Does my 6 month old maltese have giardia or maybe just a bad case of food poisoning?

Question

My poor little puppy threw up in the middle of the night on Tuesday night. He was very active the next day, but would throw up everything he ate and drank. I took him to an emergency vet after hours that evening and they ran some tests on him. The vet said he has giardia. I didn't know the symptoms of giardia until I did further research later. I explained to the vet that he was only vomiting, no diarrhea, no blood in stools, no pain in abdomen. He was given metronidazole and panacur. He was not able to hold anything down the first day he was taking his meds, but last night he was finally able to take his meds and food with out vomiting. I cleaned his area and found some remnants of crawfish shells near his bed. I'm wondering if he wasn't actually sick and it was a bad case of food poisoning. I didn't give my puppy crawfish. He must have gotten some scraps when we had crawfish on Tuesday evening. He's very lethargic this morning and I'm worried that he's taking meds for something he doesn't have.

Answer 1

If the vet diagnosed the dog with giardia you should feel confident the dog has the protozoa.

Giardia may be an incidental finding but the dog needs the panacur and metronidazole inorder to eliminate the giardia.

Its important that the dog gets retested for giardia to ensure it is gone as giardia is zoonotic which means humans can become infected.



You dog may of presented ill due to a dietary indescetion (the craw fish) but the medication fo giardia will not compromise recovery.

The metronidazole will actually help.

Answer 2

Your vet probably did some testing to determine it was Giardia. So I think it is safe to say he is right. If a dog hasn't eaten much it is possible that they would not have the intestinal problems usually associated with the disease. The crawfish shells are troublesome though. You need to be especially careful to keep things out of dogs reach. I'm not sure about crayfish, but there are a lot of foods that we eat that can cause a lot of problems for our doggy friends. I would suggest that you ask your vet or find a comprehensive list of plants and foods that your dog should not eat. Post it on the inside of a cupboard door and teach everyone to check before they give puppy a treat other then commercial dog treats. I doubt that he was treated for something he didn't have, some of the tests that vets run for those sorts of things are done in the office and are very quick. A check under the microscope is all they need to determine if it is a parasite or not.

Answer 3

you should take her to the vet but if you cant till morning then this is what you do first off stop all solid foods second get sum pedelit in the baby secion at the store get a medicine syringe from either the baby ile or pharmacy the get some pepto bismol give her small amounts of the pedilite about ever hour and 1ml of pepto every 4hours till vomiting stops or intill you can get to the vet good luck and remember if it dont stop by morning or gets worst dont wait go

Answer 4

Giardia rarely presents w/any vomiting.....parvo does.

The correct treatment for giardia IS what you were given...ever considered it has BOTH????

duh