Should I be annoyed with our vet?

[Tim Benzedrine]

A week or so ago, my mother took our dog for the standard shot regimen. The vet noted that the dog had lost eight pounds and that if she continued to lose, they should run some blood work. We had noticed the weight loss ourselves over the past month or so ourselves. The dog has been overweight for some time, so really the 8 pounds wasn't that great a loss as long as it stabilized.

Move forward a week. I'm walking the mutt and she decides to have a bowel movement. Now, I usually don't pay real close attention to the results, but this time a small white foreign object in the stool caught my eye. So I retrieved a stick and did an impromptu fecal examine. As I suspected, it was a tapeworm segment.

Now, I'm actually a little peeved with myself for not considering the possibility of a tapeworm myself, but I'm no vet. But shouldn't the weight loss have set off a warning signal for the vet? I realize that a fecal examination is an extra service, but I also can't help but feel that the vet should have suggested that we let them perform one. Or am I unreasonable in that assertation?

The vet service has been pretty good overall, albeit a little pricey, and I just think they dropped the ball, so I don't think a change in vets is warranted. Still, like I said, I'm a little irritated.

An aside: Internal parasites make my skin crawl. I know the life cycle of the tapeworm and the chances of one being passed onto an adult human are pretty slim, but I'm still uneasy. Yuck!

 

[skinheaddave]

Do you get full bloodwork and exploratory surgery done every time you are feeling a little under the weather? The vet suggested that you look into matters if the problem persisted and this seems reasonable to me.

Cheers,
Dave

 

[pitbulllady]

Many dogs lose weight in warm weather, so this is not uncommon and unless the weight loss is unusually great or happens very fast, few vets or long-time dog breeders would be concerned about it. If the dog was overweight in the first place, this would not be seen as a bad thing.
Tapeworms also cannot be detected by a fecal exam, since unlike other intestinal worms, they do not lay eggs inside the host, but drop out of the animal to lay eggs in a place where the eggs will comin into contact with their primary vector, fleas. The eggs stick to the fleas' hairs, and when the fleas' host animal swallows the fleas after biting itself to scratch, in ingests the tapeworm eggs, too. Those segments you saw contain the tapeworm's eggs. Seeing segments is generally the only way to diagnose tapeworms, short of exploratory bowel surgery. Standard dog wormers, including Ivermectin, do NOT kill tapeworms, so a special prescription wormer such as Droncit must be used.
Normally, tapeworms do not affect the dog's health or condition, unless they are present in huge numbers or unless the dog has another underlying health problem, such as diabetes or an immune system imbalance. They are disgusting, but generally not a major health threat in adult dogs, unlike other worms which actually drink the dog's blood.

pitbulllady

 

[Tim Benzedrine]

Okay, fair enough. Good points from both of you. Again, I wasn't going to go postal on the vet, or anything I was just wondering if I should be vexed that they had missed something.

I had learned thru various sources on the net that they eggs do not show up in fecal examinations, but I thought that they'd look for segments instead of eggs. I didn't know they were undetectable until making their exit.
They gave us a 50 mg dose of cestex to do the job. I should mention that this isn't our first time combatting the vile critters. The dog came as a stray to our door so we adopted her. She had a tapeworm which we took care of immediately without an appointment, and then upon her first visit to the vet a couplr of weeks later, we learned she was hosting a couple of the usual suspects as well, hookworms and whipworms. We keep her on Sentinel, so we don't worry too much about re-infestation of those guys, but as Pit-Bull Lady points out, standard wormers and preventatives won't do the trick. That totally baffles me, I'd think that what kills one kind of worm would kill another, but not only am I not a vet, I'm not a chemist either! I guess it boils down to biology, like the reason that we can eat chocolate and dogs should not.

So anyway, looking at it from your perspective, I'm glad that I didn't call them and complain. That would have been unlikely anyway, I'm not a particularily confrontive person. It'd been more like me to just switch vets if I had a legitimate gripe. Which it appears that I do not have.

Thanks for your comments, and if anyone has any further input on the matter, I'd be happy to read it.

 

[pitbulllady]

The reason that standard wormers like Panacure and Ivernectin don't work on tapeworms is that these all target the central nervous system of the worm. Tapeworms are so primitive that they don't even have a central nervous system or an actual "brain", like the other ascarid-type worms do. I know that Droncit, which is now less-prescribed than the newer drug, Cestex, actually destroys the protective coating of the worm's segments, allowing it to more or less fall apart from the inside out.

It is intriguing, though, that we have so many differences, chemically-speaking, from dogs. There are so many things we readily injest, like coffee, chocolate, and Macadamia nuts, that can kill them.

pitbulllady

 

[Tim Benzedrine]

Yes, it is interesting. And on the flip side, there are plenty of things, some berries and mushrooms for example, that birds, squirrels and no doubt dogs and many other critters can eat with impunity that will make us either very ill or keel over in very short order.

