Day 8 - Not So Rare Indeed

Written by Erin

Cooper still didn't appear to be feeling well today. He was still very bloated, and he wouldn't eat much of his food all morning or afternoon. We switched his diet on Saturday evening, and I don't think he or his body liked the new food. I found bits of it in his feces, so it probably wasn't digesting too well. We will get more prescription food at the vet.

bloated belly

Around dinner time I went to find Cooper sitting up with an empty food bowl. I was very pleased, especially considering he had been lying down the past 2 days. He still wasn't perked up as much as a few days ago though. We didn't hear a single bark out of him. When he was outside, he wouldn't walk to his food bowl. We had to bring it over to him. After he ate, he walked back over to the garage but couldn't make it up the last step. I'm glad he now recognizes the garage as his home.

ready to come into the garage

We saw Cooper scratch himself for the first time today! It was provoked by Mason rubbing his back. While getting this massage, Cooper lifted his back leg and scratched like the itchy puppy we expect him to be.

scratching

I went to visit the expert parasitologists today as they looked at the fecal float from last week. Upon closer examination they do NOT think it is Baylisascaris anymore. This is based on the texture of the egg's coat. Toxocara species have a pitted/scalloped pattern, somewhat like a golfball, and Baylisascaris has an irregular texture. It is still unclear why there were 2 types of Toxocara eggs that looked so different. Perhaps one is Toxocara cati that the puppy got from eating cat poop? All we can do to know more at this point is to look at the worms themselves. The lab was unable to definitively identify the worm I brought in today. The last update I have is that they were putting it into a lactophenol solution in hopes of being better able to see the morphological characteristics. For now I am just being instructed to collect any more worms I may find.

Either way, we still can not back off on our safety precautions. Toxocara species also migrate to the eye and other organs, just not usually the brain. We still are torching any poopie piles outside and throwing way anything with poop on it.