Giardia is far from fatal if you take care of it properly. The meds do work, though sometimes if your dog has it badly enough it can take a couple rounds of meds to clear it up. Also, if your dog (or any of your other dogs) eat ANY poop from the infected dog, they will likely also catch giardia. This includes if the infected dog licks his butt clean and there's a tiny bit of poop on the hairs around his bum, or if anyone tracks in a little poop and it's licked off of a paw or the floor.
My pup had giardia, and to get rid of it we washed his bum with baby shampoo after every poop and picked up his poops right after he did his business, then poured a 20% bleach solution on the spot where the poop was. It only took a couple rounds of meds for us to get rid of the giardia, but it was a lot of work on our parts to keep everything clean so that he would not reinfect himself.
Also, giardia is super small and hard to see under a microscope and may or may not show up in every stool, so it is possible to get a false negative test back from your vet. And like someone else said, this is a parasite that humans can get from their dogs. So wash your hands often, and after every time you clean up poop or clean off your dog's bum.
Good luck, and I'm sure you'll get rid of it if you're dilligent enough about keeping the poo cleaned up and your dogs from ingesting any poo. I'm sure it would be more difficult with multiple dogs, so you may want to separate the infected one until he is no longer pooping infected poops.
Lauren & Nikko |