Raven's Journey in case we can help someone else.

[taxtell]

Hi! I just wanted to share our little 9 month old girl's journey with everyone. Hopefully some new puppy owners can benefit from my mistakes.

When we brought Raven home from our breeder's (who is amazing and tests for everything you can possibly test for), she had the sniffles. I took her to the (integrative, so they said) vet and had her looked at, as I suspected she had bordetella. The vet assured me that:
1) The oral bordatella vaccine will help her get over the affliction faster.
2) It was perfectly fine to give her DHLPP as well.

Unfortunately, they were wrong. As a former vet tech, I should have listened to my gut instinct. Raven got VERY sick from her vaccines and ended up with a severe case of pneumonia.
She was put on so many antibiotics. She was on Amoxiclav, then amoxiclav with baytril (generic, which made her projectile vomit) then amoxiclav with doxycyclin from July to November, (again, I should have paid more attention) and she wasn't getting better. It took literally months to get her lungs clear. I believe the using Mycodog Breathe, using a nebulizer and a high dose of Azithromycin finally cleared her up (along with an herb called Lift the Qi).
Because of the overuse of antibiotics, her gut biome was destroyed. (I sent a sample to animalbiome to confirm this. She is still on their FMT protocol.
During the antibiotics she scratched her cornea. She went to an ophthalmologist and was diagnosed with dry eye in both eyes. Autoimmune in the left eye, neurological in the right. She started showing symptoms of Horner's Syndrome as well, causing a partial paresis of her right lower lid...which made the dry eye worse. The ophthalmologists weren't great and kind of dismissed her as 'well, she's a cavalier, so...'.
I was frustrated and took her to a holistic vet for some acupuncture to hopefully restore some movement in that lower lid. Upon examination this vet told me it was her ears. She was insistent about it.
I finally took her for an MRI. It was, in fact, her ears. Her middle ear to be precise. The neurologist insists it is PSOM. I feel she was a bit young for that diagnosis, but ok.

So I took her back to our regular vet (not the integrative clinic) and he agreed to do a myringotomy . He said he pulled out what looked like thick mucous. He sent the material in for cultures. They came back positive for bordatella. Full circle.

As of now, her paresis is gone and she is in fantastic spirits. Playing, eating, snuggling. She looks great. Let's pray it stays this way.

TLDR:
Do not let your vet push you into something you are not comfortable with.
Do not be afraid to question your vet.
If you feel like something is off, get a second opinion.

I hope we can prevent another cavalier from going through what we did.

 

[Nicki]

Oh my goodness, poor Raven and poor you, what a traumatic journey when you should just have been enjoying puppyhood together.

Thank you so much for sharing your story.

Surely if your dog's system has been exposed to something like bordatella they will already be making the antibodies, so I do not understand how vaccination at that time will help - and suspect it just puts the body under more stress? Vaccinating a puppy suspected of being sick is against the advice of the package inserts so I am so sorry this happened to you.

It's brilliant have a good holistic vet in place now and are working on Raven's gut, I think we are finally starting to understand the importance of the microbiome, and it will be especially important for Raven after such a poor start.

Raven is very beautiful and we really hope she can recover her health - she is fortunate to be with you, and for your dedication and commitment to her.

 

[taxtell]

Also! Insurance is such a great thing to have!

 

[taxtell]

Here she is last night on the bed after shredding some paper on the floor. She’s feeling good.

 

[taxtell]

Looking innocent!

 

[Karlin]

Wow what a terribly difficult experience you've had much less poor Raven. PSOM is a really common finding on scans of cavaliers, FWIW, but isn't always the cause of any given symptoms as it can be similar to quite a few other things. Glad you have some sense of what needs managing now. Gut biome thinking has come such a long way since when I first had cavaliers 20 years ago! It's one reason why I think feeding only dry food is best avoided, even though so many vets still push for this for dogs and cats. I use dry as a basis for feeding most of the time but always add some wet food or meat etc, and 'real food' treats, fruit or veg or meat or freeze dried organ treats etc.

 

[taxtell]

Wow what a terribly difficult experience you've had much less poor Raven. PSOM is a really common finding on scans of cavaliers, FWIW, but isn't always the cause of any given symptoms as it can be similar to quite a few other things. Glad you have some sense of what needs managing now. Gut biome thinking has come such a long way since when I first had cavaliers 20 years ago! It's one reason why I think feeding only dry food is best avoided, even though so many vets still push for this for dogs and cats. I use dry as a basis for feeding most of the time but always add some wet food or meat etc, and 'real food' treats, fruit or veg or meat or freeze dried organ treats etc.

Agreed! We feed raw. She was actually weaned onto raw.
Sorry about the failed pictures, files are too large I guess

 

[Karlin]

I'm hoping the next board software release will take care of the file size issue automatically, it was flagged as one of the new features to come.