« More Laika | Main | Baby hawks, for real! »

May 13, 2006

Mighty, not Mite-y, Dog

Romping in the grass, a favorite pasttime (all photos here by Uncle Steve, with more here!

Today was Laika's one-month checkup to see how she's fairing against the Demodex mite. Demodex is a hair follicle mite that appears on most dogs, but usually they fend it off. Laika's immune system was compromised and she was unable to fight the mite, so she began losing patches of hair.

We were warned early on that it would probably be a long hard battle. What started out a month ago as two nearly invisible spots in her pretty coat rapidly progressed to lots of little bald patches on her neck and forequarters. Our vet was so serious-sounding about this that I've really been prepared for the worst.

Our vet chose a treatment that's fairly new; instead of the mildly toxic dips that used to be the prevalent treatment, Laika gets a dose of large-animal wormer every other day and a special bath every week. We also do what we can to be generally good dog owners and keep her stress level down so her immune system can bounce back. The medicine makes her susceptible to sun burn, so we have to protect her from that and sometimes she has to wear a child's t-shirt for extra coverage.

First trip to the beach at Point Reyes

When the vet came back from checking her skin scraping today, she looked very serious. "So tell me now specifically, have you seen new patches of hair loss this week?" I pointed out a spot that I knew was very recent, and she took another skin scraping from that. When she returned, she confirmed what she had started to think the first time. I was surprised and delighted.

Laika is completely free of Demodex mites. They couldn't find any, dead or alive, in her skin scrapings. It's possible that we've already beaten a problem that they expected to take months to overcome. If that's true, she'll probably stop losing hair now and start growing it back.

We have another appointment in two weeks to check. And we'll keep a guarded optimism until then.

Heading home, tired and plagued by a tiny mite, but happy (we like to think!)

Kudos to our vets for being up-to-date on state-of-the-art treatments!

Today was also the first day of obedience training. I'm pretty convinced that it's us that getting the training, because Laika catches on really fast if we do the right thing. Our instructor, Mike Ossenbeck, seems really great with the dogs and he's pretty good with us, too. Laika is doing really well with "sit" and "come". "Let's go", our version of "heel", is a little more difficult for us, but we're committed to plenty of practice. When we look at that wrinkled-forehead smile, we know we have to do the right thing by her!

Posted by terrie at May 13, 2006 09:19 PM