Dogs with distemper suffering from the neurologic stage of the disease are being sought for a study into a promising treatment at Kansas State University’s College of Veterinary Medicine.
Made possible because of a grant from Maddie’s Fund, the study aims to document the effects of the NDV spinal tap in dogs where the distemper virus has attacked the nervous system. In this procedure, a small amount of Newcastle Disease Vaccine is injected into the spinal canal. The NDV spinal tap had been performed at Kansas State in May 2012 on a distemper dog that had been paralyzed and blind and subsequently regained its ability to see, walk and run. At least 10 dogs are needed to complete this study.
The grant will cover the costs of the treatment and related tests for participating dogs.
To be eligible for this study, the dogs should:
Be in the neurologic stage of canine distemper, which includes symptoms such as involuntary muscle tics, twitches, spasms, seizures, paralysis or blindness.
Be able to be brought to Kansas State University for treatment and returned for an evaluation 3-4 months later. If that return visit does not happen, the owner would be charged for the full cost of the treatment and tests.
Kansas State would also have to confirm that this is a case of neurologic distemper and meets other criteria for their study before they proceed.
Also, animal shelters with dogs in the neurologic stage of distemper would be welcome to participate.
If you are interested in this program, contact Dr. Ken Harkin at 785-532-5690.
We are always glad to hear about more vets picking up the NDV treatments, but I was especially gladden to read this email from Dr. Enrique Quiroz of Mexico City”
“We are Servican DF in Mexico City; we’ve had the opportunity of contacting you in the past. I’m glad to get in touch with you again.
“I’m very proud to say that we’ve been having great success since we’ve been implementing Dr. Sears’ serum beginning 2012, with around 40 cases, of which some of them we have documented on film so you can watch them and perhaps upload to your webpage.
“Since I no longer have my office, I’m basically working at my home or the dog owner’s. This has worked wonders for our purposes, because the treatment is better received by the animals when they’re at their home and we can avoid having cases of immunosuppression.
“For all cases we have solved, we’ve made viral tests by immunofluorescence from blood so we are certain that we are fighting a viral disease like distemper, and we discard any other cases.
“We are very interested in being a reference for people who contact to you from in Mexico City, so please, if you consider appropriate, it would be kind of you if you could mention our info on your webpage so we can continue spreading the good news about your effective treatment for distemper and help so many dogs in our city.”
I received these notes about treating parvovirus from J.D. Ward at the Rescue Ranch Sanctuary recently. Although most of what we deal with on this website is distemper, parvo is also a common enemy of shelter dogs and rescues. For more information or tips, please go to the Rescue Ranch Sanctuary.
We’ve given (NDV) serum to parvo dogs just in case–at least two injections, especially if coming from a shelter.
I have found that Amoxicillin four times a day and Tamiflu are very important. Baytril with the Amoxicillin (given at same time) then a mixture of Tylan with Pectolyn as a precaution. Tylan can be ordered without a prescription online. Most vets have it. Pectolyn is a pink thick base to coat intestines. These are two oral antibiotics at regular weight dosing. Administer medications at least four days, but usually seven days to make sure the dog is recovered.
For fluids, you can use Pedialyte syringed every 1.5 hours around the clock. Low salt or no salt chicken broth is another option.
Recommended diet:
Boil 70% white potatoes to 30% skinless chicken for at least an hour.
Cut up solids into small pieces and cover with some broth.
After cooled, offer to dog, even if you have to hand-feed each piece.
Offer each time before syringing fluids.
Feed small meals, five times a day to avoid major diarrhea.
NOTE: The dirt/yard and the inside area where the animal poops has to be cleaned with a 1-to-30 bleach-to-water solution. Leave wet for at least five minutes each time. Remove animal before cleaning so it doesn’t inhale the fumes. Once dry, it is safe to put animal back.
********* From Dr. Alson Sears
Parvo in dogs is very easy to treat. You need to get them before they are moribund. Weigh the dog in pounds. Give IV fluids — 100 cc per lb per day plus the estimated amount of fluid lost in vomiting and diarrhea. Must be IV. Lots. Keep it going. Then do a white blood cell count [WBC]. This is a good estimate of survival. If the WBC falls below 6,000, the dog is in trouble. If it falls below 2,000, death is imminent in spite of all.Now you need antibiotics. Again I like Pen-G and Baytril. In this case Baytril and not Chloromycetin because you are only going to be treating for a very short period of time. 4 days maybe.
