VETERMASCOTAS

Pancho is a five years old male Alaskan Malamuten. His owner feels that Pancho is tired lately, no longing for his daily countryside walk, no barking to nearby cows, and now and then its nose bleeds.

For some days he was intermittently lame and antinflamatory treatments have been no good. Pancho was changed to a high level protein diet, but he is still losing weight.

Pancho's leishmania results were negative, as his zone veterinarian did test him and his owner sent us his blood tests and ultrasound images. Pancho is now most of the time lying down, reluctant to move and has respiratory difficulties

After studying the blood test results we discovered that Pancho was anemic, its platelets were very low, and keratinize and BUN results were highly altered. The ultrasound images showed that the liver had increased in size.

With this results and all the symptoms described by its owner, we recommended a specific blood test for erlichiosis. This is a tick related parasite, specially in countryside areas with farm animals.

The result was positive for erlichia, so we recommended a Doxicicline antibiotic treatment every 12 hours for a 20 days protocol, and prednisone for 5 days. The number of platelets was very much recovered in three days and after a week Pancho was able to run after every cow around the house. We also recommended two new blood tests in a month and six months after. At this time all analytical values were normal. At the following spring time we recommended external deworming products to avoid ticks.

Now Pancho is full of life again.