Sick Little Boy

Today was Toby’s inauguration if you will into manhood..This morning he had his ‘manhood’ removed and while there something was discovered that was missed when we first found him. 

For those who don’t know I’ll give you a quick run down. Toby came to us about a month and a half ago at age nine weeks. He was found stuck between a shed and a fence. Someone had abandoned him or so we thought. Well we took him to our vet and was told he checked out well except for the common worm parasites all puppies have and was given three rounds of deworming. 

This is what Toby looked like when we found him.

Cute wasn’t he!..

Over the course of the last month and a half Toby has thrived and grown. We thought he was doing well except for this diarrhea that keeps coming and going. On his last follow up appointment which was last week one of the doctors said it’s possible he has an infection in his intestines that may not have shown up on testing. They put him in antibiotics but they weren’t working.  We were trying what we knew to do here at home as the diarrhea had kicked into gear over the weekend and our vet is closed until Monday. Rice, high fiber food etc. It would work and then it wouldn’t. When we spoke to the office on Monday they said to give the antibiotics a few more days and then we’d recheck. 

Well, Wednesday of this week, was Toby’s appointment to make sure he couldn’t make any babies in the future. The doctors said they would run some more tests to see if they could find what was happening. It’s a good thing they did.. Although Toby looked a lot better than his sister Sarah when we found her, obviously he was and had been suffering from the same thing she was when we found her. A parasite in the intestines that is eating his red blood cells. His blood work today showed a pretty low red blood cell count, low hemoglobin etc. We are now sure this parasite has just been hiding from us for the last month and a half but now we found the sucker and so, will be hit with an arsenal of medication.

Yes, all that there is for mah boy. Looks scary but it’s really not. The Huge syringe is not a needle it’s a tube of supplements in gel form, the pills in the silver packet are also supplements, the smaller syringes are also not needles but de-worming meds we have to give him by mouth once a day for five days, the green bottle is a bottle of fiber pills and the small bottle is a bottle of pain medication from his neutering surgery. Despite what we found today, Toby has continued to thrive. 

See?

He now weighs a whopping twenty-five pounds, up from 5.2 pounds when we found him a little over a month and a half ago. So we must be doing something right despite a sneaky parasite trying to take him away from us. He’s eating, playing, gaining weight and he is SUCH a good boy and a blessing. Will ya look at that ear!! I just LOVE that ear! 

Robyn

XO