calliecritturs
Posted : 12/24/2009 3:11:55 PM
BEVOLASVEGAS
FWIW, when Shooter had parvo, he tested a very strong positive. He was almost fully recovered after one day of getting SQ fluids. Bevo, otoh, was a very weak positive, & was hospitalized for 15 days on IV fluids. IMO, the recovery time has more to do with their immune system & less to do with what the parvo test says.
Really good point -- and SO Much depends on when the dog got the shot, what kind of shot it was and also whether or not maternal antibodies were there or not.
Mora doesn't look super young and no telling what shots (or not or when) she'd had early on. But if she'd been exposed and then got vax'd that can sometimes bring the parvo "out" more or make the test read weird.
Most of the time, shelter staff really aren't knowledgeable about vaccines -- like someone said above -- people tend to think "Oh she's had her shots" .... **yesterday?????** and the assumption is there that they are somehow immune.
But immunity takes days or weeks to form -- and they shed the cells from the vaccine for that entire time in their ***.
Much depends on what kind of "test" they used. Clinical diagnosis is most common -- swollen lymph glands, the presence of the diarrhea (which has a really specific smell), vomiting, etc. Then sometimes a CBC is run - because usually a parvo dog will have few white blood cells (and then put that together with the diarrhea, etc.)
Mostly they're using a fecal antigen test -- BUT anywhere up to two weeks prior if vax were given you can get a false positive (or a higher than real positive).
Essentially it's all relative to be honest -- typically unless it's an OLD dog, the more mature a puppy is the better chance they have of making it thru parvo because the immune system is more apt to be online.
But at the same time -- a pup who has been over-vax'd but not effectively vax'd (so the immune system has been trashed anyway) AND that same dog has had little good nutrition and a tough time overall might have a harder time battling it.
That fact that Mora is already a 'survivor' in a ***BIG*** way likely is going to serve her well. Her body has already learned the hard way to protect itself-- and if she's had even a couple of weeks of regular food at the shelter, her body is better armed than you might think. It all depends on the shelter.
I'm going to mention Outdoorschik here -- when she adopted Oliver he was a rescue who came from down in Alabama (the year of all the Katrina stuff or the year before when we had so many hurricanes -- I can't remember). But by the time this so-called-rescue got him up to the Northeast -- in a SUV full of flies, poop, pee and these dogs absolutely starved to death and SICK -- he had pneumonia and darned near didn't make it. It wasn't the dog she'd contracted for (Oliver was maybe 6-7 weeks old if I recall -- not the 4-5 months old and house-trained he was supposed to have been) but she and another woman were picking up these "last two" dogs from this "train" that had come up from Alabama/all points south and I don't think either women considered anything past getting those dogs away from those people.
Those dogs were far far too weak and young to have *been* vaccinated, but they were before they left the South -- and of course add poor conditions to being too young to process the battering the immune system took but man, they didn't stand a chance and Outdoorschik had her hands full. It wasn't parvo but they *thought* it was.and then his lungs got SO congested.
My point simply is -- they can "test" but it's not necessarily going to be accurate because there are just too many variables to be sure, so you arm yourself for the worst and be thankful for the best???
The other possibility is that in order to cross state lines she probably had a full slate of all kinds of vaccines, including rabies which TRASHES the immune system, and then I'd betcha someone vax'd her again before he was placed (ouch -- probably mere days apart).