Then you need to sterilize the gut. I really liked Pectolyn/Tylan in large doses. 5 to 10 cc per 10 pounds three time daily. (15 grams Tylan powder to 8 oz of pecto). Then the magic of medicine.
TAMIFLU. 1 CC PER LB TWICE DAILY ORALLY.
Note from J.D. Ward: You can make Tamiflu sugar suspension using capsules or have your vet call in Tamiflu suspension for small dogs. 75 lbs can take a capsule/capsules come in sets of ten usually for $100 or so. So, for instance, if you have a 75 mg capsule of Tamiflu, mix 25 ml water and 12.5 ml clear Karo syrup then mix in the capsule powder. Each ML will give 2 ml of Tamiflu so a 10 lb dog would need 5 mls of the mix; a 20 lb dog would need 10 mls. Keep in refrigerator and swirl each time to mix suspension up again then draw dose. After seven days, throw out leftovers–even if made by pharmacy–so don’t make up too much at one time. (Tamiflu powder is very, very bitter so the Karo sugar syrup makes it easier to consume but expect a little resistance. If suspension is ordered through the pharmacy, you can ask for chicken or beef flavoring to be added.)
Usually you can stop the worst symptoms in about 48 hours. I would treat these cases for 4 days anyway. Home on antibiotics and Pectolyn/Tylan for at least 1 week.The antibody to gm negative serum which is pushed is useless. Serum from recovered dogs does NOT work. NDV induced serum is totally useless at any amount. There are other techniques I have heard about mostly Holistic and useless in the treating of this disease. My other wonder about this disease is that a dog place in a kennel with Parvo does not seem to pass this virus on to other animals as a fomite.* Need to have access to the stool.
All variations on the parvovirus respond to the above treatment.
The problem out in the field now is that there is a new parvo. Parvo 2C. Most vaccines only cover for Parvo 2A and 2B.
So,
Fluids (see above)
Antibiotics (see above)
Pecto/Tylan (see above)
Tamiflu (see above)
WBC check once or twice daily
Keep clean and bathed as necessary
— Thanks again to J.D. Ward and the Rescue Ranch Sanctuary for sharing this information.
Ed Bond
*According to Wikipedia, a formite is any object or substance capable of carrying infectious organisms, such as germs or parasites, and hence transferring them from one individual to another. Skin cells, hair, clothing, and bedding are common hospital sources of contamination. So, this is NOT how parvovirus is spread.
Lulu Bond is the unofficial greeter at Eco Dog Wash & Daycare and is beloved by many. Her mom Karen does so much for the community and the rescue world in LA. She’s always the first to step up to help and has taken in so many strays in the community. We’d love to help this wonderful local small business owner and dog lover with Lulu’s bills, as I’m sure you know the challenges of new businesses, especially ones that do so much good for the community. Karen’s other dogs have had expensive health problems this year, which adds to the challenge.
Lulu has a sino-nasal carcinoma — the good news is that it’s localized and has not spread to other places. Bad news is that there is no cure and there is only treatment to improve quality of life for a time. But every dog is different, and if she responds well to the radiation – who knows, she could beat the odds! She is Karen’s “heart dog” and any additional day, month, year that we can give Lulu will mean the world to her.
Lulu is being treated by Dr Nassi on Beverly Robertson Veterinary Clinic and Dr Laura Askin and Dr Chertin at VCA West Los Angeles Animal Hospital. Any amount is much appreciated and will go directly to her care. You may donate via paypal or directly to the VCA, referencing that the donation is for “Lulu Bond”.
VCA is open 24/7 and may be reached at:
VCA West Los Angeles Animal Hospital
Phone: 310-473-2951
Fax: 310-979-5400
1900 S. Sepulveda Blvd.
Los Angeles, CA 90025
Here’s a button where you can make donations to help.
This is not a distemper case, but Plato is a senior dog caught up in a sad divorce situation that has been “adopted” by us at Eco Dog Wash in Los Angeles. He’s the resident plaything for the rescue puppies and kittens who’ve passed through our doors. Unfailingly patient and good-natured but suffering from bad hips. We just found out today he had a major ACL tear that needs physical therapy and/or surgery.
