According to my vet Giardia is becoming more frequent, probably from better testing. He said they really don't know exactly how puppies get it, because many people with a litter of puppies who have never even been outside get it.
Ours had never drank any dirty water, as a puppy had been raised in the house and never taken outside until we got it. It didn't have loose stools until 2 weeks after we got it. We had our water tested and it showed signs of giardia, according to the tests probably not in high enough amounts to make a human sick, but possibly enough to make a small dog sick. We started buying bottled water and only drinking it ourselves and only giving it to our puppy. Two months later the pup had loose stools again, once again it tested positive for giardia. This time we had the bottled water tested and it also tested positive for small amounts of giardia.
So imo you can't blame a breeder and I know who got my pup from gave me all kinds of information about the importance of worms, vaccinations, but also coccidia as well as giardia. She had the puppies tested for worms, coccidia and giardia and gave me the vet report. She also as a preventative and on vet's advice treated all puppies for five days with panacur. My contract clearly stated that it didn't cover worms, giardia, coccidia as they were easily treatable and could test negative before they leave and positive later on. It also stated it only covered parvo if the puppy was found to be sick within 48hours, because new owner could take puppy and expose it to parvo before it had all it's puppy shots. Sounded perfectly fair to me. Puppies can pick up worms easily and apparently can pick up giardia easily as well. Parvo sounded fair to me as well, because I was given tons of info on that as well, how puppies aren't safe until they've had their entire series of shots. How not to take them to pet stores, parks, etc. until they've had all their shots. But then I've had dogs all my life and know dogs get sick and worming, vaccinations, etc. is just part of owning a dog. It could be the water supply that deserves the blame for the giardia as our water along with bottled water tested positive.
So it's common and becoming more frequent and is easily treatable. Cost me $34 bucks, $14 for the fecal exam which tested for giardia as well as coccidia and worms and $6 for the panacur. Then a week after the treatment, I paid another $14 for another fecal exam to make sure it was gone.
I didn't go back and ask the breeder to pay for it, to me it was no different than worming the pup, which you must do again anyway. Another thing the vet told me was the liquid panacur seems to work better on giardia than the pill form or granule form. He gave me cattle/horse panacur. 1cc per 4lbs or 1/2 cc if weighing under 4lbs for 5 days. |