Roundworms? Yuk!
During one of our "puppy" visits to the vet, we also dropped off a stool sample for them to pore over. We've done this many times over the years with all our dogs and never had any problems. The next day we got a call from the vet that our little Gumbo had roundworms. Roundworms? What the heck is that? Both of us freaked out as if our little baby was on his last legs. We wondered what had we done to make him so sick and infected? After much Googlng we soon learned all the gory details of roundworms and all the fun they can cause. When we picked up Gumbo from the breeder, she mentioned something about giving him dewormer monthly up until he's 6 months old. Bah, we thought. That never happens to us! Well, it did!
Well, as probably most of you already know, we returned to the vet and obtained some reasonably priced (odd for the vet) medication to treat these little interlopers. They gave us 10 prefilled (how nice) syringes full of a milky solution to be given orally for 5 days and then 5 days more, one week later. This was fun as sticking something in Gumbo's mouth was usually reserved for my fingers but all in all, he did pretty well. After the first few days of treatment, we soon saw the results of the medication. It turns out that this medication stuns the roundworms and they get passed in his, well, you know, his stool. So much to our surprise, after his morning constitutional a few days later, we saw the culprits writhing around in agony and appearing very surprised to be outside of their accommodating host. Enough said about this! Just Google it for more information and pictures of roundworms.
Two weeks later we returned to the vet with another sample of his output and we got the verdict he was clean! Hurray! It seems that these little critters will eat just about everything and I'm pretty sure it was something he ate while out on a walk that did him in. Actually all through this, he never showed any sign of infection. We were the ones affected by it all. It was so hard to see your little baby affected by some 'creature' and feel so helpless to do anything! Thanks so much for vets. What would we do without them?
