Doug Goodman

For the first four or five days, Voodoo did really well.  She was alert, active, playing.  Then she stopped eating.  I thought it was separation anxiety, which is common in puppies.  She had moved a few hundred miles from her home and was without her parents for the first time in her life.  It didn't seem like a big reach, but she ate her last meal Saturday.  By Sunday, I had decided to take her to the vet as soon as my morning meetings were over.  When I came home, she could barely walk to me.  Uh-oh.  I took her to the closest vet and told them she was constipated and puking.  The vet tech and I were both thinking the same thing:  blockage.  The pup ate something and it was lodged in her intestines.  Well, we got the location right, just not the prognosis.  The doctor called an hour later.  Hookworms.

For anybody who gets squeamish, skip the next few paragraphs.  This gets gross.  Hookworms are a parasite.  They lodge in a dog's lower intestines, using thes gnarly looking teeth to hang on to the intestine.  Unlike some other parasites that actually eat a dog's food, hookworms feast on blood.  They are like leeches of the intestine.  Very gross.

There are two ways a dog gets hookworm.  The first is by sitting on a larva or stepping on it.  Then the larva travels into the dog's intestines, becomes an adult, reproduces, and lays eggs.  The dog defecates the eggs/larva, and that is how the baby nasties get onto the ground for the next dog to step in.  The second way is via the mother.  The little boogers can actually be passed through the milk...

"She could die at any minute."  I'm not trying to overdramatize the situation.  The vet actually said that to me.  Voodoo was severely anemic.  She had white gums, dry hair, and 0 energy.  She was literally being drained of blood till she was dead, like some vampire was eating her from the inside out.  The forward plan was to giver her a blood transfusion to get some blood in her and start worming.  I agreed to it, and they kept her overnight.  The vet told me he did all he could and the only thing left was to cross our fingers and pray. 

I thought on this some, and I was reminded of Where the Red Fern Grows.  In it, a boy gets "puppy love," a.k.a., "dog fever."  He prays for a dog, and he makes every offering a boy can make.  I wanted to make the same prayer, and offer everything I could, whatever it was.  I also remembered that these things happen for a reason, and if the dog and I weren't meant to be, then so be it.  This was out of our hands.

The next morning the vet called me to say that Voodoo had made some progress.  She wasn't defecating as much, she had a little more energy, and she was trying to drink.  He wasn't ready to say she is better, but the outcome looked a little brighter.  I decided to pick her up in the evening and treat her at home.

When I picked her up, she did look better.  A little.  But not much.  I had to agree with everything the vet was saying.  This could go in one of two ways, he said.  Either she will have great improvement over the next few days, or she will keep sliding.  I am hopeful that she will get better.  Voodoo is known for resurrection and transformation.  This pup has something still left in her.