Hello all!
Reagan is 19 weeks old and he came into my family 5 weeks ago. I took him for his first WELL PUPPY CHECK and the vet prescribed a course of Albon from the results of his fecal exam. In retrospect I am surprised that he never mentioned anything about flea prevention treatment because a few days ago we found that he had FLEAS. We treated him with a natural spray that he HATES and treated the home. He has only been in my backyard and I suspect that he might have gotten fleas from the yard. We have a disgustingly high population of vile raccoons in the neighborhood and that USED TO hang out on my deck and backyard. (I think the scent of my dog deters them a bit but I am going to look for something to treat the yard.)
In any event, for short term my son put a flea collar on Reagan (I had mixed feelings about it but felt it would be okay for a few days) Reagan only had it on for a few days when it caused a VERY SCARY INCIDENT:
Reagan woke up in his crate on my bed yesterday morning and as I was waking up I could tell right away that he was VERY UPSET about something and was thrashing around.
I took him out of the crate - still couldn't tell what was wrong - he usually lounges on the bed and wants to be petted as he wakes up but this time he was clearly panicking about something. I brought him into the kitchen and put him on the floor and offered water - I thought something was maybe irritating his throat. He kept his head down and wasnt looking at me. I got down on the floor with him and and I tried to get a good look at his area of concern and was HORRIFIED to see that he had somehow managed to get the flea collar into his mouth. It was wedged in his mouth tightly while still around his neck!!
Fortunately one of my sons had slept over and he helped hold the puppy down while I cut off the collar. I held him to calm him and saw that he had a lot of thick saliva on either side of his mouth under where the collar was. He was shaking a lot but was calmer than when he had the stupid collar in his mouth. The worst part was after a few minutes of holding him I put him down on the floor and saw that he couldn't walk straight and was trembling and stumbling around and breathing heavily - didn't want water or food and was really out of it.
I was in a panic because I felt I had poisoned my dog and caused some kind of neurological damage and I couldn't reach the vet!! When I called a second local vet and they were closed I called the county emergency pet number.
After I exlained the situation to the guy that was taking calls he asked when I last fed the dog - he had eaten a little bit around 90 minutes earler but not much at all.
He told me that he suspected that my dog might be suffering from hypoglycemia and to do the water and karo syrup thing. Reagan was still not interested in drinking water so I gave him some Nutrical and held him on my lap as he started to calm down. After about 10 minutes he was more like his normal self. I was amazed.
I had read all about hypoglycemia in these puppies but had NO IDEA and so was extremely surprised that he could have such a sudden onset of the hypoglycemia. It was brought on by the stress of having that collar stuck on him. I was afraid that the collar poisoned him but the emergency person said that he didn't think that was the problem as much as the low blood sugar.
THANK GOD within an hour of the incident he was 100% okay!!
Just to recap what I have learned from this very scary incident - always check flea collar (or better yet THROW OUT), always have Nutrical on hand, and be sure to have your local emergency vet number handy. In my hysteria when leaving a message on my vets machine I didnt even leave my name and phone number - just Reagan's name so it took them extra time to call me back.