We are collecting donations for his treatment.
Here’s more about Plato from Karen Bond, executive director of Kind Hearts In Action and co-owner of Eco Dog Wash:
“He was left with us and never picked up from boarding because of a bad divorce and money trouble. He is 10 going on 11 soon and has bad hips but a great attitude. When I broke my ankle he let me use him as a crutch to get up the stairs to the paramedics because they couldn’t get to me with the other 15 boarding dogs running around hysterically. He has been listed as adoptable but we (me) are so picky about where he goes we haven’t found a good match yet. He is a big 80 lb guy, part bully mix and Akita we think. He’s the one with all the videos of kittens and puppies all over him. Because he has a funny set to his hips he could have simply stepped off the curb wrong and exacerbated a smaller tear he may have got while rough housing with puppies (also see videos on our Facebook page) but it’s a major tear to the ACL, and he cannot walk more than a few feet with out falling down because he is so off balance and cannot put his leg down. We are looking at physical therapy and a brace. We are trying to avoid surgery but the therapy and a custom brace are really expensive. Braces can run in the $600 to $900 range. He’s a big guy so it does make it a bit more pricey. But we are getting more veterinary input this week. He is everyone’s favorite guy and to be left at boarding after being a loyal companion for 10 years is hard but he just settled in and has been a superstar.”
UPDATE: We’ve received a quote from the vet that it will cost at least $1400 to get Plato better. We have so far raised nearly $400, so we still need your help.
I thought I’d share the guiding principles I have developed in the past five years of fighting for distemper dogs. These basic ideas are what has helped keep me sane and keep perspective during this battle. It may be useful for others who are advocating for these dogs.
1) Expect resistance. Veterinarians are trained to follow procedures they learned in school or read in scientific journals. This is reasonable. Until a treatment is published, most will not listen to any claims of a cure for canine distemper.
2) It doesn’t hurt to ask a vet if they are interested in an unpublished treatment. But when they say “No,” just move on. As the saying goes, “You can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make it drink.”
3) Make everything clear and transparent. Answer any questions you can. Admit when you don’t know the answer. Keep track of all outcomes good and bad. Post those numbers publicly. Spell out the procedures clearly so that any veterinarian or scientist could replicate and test the treatment if they wanted to.
4) Leave the door open for anyone to find the information needed to save a dog. Do not argue with someone who is doubtful. Until the treatments are published, pursuing the NDV treatments requires a leap of faith. You can’t force that.
5) Don’t blame the dog owner. How the dog got infected with distemper is secondary. The reality is there is a sick dog who needs treatment. Talking about what they should have done after the opportunity is gone is not helpful. Instead, educate the owner about the possibilities and the limits of the treatments with their current situation and let them decide what to do. Later, you can talk about what will make a difference with other dogs in their life.
6) Even if they did not follow your earlier advice and the dog has progressed from the early stage into the neurologic stage, do not blame the dog owner. Just work with them in handling the new reality. They weren’t ready to make that leap of faith before. They still need you now.
7) Encourage vaccination wherever you can. Preventing the disease is the most effective way of beating it. However, understand the limitations. For example, vaccinating dogs on intake at a shelter is a good idea, but if the dog had already been exposed to distemper before intake you could have an outbreak of disease. So, keeping newly rescued street dogs away from other dogs for a couple of weeks would be ideal.
8) The owners are the best ones to be advocates for their dogs. Since I am not a vet or a scientist, I have no standing to tell a professional what they should do. But an owner who has a sick dog in front of a vet is in a position to say, “Please, my dog is dying anyway. I would like you to try this treatment.” It has been in moments like this that progress has been made.
9) Remember you are not an expert unless you have been to veterinary school. The vets are the experts. The NDV treatments were discovered by a veterinarian – Dr. Alson Sears, now retired – and what we are doing on the Kind Hearts In Action website is transmitting this information from one veterinarian to other vets. One day, this information will be available in published scientific journals. Hopefully, soon after that, this campaign of email, websites and social media will not be needed.
10) Vets are the ones who are qualified to diagnose and treat distemper dogs. We do not encourage non-vets to treat dogs on their own. We also cannot diagnose dogs via email, no matter how many videos and lab reports are sent to us. We can send people broad advice, which is posted on the website, but the judgment needs to be made by the vet who has the patient in front of them.
