Problem found (hopefully)

I talked to Pete's previous owners the other day.  I called them to find out if they had experienced this issue with him when they had him.  They did.  Their vet told them that it was "Red Mange" or Demodicosis.  It is a condition caused by Demoditic mites burrowing into his hair follicles causing red, oily, and scaly areas of the skin, severe itching, a "mouse or rodent like" smell emitting from the area, and hair loss.  It is commonly found in pups but has been occasionally found in adult dogs as well.  Pete has all of those symptoms.  His former vet recommended to John and Christy that he be given Ivermectin as treatment as well as a chemical dip treatment of Mitaban and skin scrapes every two weeks until the mites are completely dead.

I have done a lot of research on Ivermectin over the past two days.  It is a cattle and swine dewormer.  It is not approved for treatment of worms or parasites in dogs or cats but has shown significant effectiveness in treating heartworms, parasites, and demoditic and sarcoptic mange.  Some dogs such as Collies or other herding breeds are missing a certain mutation in a medicinal absorption gene and has been show to be fatal in those breeds.  Luckily Boston Terriers aren't in that group of dogs. 

Some sites say that if you get the 1% sterile Ivermectin for cattle and swine that it should be diluted with propylene glycol while others state that you should give them no more than .1 cc per 10 lbs undiluted as propylene glycol can be highly toxic to dogs.  Other sites state that that first rule is for using Ivermectin as a heartworm preventative and that treatment for Demodicosis has to be given to the dog at a near toxic level to kill the mites that are infesting the skin.

Toxic symptoms include temporary blindness, temporary deafness, ataxia (loss of muscle function or breathing), emesis (vomiting), depression, coma, and possibly death.

The past two days I have given him .2 cc and he hasn't had any adverse effects.  I am going to raise it to .3 cc tomorrow and Wednesday and keep an eye on him to ensure that he doesn't start exhibiting any toxic effects.  The goal is to get him up to .5 cc daily for a while until it is gone.  If I follow the .1cc per 10 lb logic, he would get .25 cc daily which as noted by a few web sites is the low end of treatment as heartworm preventative and mange treatment.

I have noticed already that the red smelly patches aren't as oily today and seem a lot less red.  He also hasn't been scratching nearly as bad today.  I called a veterinary dermatologist today to try to get an appointment and they wouldn't even schedule one until he had been on Ivermectin for at least 4 weeks as most cases of Demodicosis are often confused with dermatitis allergies and it would be a waste of my time and money to bring him in for this issue if it is in fact Demodicosis. 

My fingers are crossed that this course of treatment works.

2 quick videos of Pete

And we're back!

I picked up a new 750GB external hard drive last night at Best Buy so that I can have one place to back up all of my files rather than spending hours upon hours of burning everything to DVD. I got all of my files moved over to it last night.

I woke up early this morning waiting for Jen and Nathan to come pick me up to go to the Cooper-Young Festival, so I decided to go ahead and format my computer since it has been running like crap lately and had a lot of junk on it that I don't use/need.  After I verified that all of my files were successfully moved to the new drive, I began the process.  After a few snags getting my computer to finally boot to the DVD-ROM drive and not freezing up when reading the Windows XP disk, I finally got it done.  I reinstalled all my drivers and basic programs.

I bought a copy of Acronis TrueImage 11 to backup my hard drive since I can't find my Ghost boot disk.  Acronis is much simpler to use and compresses images better than Ghost.  I created the image and backed it up to the external drive.  This will simplify things in the future making it unnecessary for me to have to worry about backing up all of my files and then going through the whole formatting and reinstalling process.  Now all I have to do is boot to the Acronis boot disk choose the image and click Restore.  I have it set to do an incremental backup every week so that I can minimize any lost information in the event that I do have to do a restore.

In other news, we had a good time at the Cooper-Young Festival this morning until the masses of people showed up.  There was some nice stuff there.  For those that don't know, the Cooper-Young area is the young/hipster/artsy/liberal area of Memphis.  Every year they have a festival.  The streets are lined with booths of people selling their crafts and art as well as various food and drink booths.  We found a natural products booth selling soaps and various other things.  They had a few little baskets with organic dog treats so I picked up some Peanut Butter and Oatmeal treats as well as some Bacon and Cheese treats for Pete. 

When the crowds picked up we decided to get going.  It was starting to get pretty warm out and the sun was beating down pretty fierce.  We stopped by Raffi's Deli on the way and had some lunch.  Today has been a lot of fun.  I hadn't been to the Festival in a couple of years.  I was glad that I made it out there this year.

What else can I do?

After figuring it up tonight I have spent nearly $1000 on Pete over the last couple of months between getting him neutered, microchipped, and shots updated ($250), and another $750 between medicine (clemastine, amoxicillin, prednisone, benedryl, and more), allergy testing, and various other vet bills trying to fight off this skin infection, allergy, disease, whatever it is.  His hair was thinning out and he was bald in a few spots so I started giving him Ivermectin again thinking that it was Sarcoptic Mange.  That helped his hair grow back in, but did nothing for the scratching.

The vet recommended an allergy test.  The allergy test was done by a deep skin scrape.  They anesthetized him to do it.  I had to deal with a very grumpy Boston Terrier for two days afterwards and it came back inconclusive.  I have washed all of his bedding with hypoallergenic detergents and bleach, bought new bedding, and cleaned the carpets with a hypoallergenic soap thinking that it was something in the carpeting.  He is still chewing and scratching himself bloody.

Tonight I came home to find blood all over the inside of his kennel.  I pulled him out quickly and found that he had chewed a large cut on his front leg.  I got it to stop bleeding and bandaged him up.  I talked to a woman who breeds Boston Terriers and she said that her oldest BT had the same thing when she was a puppy.  She started feeding her a salmon, duck, and sweet potatoe type of dog food and the problem went away.  I called the vet to see if they recommended trying that.  The vet was all for it.

I found a bag of it at Pet Smart for $49.95 for 15lbs.  I also bought a medicated oatmeal shampoo.  He likes the food.  I gave him a bath.  The rash turned bright red while I was drying him off but he isn't scratching at the moment and seems a bit more calm.  I have to give him a bath once a week with this shampoo.  I also clipped and filed his nails down so that when he scratches they won't cut him open.

If the new food and baths don't work, I don't know what else to do.  He is such a great dog.  It kills me to see him in pain like this.  When he starts scratching he cries and gives me this pathetic look like he is asking me to make it stop and it breaks my heart.

He is supposed to have surgery on his back legs to fix his disjointed knees, but I can't see putting him through that right now while we are still battling this other issue. 

Everyone thinks I am crazy for spending this much on vet bills and everything else for a dog.  They keep telling me that I need to put him down and quit wasting so much money on him and just be done with it.  Am I wrong for refusing to do that and not even considering it as an option?

Stunning!

I love the pictures that Lars Stephan takes.  Not only does he take amazing photos but he also shares his self images which are a beautiful thing to behold.  I don't remember exactly how I found him, but I have been checking his Flickr page every day for the past couple of years.

He recently took the following picture and I absolutely fell in love with it.  The photo is titled Oliver #1 and is probably one of the best portraits he has done yet.