Health
Jared's Story
Jared was born at the beginning
of November 1996, one of a litter of eight puppies - 6 boys, 2 girls. The birth
was easy with no stress for Emma, the mother, at all and she doted on the pups
as soon as they were born. All were normal births and normal weight for afghans
- Jared was the third puppy to be born and he weighed 18 oz.
All went well with the litter with no problems at all until they were
approaching six weeks of age and I went into them on that particular morning and
was horrified to see Jared with a swollen face and a rash on his muzzle. There
had been no sign of anything untoward until then, no spots or pimples - they had
been checked by me every day, played with constantly, several visitors and
potential owners came to look at the litter, and at no time did he look any
different to the others.
I had vaguely heard of juvenile pyoderma but had no real idea what it looked
like and my first reaction was to burst into tears as I thought he was dying!
Fortunately for me, at that very moment a friend visited whose mother was Beryl
Formstone whom some of you will remember for showing afghans in the 70’s and
80’s. Beryl was then into dachshunds, and the minute Steve saw Jared he rang his
mother. She confirmed instantly that it was JP, she knew of several people in
dachshunds who had had the problem and instructed me to get to the vets
instantly and insist the vet put him on Antirobe immediately as no other
antibiotic dealt with the problem as effectively - Synulox doesn’t touch it!
I instantly took him to the vets - our vet, Richard, had almost no knowledge of
JP but was more than willing to go along with the information given me by Beryl
and Jared was put onto Antirobe and Prednisolone. Unfortunately before long the
swelling had spread to his eyes and ears - the eyes streaming with discharge and
the ears so swollen they appeared almost totally blocked. It was an exceedingly
worrying time as gradually every gland in his body swelled before finally
reacting to the various treatments he was having. In fact he looked at that time
more like a shar pei than an afghan. His face was bathed three times a day and
this had to be fairly hard to remove the crusting of the sores and Panalog
ointment then applied, he had Lincocin drops for his eyes and Canaural for his
ears - but throughout all this he never once complained and carried on eating
and playing absolutely normally. Rather than keep him separated from his
siblings I was told to keep him with them unless he showed signs of distress -
which he never did. None of the other pups ever showed any signs of the disease.
He carried on with the various prescriptions for almost two months, weaning
gradually off all of them, though he had a blip during this time (when his
penile glands swelled up) and briefly he went back onto two Antirobe a day.
Once he had been declared fit Richard felt he could be safely vaccinated and his
course of vaccinations started. He was never able to be socialised until well
after he was eighteen weeks and we felt he missed out on this. He was shown with
success once he was six months old with only the very faintest scarring on his
muzzle which with age has disappeared.
The only sign of anything being slightly wrong is that his tear ducts do weep
occasionally, and I believe that can be a consequence of JP. When he was
declared fit and well by our vet he did warn us that he may suffer later in
life, but at the time I was so pleased that he had recovered so well I
completely forgot to ask Richard what might happen!
Needless to say he has never been bred from for although it isn’t proven to be
hereditary we didn’t want to take the risk of it possibly being so. Jared is now
10 - and lately he has been having problems with a rash on his tummy. This could
be an allergy to heat or grass but it is just a possibility that this is
what Richard meant as a potential problem as our current vet does feel that as
JP is an auto immune disease his system could be compromised, hence the rash
now.
Di Searle (Salamkhan)
06-01-07
More JP Information here
Juvenile
Pyoderma
© Diane Searle-2007 - all rights reserved