A couple of months ago I received an application from a woman who wanted to surrender her Lab, Marshall. She said on her application that she rescued Marshall, a black Lab about 4 years old, from a high-kill shelter in North Carolina in December because "she couldn't stand to see another nice black dog put down."
When I met with her at her house, she struck me as a dog person with a good heart. She told me Marshall had been heartworm-positive and that she had had his heartworm treated. She told me that shotgun pellets in his left front shoulder were the cause of his limp, which she said did not hold him back. I took her to be a sincere person who genuinely cared about dogs. Marshall himself turned out to be a huge black Lab, nearly 100 pounds, with a gigantic head and a heart to match.
I took Marshall into rescue in late August and gave him to a first-time foster in Ocala, thinking he would be an easy dog for a newbee. The first thing we do with any new dog is take him to the vet. Marshall's former owner had given us his North Carolina shelter records, and he was up to date on vaccines and was already neutered. All he needed was his microchip and a fecal test, I told the vet. Heartworm test, he asked? Oh, right, I said, I'm sure he will be negative but we should do a test. Well, guess what. He was heartworm-positive.
A healthy percentage of the dogs we take into rescue here in Florida have heartworm, which is a nasty long, skinny worm that resides in a dog's heart and lungs. It is easily prevented with a relatively inexpensive monthly medication, but many dog owners do not bother to give it, the same way they don't spay or neuter or apply Frontline for fleas. Dogs that have heartworm that's left untreated slowly deteriorate. Their fur becomes dry and brittle, they become tired and winded with exercise, and they lose their zest for life. Imagine how it would feel to have live parasites crawling around in your heart and arteries.
Treatment for a dog with heartworm usually entails up to three injections with a drug called immiticide, which is an arsenic derivative -- in other words, a poison. The drug does a good job killing the worms; the worms are then absorbed by the dog's body over a period of weeks. During that time, it's critical to not get the dog's heart rate up, lest the worm debris migrate to the lungs and cause an embolism and sudden death. The injections are painful and the recovery is uncomfortable. Because most people do not want to adopt dogs with heartworm, our rescue pays for them to be treated with immiticide before they are adopted.
So Marshall would need heartworm treatment, which wouldn't ordinarily pose a huge problem, except that in early August, the only company that makes immiticide, Merial, announced that it was completely out of the drug and didn't know when it would have any more. This news changed everything for our rescue. We would have to take in fewer heartworm dogs, knowing that they would not be adopted for months, if ever. The heartworm dogs we already had, we would have to try to adopt out to folks willing to take a chance that someday the drug would come back.
Thankfully, a few weeks ago Merial began importing supply from Europe, so everyone is hopeful supplies will be plentiful again in the near future. But for now, availability is tight. I managed to secure one injection of immiticide for Marshall. The protocol we are using is daily doxycycline (an antibiotic that weakens the worms), monthly doses of Advantage Multi, a heartworm preventive that over time kills adult worms, and one injection of immiticide instead of the series of three recommended by the American Heartworm Society. Today was Marshall's day for his one injection.
So today I drove to Ocala while it was still dark to meet Marshall's foster in a McDonald's parking lot. I have three healthy dogs in my house, and when you meet a dog that isn't well, you can see it. Marshall just didn't have that sparkle that a healthy Lab has. He's still sweet and wags his tail, but it's just a little subdued. It made me more determined than ever to make him well. Here was another sweet dog who was dealt a bad hand.
Marshall was found to have an enlarged spleen during his initial intake vet visit. We paid for an ultrasound and there was no sign of a tumor. The heartworm vet said his tummy was tender, probably because of the enlarged spleen, which was probably enlarged because of the heartworm. A blood test showed his heartworm load to be moderate (versus light or heavy). Which led me to wonder: Did his owner get him treatment or didn't she? When I found out Marshall was heartworm positive and tried to call and ask her about it, she wouldn't answer the phone. I consider myself a decent judge of character and can hardly believe she was untruthful about treating him for heartworm. We have papers from the North Carolina shelter so that part is true. It could be the treatment was inadequate. Anyway, lesson learned. From now on, owner surrenders will have to take their dogs to the vet before I take them in, unless the owners are destitute. (Which they often claim to be. Then again, I would have taken Marshall in regardless.)
No comments:
Post a Comment