Milo diagnosed with IMHA 9 days ago. – Page 2

Keymaster

Kisha,
I’ve been on a private tick discussion group since 2007 and have picked up a lot of information about tick disease. There are a few tick diseases, and one in particular, that can hide out for years and return much later with a vengeance. The dog can have a brief illness and then much later present with sudden serious symptoms that can lead to death. I am never truly convinced that it is appropriate to disregard previous tick bite history. I have helped owners whose dogs were in these last stages and it was very difficult to watch these dogs crash so quickly. The owners could not understood how a tick bite a year ago could do this. Nor did they understand that many vets fail to treat the original tick bites with the proper dose of doxycycline, or as we say, “only tickled the tick,” allowing it to hide where it couldn’t be affected by the medication.

On this page, click on Tick Borne Diseases and Dogs.
https://www.secondchanceaihadogs.com/parasite-resources/
Gil has spent years collecting and modifying this information. Click on the picture of the page to open the site in a new tab. You can read many of the pages if you wish but it might be good to start by reading her information about Erhliciosis, click on that page in the right sidebar. She discusses the three stages of the disease, the last often happening much later.

I am merely trying to encourage you to not discount further testing for tick diseases, not scare you. In a dog that has very few risk factors this is still an unknown as far as I am concerned.

The other page you may want to consult is the Test Laboratories. I recommend ProtaTek. This is all that Dr. Holland and her staff do, test for tick diseases and other like conditions. She is always willing to discuss things with a vet on the phone. The main issue comes down to the difference between a screening test (is there some indication of infection at some point in time) vs a test that measures titers (how much infection is there.) It’s not quite that simple, but when you are looking at a disease that can hide in the body you want to be able to measure “how much” not just yes or no.

When Chance was so very ill in 2007, these were the first tests I had run, I was hoping to God that it was a tick disease and we could treat it with doxycycline. It wasn’t, as Dr. Holland explained to me, the titer was extremely low and could be explained as an aberration. She’s good with these tricky lab results.

As for dry food, Dr. Dodds would be the first person to note that dry food can be tainted with dangerous microscopic molds like and fungus like Aspergillus which may cause serious illness. I would never assume any dried dog food is perfectly ok.

I would like to see a chem screen from any time during this diagnostic period, this is the test that looks at the functions of the body such as the health of the organs, blood sugar etc. I am looking for a specific reading. You will know you have done one because it can be very expensive, more so than the CBC I was able to look at. Thank you.

Perhaps you can tell me more about the actual day you felt he was ill and how he behaved when you thought this. That would be very revealing. We should try to tease this out a little bit more for your sanity.
my best
patrice

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Patrice

Keymaster

Kisha,
Thank you for the update and the chem screen!

The chem screen is completely normal. There are no values that are low normal or high normal. The value I wanted to check is globulin. Dogs unable to effectively fight ehrlichiosis in the early days of infection can become chronically infected. In that case we would have seen elevated globulin levels in the blood, which we don’t.

In addition, dosing with doxycycline can be prophylactic. This means that there was never a diagnosis or sign of tick disease but that there was the potential for exposure. So dosing with doxy “just in case” is often a very good approach with tick diseases. My vet is very much in agreement and if I find an attached tick on one of them, she is willing to dose with a prophylactic dose. Testing for tick diseases is not effective until approximately 6 weeks after a bite! Too long to wait if there was exposure to disease, it’s best to treat right away.

I misunderstood about his exposure. It sounded like there were times when he had ticks on him. Yes, there are small ones and they are very hard to find, so exposure can happen without ever seeing a tick.

In general tick diseases are spreading, esp due to climate change, at a rapid rate. Areas that had no reported ticks even 5 years ago are seeing them in greater numbers, for instance Canada. I keep track of reported tick disease with this website.
http://www.petsandparasites.org/parasite-prevalence-maps/#2017/all/lyme-disease/dog/united-states/
An owner can drill down through the maps to their own county and can also request a monthly email notifying of the reported cases of each tick disease in their area. CAPC is careful to point out that these are only reported cases and the numbers of disease are probably much higher if you consider all the dogs that went untreated or vets that didn’t report. So I have been seeing skyrocketing tick disease numbers in the location I live and vacation in. You might want to keep track of CAPC maps on your own, via their regular emails.

Many owners have remembered that their pet was acting sluggishly in the days before they truly noticed something seriously wrong, you are not alone.

A PCV of 28% is great! He’s moved very close to what could be considered moderate to mild anemia. So there is positive regeneration and apparently less or no more hemolytic damage occurring.

Whatever the trigger, it appears that he was uncomfortable. Dogs tend to have behavior changes when there is some degree of pain or discomfort. So something did happen, but what is not clear.

Please keep us up-to-date with future improvements and questions!
my best patrice

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