On May 18, 2008, My husband and I responded to an ad on craigslist.com about a puppy. We went that evening to pick up our little angel. We fell in love with Chewie immediately! The lady who sold him to us for $75 had no records of taking him to the vet or paperwork proving his shots were administered. But she told us that her friend was a vet and had done this at home. So we wrote down the dates she told us he was vaccinated and dewormed. We took him home and made him a vet appointment for May 28 for his second set of shots.

He was a great puppy. Doing very well with housebreaking. Well on May 27, the day before his appointment, he began having a slight case of diarrhea. Which wasn’t alarming since we had just stopped mixing his food and just started giving him his new puppy food. The next day he goes to the vet and she gives him his shots and then gives him an injection of centrine for the diarrhea which was supposedly caused by giardia. We go home and he takes a 2 hour nap. When he wakes up he begans acting lethargic and sore, yelping when I pick him up. So I called the vet, they say to watch him overnight and if he’s not better than to bring him back in. When we wake up the next day on May 29, he has thrown up the entire contents of his stomach and had diarrhea twice. So I take him in when they open.

They do some more fecal tests and we discover that he not only has giardia and a bacteria in his intestines, but that he also has parvo. So the doc gives him some fluids under the skin and gives me some meds for nausea, vomiting, and the other bacterias. I also have to begin forcefeeding him pedialyte and wet food. I was getting barely any sleep and constantly having to monitor him, but I thought it was helping, so it was totally worth it. And it was helping up until June 2.

The night before was horrible. He begin having very frequent vomiting and diarrhea, not keeping any of his fluids down, and becoming more and more lethargic. This happened so fast! By the time we got him to the vet that morning when it opened, he had a 106.1 temp and a blood sugar level of 31. They hospitalized him immediately. The outlook was bleak. But somehow, here we are on June 5 and we get to pick him up, this was his last day at the vet. He’s doing so much better! After the last 9 agonizing days and nights, our little angel has beat the odds. What a lil fighter.

I guess the moral of my story is to not give up. And make sure you give your pup lots of pep talks and visit them at the vet, it helps! In the end, I lost some days and nights, over $1200 in vet bills, and endured a lot of pain while watching my little angel deteriorate, but it all was sooo worth it! It paid off, we have our Chewie back!