lola’s tail
Yes, I know, it’s tale, not tail. Especially not in a Frenchie, as they are born without one. But hear me out anyway because this is interesting and may even sound familiar. Lola came to us on December 6, 2018, thirteen weeks old. Blue pied, perfect, cheeky, stubborn, big ears, bigger personality. Yes, I bought her from a good breeder. Yes, I know that there are abandoned Frenchies in shelters. At the time I believed that having a dog from a good breeder is less risky than adopting one from a shelter because my only desire was to have a healthy dog, and those in shelters usually aren’t, nothing else and at the time that seemed like a good idea. I do the best I can at the given moment. We all do. No judging, no regrets.
So, I prayed for a healthy puppy, because I had a sickly boxer before who died tragically from overheating in the car and I was traumatised for life. Boy, was I in for a ride! So Lola came, beautiful, all white with just those few blue patches on her face and ears, all playful and mischievous, with those bat ears and blue puppy eyes. And with giardiasis. In a few days, she was pooping slimy smelly poops all over the house and we were out for our first vet visit and our first round of metronidazole.
Metronidazole is a pharmaceutical used to treat infectious diarrhea, and can cause many side effects, such as diarrhea (yep, causes what it treats too; this diarrhoea is, however, more dangerous, more long lasting than the infectious type, because it’s caused by wiped out gut flora, weakened immune system and dysbiosis), upset stomach, vomiting, gagging, drooling, tiredness, loss of appetite, fever, allergic reactions, ataxia, tremors, seizures, kidney and liver damage. Yes, it’s supposed to kill giardia, but many times it does not work. Lola’s was one of those ‘many times it does not work’. So after a week of metronidazole, we went in for a checkup and the vet says she was clean.
Only, she was not, because after a week, we were back to where we started. I took her to another vet. They gave another dose of metronidazole and an additional antibiotic. Ten days. The tenth day we cooked all her heat resistant toys and beds, discarded the rest, wiped everything and everyone with Betadine multiple times. And she was confirmed clean. We were done with the vets, or so I thought.
The nightmare continued. Here she is end of February 2019 with demodectic mange, which affects dogs when their immune system is compromised:
What a difference a few weeks and a few chemicals can make, right? I took her to the vet who gave her an injection and an oral insecticide to treat the mange. One of those nexgard or bravecto things. The vet also said she had an inverted eyelash causing damage to her eye, and tried to remove it with pincers, but Lola was by then so traumatised with the vets that she wiggled like crazy and the vet said to me that she is hysterical and that it’s not possible to remove the eyelash. Reminder: we are talking about a six months old Frenchie puppy and three adults handling her and the professional health care provider saying she cannot do her job because the puppy is hysterical. I screamed at her a few encouraging obscenities and the eyelash was miraculously removed. I set in the car with Lola and drove off crying all the way back home. And it was an hour drive. Lots of tears, believe me.
I started wondering why is it that the two vets could not fix my dog and not only that, why is she looking so much worse and why am I feeling like I do not want to go back to another vet ever again. That is when I started my road down the rabbit hole of the holistic pet care on the internet. I started researching feeding advice, kibble, canned, raw, fresh cooked, freeze dried, holistic care, deworming, flea and tick prevention, supplements, balancing home made food. I started ordering and trying food, experimenting in the kitchen, throwing every recommended probiotic, prebiotic, post biotic, herbs, vitamins, immune support supplements, leaky gut protocols, natural dewormers, flea and tick sprays, coconut oil, diatomaceous earth at her, hoping that something will stick. Nothing did.
She seemed to be intolerant to all meat, vegetables, kibble and raw food caused her constipation followed by gut leakage. That’s when I tried a third vet because I could not stop poop leaking out of her butt and she was in diapers and the whole house was covered in shit once more. I came to the vet and he was disgusted by the smell of her poop when I took the diaper off, told me he is a surgeon and cannot really tolerate the smell. Of course when I told him I fed raw meal to her, he immediately diagnosed her with food poisoning and sent me home with the antibiotic and a bag of prescription kibble. Which I threw in the trash on arrival home and never went back to see him.
Over the next year and a half, I continued buying and throwing out the supplements and food. I changed several more vets, Lola got several more rounds of antibiotics and in the end of summer 2020 I was feeding her Hill’s ZD cans, which are basically corn starch with hydrolysed chicken protein and some artificial aroma. They looked and smelled wrong, but she ate them and for a few days they were tolerated, after which she ended up having bloody exploding liquid poop shooting out of her butt. I gave up and admitted defeat to myself. There was nothing I could do, no vet knew what was wrong with her, and I accepted the fact that she was going to die a miserable death and I am going to follow her because my heart will break with guilt and helplessness and despair.
Out of despair I decided that I will give raw food one more try. So I got frozen salmon filets and fed her just that. Next day she pooped a normal poop and never had a bloody diarrhea again. It was unbelievable. Lola survived her first two years. The photo below is from October 2020.
And no, this is not another blog about raw feeding and I am not going to preach about how Frenchies are basically wolves and need raw bloody meat and bone and organs and how you should fast them because that is what they do in the wild. Have you ever seen a Frenchie in the wilderness hunting their food? No? Right then.
Was everything resolved forever by feeding the raw salmon on that day? No, but that was a crucial step that made me start believing in myself and my intuition again. That was a step that created a big shift.