 

[MilkmanWes]

A tape worm segment will not drop with every bowel movement so a fecal exam would have to be combined with luck. Checking for worms in the stool was a good step on your part, and since you did look closer the vets discusion did some good. So while they may not have said check the fecal matter or asked for a sample, maybe they should have. But you were alert due to your conversation with them, so all is well.

For what it is worth I think that any pet owner should check the fecal matter from time to time for consitancy, blood, and obvious parasites.

Tape worm trivia - At one time you could buy small tapeworms that they could swallow as a weight loss aide.

Personal Tapeworm Experience - A cow in my care passed a tapeworm that we estimated to be 5-6 ft in length after recieving a worming solution. Pretty nasty stuff.

 

[Tim Benzedrine]

Tape worm trivia - At one time you could buy small tapeworms that they could swallow as a weight loss aide.

Do you mean for PEOPLE to swallow? Egad, I'd sooner have excess fat trimmed off with an electric knife without the benefit of anesthetic!

Anyway, thanks for the info. Like I said, I do not normally scrutinize the feces of the dog, but I don't look away and pretend it does not exist. I notice the consistency usually and anything unusual. However, it usually takes something being amiss for me to go into a more "detailes" examination.
Jeez, I'm trying hard not to disgust anyone with this thread, but the subject matter makes that rather difficult.

I have another question or two. Do they shed a LOT of segments? I'm a little worried about possible contamination. I realize that the big threat is for children, but I should explain that we have a severely retarded "child" in the house, with about the same hygiene sense that a much younger person would have. Not only that, but prior to my recent discovery, the dog had been allowed to bunk with me in the bed. She's been banished from THAT little luxury, however. At least until I'm positive she is parasite free.
I'm also worried about re-contamination, as she has a few fleas still. I gave her a flea shampoo, but I either I didn't get them all, or there were a few hiding out in the rug or somewhere and hopped back on, or she picked them up outdoors. Her monthly pills keep us from getting a major infestation, but if it only takes one lousy flea to get the ball rolling, that is one flea too many. Still, I am loathe to use over the counter flea shampoo and will be unable to go back to the vet in the very near future. Which is the lesser evil? Using commercial flea shampoo, (We have a bottle of Sargents that seemed to cause no ill effects) or allowing the fleas to remain at large? Flea season should be winding up here within the next month or so, I'd think.

Thanks again, y'all!

 

[MilkmanWes]

This was before the days of electric knives. Dark Ages of Medicine before penicillin - turn of the century (1900s) IIRC.

Do you mean for PEOPLE to swallow? Egad, I'd sooner have excess fat trimmed off with an electric knife without the benefit of anesthetic!

 

[xelda]

Tim - I've dealt with a flea infestation before. Those plug-in flea traps worked really nicely. Just get a few--one to go in each room your dog spends the most time in.

 

[Socrates]

Tape worm trivia - At one time you could buy small tapeworms that they could swallow as a weight loss aide.

Where can I buy them? ;P

Personal Tapeworm Experience - A cow in my care passed a tapeworm that we estimated to be 5-6 ft in length after recieving a worming solution. Pretty nasty stuff.

Never mind - after reading THAT I changed my mind. How much would a 5-6ft long tapeworm weigh?

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Wendy
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[Tim Benzedrine]

Tim - I've dealt with a flea infestation before. Those plug-in flea traps worked really nicely. Just get a few--one to go in each room your dog spends the most time in.

Thanks for the heads-up. I'll remember that in the event of a heavy infestation. However, it isn't a problem at the moment. See, the monthly medication we have the dog on interrupts the reproductive cycle of the fleas. So, while it doesn't actually kill the existing ones, it prevents them from laying eggs which is where the trouble really begins, the eggs get in the carpets amd furniture and soon you have zillions of the things. We haven't had an infestation since our last dog, for whom we had on no such treatment. Our vet at that time would not prescribe them, I think he believed that they were harmful to the dog's liver, and for all I know, at the time he may have been correct. However, in retrospect, while the dog lived to a ripe 16 years old, her quality of life was pretty poor at times due to the fleas and the side effects they create, so I'm not so sure sparing her the medication was all that humane or not.

 

[MilkmanWes]

You can't anymore, been outlawed or somesuch. Blame the FDA.

As for the weight, a few grams I would guess. They have to be thin enough to not block the intestines or the host would die of impaction.

Where can I buy them? ;P



Never mind - after reading THAT I changed my mind. How much would a 5-6ft long tapeworm weigh?

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Wendy
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