Hookworms In Our New Grey

[Guest BlueCrab]

We adopted a new sister for Trixie about 10 days ago. Callie. 5 years old, ran 198 races. Cut little blue brindle.

 

Introduction visit to our vet last week came back with a diagnosis of hookworms. I did a word-search here and have been reading other posts on them. Not excited, as everything seems to point to them being tough to get rid of (which may explain why, after three months off the track in foster, she still has them...). We start the first round of panacur tonight.

 

There are a few questions I haven't been able to answer from reading other posts:

• Are there precautions I should be taking as far as the other animals in the house?
• Any risk of someone else picking them up from her from "casual" contact - e.g. sleeping on the same bed, sharing water bowl, playing with the same toys, etc.?
• Should I be cleaning up her poo on our walks to prevent anyone else picking them up? Normally - in our large yard - we don't feel inclined to scoop since it's "just us".

 

 

[Houndtime]

You want to pick up immediately and spray the area with bleach and water. Hooks come up thru the feet, I was told. Anytime we got a new grey with hooks, we had to worm them all. I think the contagion is only thru the poop. When our little Idol had them and we were camping, I would spray anywhere she pooped at the campgrounds. This time Odin had them, and we had to worm Shine as well.

[tbhounds]

Scoop the poop. The parasite is transmitted via fecal matter. It can be transmitted to Trixie and to you -gross huh? No worries about casual contact-gotta have poop involved ;-)

[Time4ANap]

If you haven't done so, dedicate a pair of shoes to the back yard - and only wear them out there - not in the house.

 

Many hounds seem to come off the track with worms of some type. Hooks are nasty and may take several rounds of medication to get rid of. You may also want to give some metronidazole if there is any blood, gelatin, or diarrhea type stool.

 

Be sure to do the follow up treatments as directed.

 

Here is a hookworm tutorial. It tells it like it is. http://www.marvistavet.com/html/body_hookworms.html

 

If a couple rounds of Panacur doesn't take care of them, you may want to ask for Drontal Plus at the vet. It's expensive, but it seems to work. Due to the cyclical nature of the hooks, it often takes quite a while to get them all, as they must be in the GI tract when you administer the Panacur or other med. The medicine does not absorb into the body to kill them, it only takes out the ones that are in the GI tract at the time.