Posted on Mar 01, 2013
By Ellie Laks, Founder of The Gentle Barn
When we first saw Benjamin lying on the side of the road at our fence in the hot sun, he was extremely lethargic, severely dehydrated, and would not stand or look at us. At first, we thought he had neurological problems caused by distemper, but at the same time he smelled of Parvo. The vet said that perhaps the reason he was not walking was because he was so weak and depleted by the Parvo. He did come up positive for Parvo so we started addressing those symptoms. In a few days he stopped throwing up, he was no longer dehydrated and he started eating, but he still did not stand up and could not track anything properly with his eyes. This still looked like neurological problems to us and we were very worried about him. Late Friday night he went into a full-blown distemper seizure which made him foam at the mouth, chomp his jaw and howl and scream constantly. We had cured his Parvo, but the distemper, which had caused irreversible damage, even before we found him, was killing him! The screaming lasted for 4 hours until we knew without any doubt that it was our duty to set him free from a body that was clearly no longer working.