Remember the end goal: That people should be able to go to the vets, not a website, to save their dogs from distemper. Since most can’t do that yet, we keep working.
A thriller centered on the threat posed by a deadly disease and an international team of doctors contracted by the CDC to deal with the outbreak. Director: Steven Soderbergh Writer: Scott Z. Burns Stars: Matt Damon, Kate Winslet and Jude Law (source: IMDB)
When I watched “Contagion” in September 2011, I felt grateful for all the empty seats around me in the theater. Watching this movie in a crowded theater must have been like watching “Jaws” in a shark tank. Very quickly, you develop a fear of other people.
Actually, it is the fear of the microorganisms we potentially carry that this movie feeds on.
A highly contagious and deadly virus – formed when the wrong bat met the wrong pig – spreads around the world because of Gweneth Paltrow. And yet, this is an understated movie. The filmmakers set out to make a realistic movie about an epidemic, and the roles are played with subtlety and honesty.
This isn’t a disaster film, but an ensemble piece about individual characters coping with this crisis. The villains of this movie interest me most.
The obvious villain is the virus itself, and if you’re paying attention you can catch Eliot Gould’s character describing it into his cell phone as related to the paramyxovirus family. The paramyxoviruses include Hendra and NIPAH, measles, mumps and … the one that dominates my thoughts every day – and for many others in the Kind Hearts In Action community – canine distemper.
When movies get it right, they can be powerful educational tools, and there is much that this movie gets right about viruses. To be sure, this film presents an exaggeration, a worst-case scenario. But you will walk away understanding more about viral diseases.
In the film, this fictional virus – called MeV1 but possibly intended as a version of NIPAH – spreads through contact, not just from human touching human, but from a human touching something an infected person had touched. For example, the waiter who picks up the glass Gweneth Paltrow just drained is doomed.
The way this virus spreads is different from distemper because distemper usually is transmitted among canines via the aerosol droplets expelled from a sick dog. As a mostly airborne virus, it spreads very quickly from animal to animal in enclosed places like shelters. Also, distemper does not transmit to humans, and it is not spreading at epidemic proportions. There is a vaccine for distemper, but unfortunately the disease still hits puppies, strays and unvaccinated dogs, spreading either through contact with wildlife or exposure in a shelters.
Now, back to the villains of the movie, and this is where I will be giving away major plot points, but I find it necessary. So, if you don’t like SPOILERS, stop reading. If you want to hear my thoughts about how this movie reflects our fight against canine distemper, keep reading.
The other villain of the movie – and it is not obvious at first – is Alan Krumwiede, played by Jude Law. Krumwiede is a former journalist and blogger who runs a website that proclaims to have a cure for this terrible disease.
Sound familiar?
Well, aside from the fact that Krumwiede and I have similar job descriptions – I am also a former journalist with a website that proclaims to have a cure for an incurable disease – I hope the similarities end there.
But comparisons are going to be inevitable. I can see it coming. Someday, someone will ask me, “Oh, you’re like that Jude Law character in ‘Contagion,’ aren’t you?”
Egad.
Well, perhaps as a way of inoculating you against this perception, let’s discuss Krumwiede, why he is the villain and how you can see the signs of his flawed character early in the movie.
Our first encounter with him is in the offices of the San Francisco Chronicle, where he is trying to get a reporter interested in a video he found online of an Asian man collapsing on a bus. When the reporter raises some skepticism about the news value, he snaps and pulls back the story. Then he threatens her with a lawsuit if one word of what he said gets printed in the Chronicle.
Red flag! Red Flag! Red Flag!
First off, everything said to a reporter is on the record. You can’t tell a reporter something and then retroactively try to take it back. Krumwiede should know that. But the reporter, now realizing Krumwiede is too big a headache to put up with, kicks him out, tells him to not call her anymore.
“Print is dead!” Krumwiede proclaims as he storms out. That may be true, but it is my hope that print journalists will not be replaced by people like Krumwiede.
So anyway, the other problem with Krumwiede is that he changes positions so quickly. When a person tells you one thing on one day and something contradictory the next day, you’ve got to question their honesty. When they switch positions within seconds, you’ve got to question their sanity.
