Vanessa Simmons watched her 13-week old puppy Skye go from eating breakfast as normal to becoming “floppy” and “not responding” within hours last Friday.
After a vet initially diagnosed the Rottweiler with a stomach bug on the same day, Vanessa spent the weekend giving her water and electrolytes through a syringe.
When Skye had bad diarrhoea and was once again not responding on last Sunday, she was admitted to emergency vets in Ringwood and diagnosed with the deadly parvovirus.
Vanessa said: “Without a vaccination it’s a 100 per cent death rate for puppies. They don’t stand a chance.”
By Monday, vaccinated Skye was in a hospital and the virus was already attacking Skye’s bone marrow, as her white blood count had severely depleted.
Even though Skye is vaccinated, she is still suffering badly from parvovirus.(Image: Vanessa Simmons)
The vet offered a form of treatment, an injection which is used for humans who have leukaemia, but each jab would cost Vanessa and her family £600 a day.
She explained: “We paid £200 to the normal vet, £2,300 emergency vet, we’ve been given a quote for the hospital at £6,000 before she was really ill, now we are playing it by ear.
“The emergency vet we went to on Sunday, as soon as they diagnosed her the parvovirus, they wanted us to put her down. They asked my husband two or three times if we really wanted to continue with this, because it would be so expensive. We had to give her a chance.”
While insurance will eventually cover around £5,000 of this, the bill is likely to increase while she receives treatment, and she will potentially pass the virus on to other dogs even after she has recovered.
Vanessa said that in the future, unvaccinated dogs could pick up the virus just by smelling Skye’s faeces.(Image: Vanessa Simmons)
Vanessa said: “She won’t catch it again but after that unvaccinated dogs can catch hit from her faeces, and it’s in her for years.
“This is where people need to be aware. We pick our poo up, but if there’s people out here that don’t, your dog’s little bit of poo that can stay in the ground for years.
“If an unvaccinated dog comes over and sniffs it, that’s a death sentence.”
Vanessa has now launched a fundraiser to cover some of the vet bills, as she has “no idea” how long Skye will be in hospital but wants to “give her a chance” to live a good life.