye is already infected. To treat it, the vet begins a course of steroids. Every day, my friend takes the little boy to the vet for injections.
The eye, though, doesn’t seem to improve, and on the last day of treatment, the vet discovers that the little boy’s liver is swollen. The baby cannot be saved.
My friend is broken-hearted. She rescued these two creatures, and now this family, who promised to give the pups a good home, has actually caused them pain and suffering.
She alternates between blaming the family and blaming herself. “Why didn’t they do what I told them to do?” she asks. “Why didn’t I check to see if they had done it?”