Later on in the movie, Krumwiede posts a video to his website, describing himself as a plague victim, listing his symptoms. Then he takes out what he says is the cure and squirts it into a glass of water and drinks it. “Did it work? If I’m here tomorrow, you’ll know that it did.” And of course, Krumwiede is indeed among the living the next day.
Let’s think this through for a second. What are the red flags here? Where does the credibility of the video fail?
1) It’s just a video. We have no way of confirming what we are looking at. He takes a brown liquid out of a bottle and squirts it into some water. It could simply have been iodine. We also have no way of confirming his symptoms. No doctor has examined him that we know of. The video is also darkly lit, so he doesn’t really have to work hard to look sick. It’s all showmanship. 2) Aside from the name of his cure – which has a vague name that’s hard to remember – he doesn’t explain what it is. He doesn’t talk about how it works, where it came from, who discovered it and how. If it were me, I’d want to know what I am putting into my body and know the risks vs. the health benefits. 3) The video is only of him. No history of other patients being treated or animal studies. One example of one person reacting to a treatment does not prove a treatment. But what’s interesting is that later in the film, we will learn how to recognize a valid treatment. This happens because of one very brave scientist. 4) He is not upfront about the financial ties he has to the cure. Later on, he’s arrested and charged with securities fraud. He had made millions by selling a panicked population his so-called cure.
The other give-away is that in later scenes, Krumwiede wears an air-tight biologic suit as he walks the streets. If he really had been sick and recovered from the virus, he would have no need to protect himself.
Bottom line, he shows us the value of healthy skepticism.
He is not a completely flawed character. Some of what he says rings true. When they do find a vaccine, he points to the possibility that there will be side effects that no one had anticipated. While what he says is possible – and it has happened in other vaccines – his criticism is not useful. What other options are there?
Well, obviously, he is trying to discredit the value of the vaccine to make a case for his cure. Thankfully, he ends up in handcuffs soon after.
While no one is perfect in this film, what emerges is that the true heroes are the scientists who worked the problem to understand the virus and find the vaccine. They make mistakes, but are able to come to terms with the consequences of those mistakes, especially as part of the big picture of saving the lives of millions.
The thing to remember about people like Krumwiede – and even me – is that we are not scientists or doctors. We didn’t spend the years in school, doing the actual work, testing the theories, arguing, debating and resolving scientific problems. I don’t think scientists should be given free reign. They should be challenged by science journalists, just as experts are challenged in any other field.
But for me, I keep remembering back to when I was in grad school. One day, I repeated some medical fact I had learned to a medical student. He considered what I said and replied, “A little bit of knowledge is a dangerous thing.”
What it means is just because you know a particular medical fact doesn’t mean you will be able to use that on an actual patient. The bit of information has to be taken in context with the complete understanding of how a body works. Yes, a treatment may work under certain circumstances, but change the circumstances and the treatment may be disastrous. That’s why you should go to a doctor when you are sick, or to a vet when your animal is not well.
That’s given me a reasonable amount of caution while I work on the issue of canine distemper and promote Dr. Al Sears’ treatments. This is something I moved into very slowly. It was not until 2008, a couple of years after Dr. Sears retired, that I decided I needed to be a full-out activist for him. That was when a woman in Romania, who was desperate to save her dog, tracked me and begged for help. Her vet took Dr. Sears’ protocol off my website and recreated the serum, ultimately saving at least five dogs.
But what I had done was make it possible for a vet on the other side of the world to find the information that a vet in California had discovered and refined over a 40-year career. It was one vet conferring with another vet, with a little help from me as messenger.
That is the basic premise of the Kind Hearts In Action site, just to give a platform for one experienced veterinarian to connect with other veterinarians who can then use his treatments to save the lives of dogs. And then, we try to connect dog owners with the vets who may be able to save their canine companions. We aim to maintain a transparency about these treatments, answering any questions quickly and without any payment required. [Donations are always welcome. We are a non-profit organization.]
When fighting a disease, getting the best information quickly is essential. The better educated our audience, the better the outcomes for patients. That’s why I encourage everyone to check out “Contagion.”
This movie will scare you, but the lessons you learn may make a big difference in your life.
