Coping With Canine Distemper

It began with the arrival of a little black puppy. My father had taken her off a beggar in the street. She was clearly too young to be weaned, mal nourished and full of sores. We took her to the vet, put her on anti biotiocs. We named her JoJo.

One week later two more arrived home. These little babies were being sold at traffic lights and we could not drive away and leave them to a certain poor quality of life and most probably death. We named these two sisters Minki and Mandy. These three became fast friends and started putting on weight, their coats started to shine and they had settled into life with with our Rottweiler, surrogate Mom, Tammy.

Last addition was a little boy pup. He was easily the youngest and was ripped away from his mom far too early. A man was walking door to door trying sell him to make a quick buck. We took him home and named him Basil. Little Basil refused to eat, we took him to the vet, we tried everything. A week later, after we had grown very attached to all the pups, I got a very tearful phone call from my Step Mom to say that Basil had become more ill and the vet had put him down - diagnosis - distemper

We had the other dogs vaccinated immediately. Too late though…Within one week Mandy, Minki and JoJo have fallen victim to this disease. They were on every antibiotic, we visited the vet most days in desperation but they have all died. The whole family is just heartbroken. Getting home is the worst -no little ones jumping up and down to say hello. Now that I have experienced this and know what to look for, I will never lose another dog to distemper I am glad to read the success stories - We miss our puppies, wish I had visited this website long ago.