Thursday, June 21, 2012

Day 23: Babies, Bottle-Feeding, Parvovirus

                Today was, again, a really slow day (As I keep saying, we’ve been having some pretty slow days recently.  Jen says we’re in the slow phase of summer; I really hope it will start picking up soon).  When I first walked into the recovery room, I saw we had a Maltese named Tessa who had a C-section sometime late last night/early morning.  Her puppies (4 of them; three boys and a girl) were staying warm in an incubator on the other side of the room.  Even though I hadn’t been there to witness the C-section, seeing the puppies was still a cool sight to see!  They were only a few hours old, and they were really small, shaky, and are (of course, like all puppies) deaf and blind (unable to open their eyes) for the time being (until they get a few weeks older).  We needed to bottle-feed them with formula, because Tessa wasn’t producing any milk.  She seemed to be recovering fine, and she and the puppies went home around mid-morning with some formula and a bottle (in case the mother still won’t produce any milk).  Next to Tessa was Diego, and he is recovering wonderfully!  Even though he is still unable to walk on his own and his head is still slightly twitching, he is able to slightly control some movements on his own now and the twitching has subsided into more of a slight head bob.  This is amazing, because most of us were surprised that he even survived the attack; yet he’s recovering so quickly! I can only imagine how much better he’ll be tomorrow!
Tessa, the mother Maltese.
Her four puppies snug together in a warm incubator.

A facial view of one of the puppies.
Diego feeling better and recovering nicely, and acting more like himself as each day passes!

                There was a 7-month old Pitbull-mix named Tyson who came in with vomiting and dehydration, and he had a distinct odor coming from him, which led us to believe (and soon after discover for a fact) he had Parvo.  He was placed in the stray cat ward (since Parvo doesn’t spread to cats).   His owners weren’t the brightest pet owners; the brother of one of the owners had a dog which had puppies, and all of the puppies had Parvo.  Tysons owners kept putting him with the puppies, which is how Tyson came down with the virus.  I’ll see how he’s doing tomorrow and if he’s gotten any better.
Tyson, the Pitbull mix with Parvo.

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