Cat Warren’s journey into the world of cadaver dogs began with one very bad puppy. She loved German shepherds, just not this one, at least not in the early going. Solo was a singleton puppy and had grown up without littermates. He didn’t know how to co-exist with other dogs and his relationship with humans was troubled. “He’s just a jackass,” a dog trainer told her, but what he really needed was a job. The search to find a purpose for Solo led Cat Warren into the world of cadaver dogs. Solo had a gift for tracking, and Cat Warren would discover that the two of them would find a purpose by finding bodies. But this is not just a linear story of Cat Warren and her dog Solo. A university professor and former journalist, Warren takes the reader on a journey in every direction and every question that follows from cadaver searching. She explores the history of working dogs and the many ways that dogs help humans search for lost people, drugs, bombs or the dead. But she has little patience for those who would exaggerate and use dogs to boost their own careers. Some have fraudulently used the nose of dogs to convict the innocent, but Warren deconstructs how an alert investigator can uncover the scheme. Warren is precise in her reporting, laying out what is possible and impossible for search dogs. No, a dog cannot track a person months after driving off in a car, but with a recent scent and a trail that has not had heavy cross traffic some amazing feats are possible. Cadaver dogs can help find bodies trapped in a deep lake or in the middle of a raging river. And although the work is grim, it is also brings closure for suffering families.
By the end of this book, you may find yourself starting to understand a little more about how your dog experiences the world. That will make taking this journey with Cat Warren all the more worthwhile.
Several books on the market today offer dog owners a chance to understand the minds of their canine companions. Questions about how dogs think, learn, love and evolve are finally being answered through scientific inquiry. But one of the most enjoyable tales about this new area of research comes from Dr. John Pilley and his dog Chaser.
At the start, Pilley found no reason to believe dogs could learn words. They don’t even know their own names, except as a signal to pay attention. That was the prevailing wisdom in the scientific community, a legacy from René DesCartes, the 17th century mathematician, physicist and philosopher. Descartes had declared animals to be no more than meat machines, and the label stuck for centuries. Further undermining the case for animal intelligence was Clever Hans, a horse that early in the 20th century seemed to be able to understand language and perform mathematical tasks. But Clever Hans was not really clever. The horse was simply reading the unintentional body language of the human trainer, and the exposure of this hoax heaped further skepticism onto the question about whether animals could learn words.
It was only after meeting some very insistent owners of border collies that Pilley decided it was worth putting the accepted scientific doctrine to the test. After he retired as a psychology professor, Pilley and his wife adopted a new Border Collie puppy who had a dangerous tendency to chase cars. His partnership with Chaser began probably the most intensive attempt to teach a dog language so far. The results, which ultimately were published in a scientific journal, went far beyond what anyone had achieved in animal language training.
It took several tries for Pilley to get his work published, and it required the help of a colleague who could organize and compile the data in a convincing way. Even for an experienced professor, getting published in a scientific journal is a challenge. That’s a useful lesson for anyone who would seek to oppose long-established scientific doctrine. But the other lesson is that scientific truths will eventually overcome scientific biases.
Pilley proved that not only could his dog, Chaser, learn more than 1,000 nouns, he could also learn verbs and combine the two parts of speech to understand sentences. Pilley’s discovery became a worldwide phenomenon and led to appearances for Chaser on the Today show, World News With Diane Sawyer and Nova Science Now. One can only wonder what new possibilities Pilley has opened up. Perhaps someday there will be vocabulary competitions among dogs to rival today’s dog agility events.
Or perhaps not. Anyone who follows Pilley into this world of animal language should be prepared to work for hours a day over several years with their dog. And while the Border Colie may have the intelligence needed to build a vocabulary of a 1,000 words, they are also high-energy dogs in need of a lot of space, attention and play. Fortunately, Pilley had plenty to give his dog.
The book is an engaging and fun read. The science here is presented in layman’s terms, hardly needing any translation. Pilley truly loves the dogs in his life, and that comes through in the telling of this story.
I’m starting a blog on this site to update our followers about the battle against canine distemper. This is where you can also get updates on the book about the NDV treatments I’m writing with Dr. Alson Sears. To get the latest news about the project, info about upcoming events or signup to get a copy (when we get there. It will take time), use the form below to sign up. We are just at the very beginning of a very long road, but please join us for the journey.
