Sky and Green Came Home!

Look who came home with me today after my daily puppy visit at the vet's (completely unexpected!):

Miss Sky:





and Mr. Green:


Yes, they've lost a little weight, but they are both incredibly active and RAVENOUSLY hungry. Everything in me wants to fatten them up, but we have to go very slow and easy on their GI tracts.

They're getting a meatball's worth of Prescription Diet ID food (I roll the the canned food into hearty meatballs) every two hours. They are also getting 100 mg amoxicillin 2x daily, 125 mg Metronidazole 2x daily, and Tamaflu 2x daily.

And, here's the good news: they're expected to recover fully. Now it's just a matter of getting their GI tracts used to solid foods again, so we'll keep them on Prescription Diet for at least another week and will gradually start adding their regular food after that.

We're also protecting them again from secondary infections since their immune systems have undoubtedly been weakened somewhat (no visitors, including our normal socializers, for a while). and we've sanitized virtually everything the pups could come in contact with.

While the pups were gone, we bleached everything: the floors, the walls, furniture, the deck, all our shoes, any clothing that had contact with the pups, the puppy pens, the puppy crates and trays, the puppy food/water bowls, hard puppy toys, etc. We washed all their bedding and any soft toys twice in scalding bleach water (our water comes off our heater's boiler so we can make it really hot). We've gotten rid of (as in thrown out) mats and rugs and toys we couldn't bleach. We disinfected (again with bleach solution) the inside of the car where we transported the pups and any "tools" we used with the pups or to clean their pens. I don't think we can disinfect much else.

We're also keeping them in the pen in the kitchen, minus the whelping box and minus the litter box, because we know we can keep that sterile (we can control that environment). I'm not sure when we'll allow them outside again, but I'll ask the vet about that tomorrow. In the meantime, they don't seem to mind a bit (anything has got to be better than a crate at the vet's)!



I can't tell you how excited Sky and Green were when they got home! And how excited they were to be with each other! And how excited they were to be OUT of a crate! Talk about rammie! Yikes! Completely bouncing of the walls, taking flying leaps at each other, taking flying leaps at me, trying to run full bore in their little pen...

And I loved every minute of it!

Yes, they've lost their manners completely, but we can work on that. And they look a little skinny, but we can work on that, too.

I'm just tickled they're home and happy and well on the road to healthy once again.

That makes me hopeful for the rest of the gang. I asked Dr. Wagner point blank today if he expected to lose any of the pups, and he said (unequivocally) "no." He still has every expectation of a positive outcome for all the pups, though they have to ride it out. And he says he doesn't see anything in how the remaining pups are doing to suggest otherwise.

Keep praying, though. Parvo is nasty business, but I think we caught it early and I think they're getting fabulous care -- both of which strongly suggest we'll get through this.

And so it goes.

I'll check in with you tomorrow morning about the two at home, and again tomorrow evening about the gang at the vet's once I see them.

Until then,
Joan