I'll be honest -- I'm almost nervous to post this. But I've GOT to. This is a typical "me" long post, but I want to memorialize what's going on with her BECAUSE someone's going to find this who is battling demodectic mange in their pup with little results so if you've found this for that email me and I'll help you. BUT
Just to catch some of you up, Tinkerbell (the pug in my signature) is just over a year old (somewhere around Valentine's Day) and she's the one David and I went to Texas to adopt last year (a friend of mine does pug rescue in Austin and they got this **really** sick, neglected pug in with an unbelievably severe case of demodectic mange, a/k/a "demodex"). We brought her home over the July 4th weekend (flew to Tx, and drove back to Orlando, FL), but immediately commenced working on the demodex the way we do it. The protocol I follow is pretty simple -- spay *early* (5 months for Tink) to avoid sexual maturation, frequent warm bathing with benzoyl peroxide shampoo and copious warm rinses with some tea tree oil to wash mites down the drain and help keep the skin as staph free as possible, and with various herbs and supplements to help jump-start the immune system and help it grow and mature to a "better place" than it would otherwise aspire to because of the genetic flaw that is demodex.
In Tink's case, we also used a lot of homeopathic help from Dr. Joe Demers (do a net search for "homotoxicology" or "auto-sanguis treatments") simply because it was quickly apparent that Tink's demodex was incredibly fierce. If you go to my photos on here you'll see all the really nasty horrible pictures of how she looked when we got her.
The recent strides aren't as easy to see, but wow -- I'm thrilled.
Now first, the 'big' news (and I'm almost scared to post this *grin*) -- Tink hasn't had to have a bath in A MONTH!!!!!!! That's a big fat ENORMOUS deal.
That means the body is gaining control over the mites -- the **body** is keeping the mites under control. She's nearly weaned off herbs - she IS on a number of supplements and likely may be on them long term.
In February I was getting really concerned that the body wasn't kicking in *yet*. She was a year old and even tho she's a pug (bracheocephalic/bully breeds tend to mature immune-wise far slower than other breeds) the body shoulda been getting with the program. and wasn't. *sigh* We were pretty successfully keeping it controlled with the bathing -- but even there I was being really cautious because you can't use the big guns harsh shampoos like benzoyl peroxide LONG term without serious skin problems also resulting. It's harsh.
About as good as I was getting was her able to go maybe a week between baths. IF there was no other "stressor" present. Ack.
I had a big blood panel done on her on her birthday and hmmmm, it came back with a worryingly high ALT and a somewhat high AST but the other liver values were okey dokey. No nausea, nothing truly heinous ... but "worrying". WEIRD. Billy was running the same odd combination -- and one of the holistic vets thot the high ALT might be bile duct issues so we put both of them on dandelion AND she started getting more milk thistle (she'd been getting that for some time) but I also put her on SamE (milk thistle is mostly a liver *protectant* -- it does some detoxing but SamE is a bigger "detox" for the liver). In fact both of them were getting it. Incidentally -- at that time we also had a bile acids test done on her to rule out actual liver genetic abnormality. T'was fine.
Trying to speculate where she picked up the liver problems? Still not sure -- we had a new roof put on last fall after a storm literally laid my roof completely back during a rainstorm (typical Floor-daaa felt roof) so of course there was mold and some toxicity there, and then at Christmas she got into some chocolate -- refer to my "Christmas of the Sparkle Poop" posts -- the little stinker stole some Hershey's kisses -- enough to send her into a mega pug zoom BUT it also did a major toxic number on the liver apparently. She should have snapped back from that and didn't. I was back to bathing *very* frequently again, this time modifying that with far less harsh shampoos (which don't work as well but I was beginning to see some major skin pore damage in the works.)
At Easter she had a rather major backstep -- all of a sudden she blew out with demodex, major staph infection, had to be on antibiotics for a full 2 weeks. And then **typically** with demodex, because cephalexyn tends to "boost" the immune sytem, often when you take them off it they can crash **again**. At this point I sent away for a thyroid test (yes, she's a pup but thyroid problems aren't unheard of and we know she's SO badly bred).
Many of us realize that hypo (low) thyroid can have an extremely negative effect on skin problems. It doesn't *cause* them ... but rather it simply impairs the body's ability to RECOVER from them or deal with them. So if you've got a whacked out thyroid you can try as you might and beat your head against the wall and you aren't going to get anywhere.
*sigh* But Tink's thyroid test (to Hemopet with Dr. Dodd's input, bless her heart) had come back FINE.
HOWEVER ... and this is the head-scratcher -- a screwed-up liver will do the same exact thing. Now it doesn't necessarily present the same way BUT the fact that her liver values were all whacked was enough to indicate that was likely what was holding this all back. The bloodwork that came back with the thyroid results showed "better" but not good enough.
Dr. Demers and I went to work HARD on the liver. Rather than just trying to boost the immune system we worked harder (homeopathically) to detox the liver and I also put her on way higher doses of milk thistle powder and SamE.
The last bloodwork we had done two Saturdays ago (deep breath) was FINE. WE've finally gotten the liver detoxed and the numbers are all down into range.
[small note about Billy -- his numbers are better -- remember BOTH these dogs are immune-compromised, so my best conclusion is that the toxins caused by the roof, hit both of them harder. We've had all four dogs blood tested "just in case" and Luna and Kee's are fine -- so my guess has to be the immune-commonality. Billy's the IMHA survivor, and his immune system will likely always be a bit damaged, and he's older so his recovery is slower. He's 9 now.]
Ok, if you're still with me I want to show you a couple of pictures. The first is a picture taking in January (and both of these were shot at Dr. D's office - I tried to contrast two pictures taken in the same lighting altho neither are tremendous pics, both just taken on my cell)
Look at her muzzle -- now the bridge of the nose is still "grey" BUT for the first time you can see in the bottom picture her muzzle area is BLACK - it's silky, soft and **black**. You can see in January it's still quite weathered ... and even in March, you can see it's far from inky black. BUT that bottom picture was last week (and ALL of these are taken literally in the same room at the vet's so same light)
This was in January, 2009
This one was in March, 2009
And now this one -- it's a blow-up of a pic taken 052009 but I wanted you to see how black the muzzle looks -- the bridge of the nose is still a bit grey but this IS approaching normal skin finally.
The hair on the top of the head is thicker, and the hair is coming in thicker on her neck. She has "feathers" on her butt now but this black muzzle is HUGE in my estimation. It's NORMAL skin. It's soft.
But the thing that has held her back HAS been the liver. This is NOT a typical demodex thing ... BUT I want to make the point that if you have a dog with generalized demodex that is NOT responding to treatment and the dog seems to trigger again and again without success, GET BLOODWORK DONE. Get a thyroid test done (NOT just a T3/T4 -- go to Hemopet or at least Michigan State and get a breed specific in-depth blood test done and they'll talk WITH your vet about the results -- it leaves the normal thyroid panel in the dust!!
But explore WHY ... now if you are just using ivermectin forever and ever be aware it WILL fail eventually. It is VERY hard on the liver. But this isn't something most vets will suggest simply because most people don't go to great lengths to resolve demodex. It's an easy thing for someone to suggest putting the dog to sleep ... but it doesn't HAVE to be un-resolvable. But it's not a quick fix thing ... but it CAN be done.
I can't resist -- I gotta put this one in as well. This was July 8, 2008 -- this was the day I got home with her from Texas on some laundry. But it shows how FAR we've come. Just in a few day's worth of baths we had hair growing but you can see on the muzzle how "pink" it was -- almost like it was 'worn off' -- it was, it was all new skin but not healthy skin yet.
