My parents adopted a 3 pound 7 month old chihuahua from someone who works at their vet. My mom picked up the little dog on Monday. She was happy and healthy and friendly and loving all day Monday and all day Tuesday. However, Tuesday morning my dad accidentally gave her the wrong food. Instead of giving her royal canin puppy food, he gave her my dogs’ science diet light (my husband and I are on vacation visiting my parents with our two dogs). The kiblets were little, so my dad thought it was her food. She ate a bunch of the science diet on tuesday morning and has not eaten since. we noticed on wednesday that she was not feeling good and was not as happy and perky. we took her to the vet yesterday morning and they told us they thought it was parvo as she had blood in her stool and the vet said that “it smelled like parvo”. they immediately told us her chances did not look good. They kept her on an IV all day and told us to pick her up later that evening. They took x-rays and saw something funny in her abdomin making them think that it was a foreign body in her intestine right below the stomache. she has been throwing up and has diarrhea and cannot keep anything including water or the oral medicines they have given her down. As of last night, the vets were leaning more towards a foreign body and not parvo, but the surgery to remove the foreign body would be between $1000-$2000 and the vet would not even perform it on her because he thinks she is so weak at this point that she would not survive the surgery. The vets kept her on IV over night, but when the nurse went to get her in the morning she said that the IV had somehow come undone and the dog had not been getting IV all night. She survived through the night without the IV. they did another x ray this morning and said that what they thought was a foreign body got a little bit small over night. at this point, it could be parvo, or another gastrointestinal virus, or a foreign body, or all three, or just two of those. the vets have no idea. they are going to do barium xrays to try to find out for sure if it is a foreign body. if its a foreign body, the doctor said he has done all he can do and the bestthing for the dog would be to put her to sleep, which is so hard to even think about but he said he would not do the surgery because my parents would incur all this expense and he really doesnt think she would make it through the suregery because of how weak she is (she hasnt eaten since tuesday morning). if it is not a foreign body, the vet is still giving her a 10-20% chance of surviving. he said her condition is poor/guarded. If what is making her sick is not a foreign body, should we take her home and try to nurse her back to health with home remedies such as giving her chicken with chicken broth or any other suggestions some of you may have? or is that only prolonging her starving to death? If its a foreign body, we have read things online like giving her pertoleum jelly or pumpkin puree to help her body dislodge whatever it is. Would this even still be prolonging her starvation as she cannot keep anything down? I am totally against euthanasia, but I am not sure if it is because I am naive/selfish and think that there is always something else that might save her. The vet seems to think that the best thing for the poor little dog is to put her to sleep. My parents have had this dog for 5 days and she has already touched our hearts so greatly. Please, if anyone has any suggestions or comments, I would greatly appreciate them. Please, no mean comments either, we are trying to do what is best for the dog.
Also, I forgot to add, the doctor gave her an anti-vommiting shot and she has still been throwing up even though she got that shot. The anti-vommiting shot is supposed to shut down the parts of the brain that make her want to throw up. The vet said there are very few dogs that still throw up through this medicine.
More info- The vet did a parvo test and it came back negative. it was a snap test. but he said that the test looks for the antibodies the dog creates to fight parvo, not the parvo itself and he said it could just be too soon to tell if it is in fact parvo.
AND the vet place is not open all night. There was no one there with her all night to see if the IV was out, they just said keeping her there over night giving her fluids would be the best for her even though there wouldnt be anyone there. I just feel absolutely terrible for the dog because we left her there knowing there would be no one there with her but knowing that getting fluids would be the best for her, but then she didnt even get anything anyway.