This e-mail came to me from Cayenne's breeder. The dog in question is related to her dogs.

Subject: Warning ... and Good News!
>
> All,
>
> As some of you already know, I was off work yesterday with a dog
> emergency. I woke up yesterday morning to get ready for work, walked
> upstairs and noticed that there were dark puddles on my carpet. Having
> three dogs, one of which is still a puppy, I was sure the puppy had
> woken up in the middle of the night and had an accident on the carpet.
> I turned on the light and found that there were in fact two large
> puddles of blood and about 20 - 30 smaller areas of blood located
> throughout the living room.
>
> I followed the trail back downstairs (where all of my dogs were still
> hogging up the bed) and found that my 6 year old Golden Retriever Maddie
> was covered in what can only be described as a mixture of blood and
> other "stuff" from her tail down.
>
> I called my normal vet who was unable to get her in until 4:30. Not
> good. I called the vet down the street from me and they could get her
> in at 11. I cleaned Maddie off as best as I could while we anxiously
> awaited our appointment time. She was not acting lethargic or sick, she
> was still doing her normal doggie tricks and running around barking as
> the kids walked by on their way to school. Once we got her into the
> vet's office, things took a turn for the worse. She lost a lot of blood
> in the examination room.
>
> We stayed at that vet's office for upwards of 3 hours trying to get to
> the bottom of all of this. We did the stool samples (multiple), ear
> cytology, lyme disease testing, testing for parasites/worms, along with
> numerous blood tests. Apparently, there is a bad viral infection going
> up and down the east coast. The symptoms start with generic diarrhea
> and quickly move forward to blood in the stool to the full blown blood
> issue we had with Maddie. We had to leave her at the vet's office for a
> few hours while they pumped fluids in to her along with a broad spectrum
> gram negative antibiotic and pepcid a/c. I picked her up last night and
> she was still acting like her normal self (minus a bit of hair where
> they had to shave her).
>
> I just received a call from my vet with her test results. The good news
> is her blood work came back clear minus the high white blood cell count
> that they expected to see due to the infection. She is home resting and
> enjoying eating her new diet of boiled chicken and rice. She will be on
> medication for at least the next 6 days. For those of you who pray,
> please put in a good word for Maddie that she keeps getting better.
>
> Please, please keep an eye on your pets. If you see any of the symptoms
> above, just give your vet a quick call before it gets any worse. My vet
> said that in all the time they have been in business, they haven't gone
> through their supply of metronidazole (this is the antibiotic Maddie is
> on) and within the last week and a half, they have completely wiped out
> their supply.

That doesn't sound too good, despite her nonchalance.

Bombarding the Cosmos for her benefit. Frank (Francis Assisi)gets tired of hearing from me.

Let us know how she does.




*******************************************

I think she is better. If I hear from Ellee again I'll pass it on. it would have been so easy to miss this, go off to work and have a severely dehydrated dog when she got home. Apparently this is a nasty thing going around so it's best to have a heads up.