READ BILLY AND BERTIE'S STORY

These beautiful boys were gifted into Bulldog Rescue when their owner reached a point where she could no longer afford their treatment. Thankfully, via their vet, they have ended up in our care.

They are both only 5 months old, but have suffered signs of Demodex their entire lives, previous treatment for Demodex (using Aludex dips) appears to have been successful as the only mites we've found so far have been dead.

Bought from an advert in the Friday Ads, the "breeder" of these pups operated with only a mobile number which is now dead, they are not registered with the Kennel Club and the owner had no where to turn except here when things went wrong.

We now have the long task of clearing the secondary Skin infections which are so bad that even playing with each other leaves them bleeding from open sores.

On arrival the faces were stuck thick with yellow gunge but a daily ritual of smothering them in anti ceptic cream alongside a weekly bath in Sporal-D shampoo together with anti biotic treatment is all we can do. We are also watching the mite activity by taking a weekly skin scrape which we are able to do in house saving a lot of money in vet fees

Bertie and Billy on arrival - Saturday 25th October 2008

Bertie and Billy at the end of the first week's treatment - Saturday 1st October 2008

And the treatment continues ....

Friday 7th November 2008: At the end of their second week there has been an improvement but not as marked as we would like and certainly not as much as we saw in the first week. Billy's tail is also very sore and it hurts him when we put the cream on it.

Further skin scrapes show more dead mites but the vet wants to double the anti biotic dose and do another scrape next week as there was a question mark over one mite that "could" have been alive. The boys ran riot in the vet surgery, it's so nice to see them completely unaware of their problems.

Watch this space .....

Sunday 16th November 2008: It feels like we're taking 2 steps forward and one step backwards. Their faces are beautifully healed but their under belly and their feet are awful. We can't really increase the anti biotic dose any more than they are on as they are so young so we will increase the number of baths they have and hope that works. Yesterday's scrape showed no mites at all on Billy, but Bertie still has dead mites present. Keep your fingers crossed.

Monday 17th November 2008: We've changed the anti biotics, Billy is looking much better although he does have very scabby legs, but Bertie isn't looking so hot. Keep your fingers crossed.

I hate this job

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Thursday 20 November 2008: This is Billy the day after we shaved his fur off, he's still full of life and determined to make friends with everyone, Keep you fingers crossed for this little man. If we can keep the infections out of his blood stream he should be OK.

Monday  24th November: Billy's skin isn't looking so great, he's developing the same blood blisters that Bertie had and they hurt him when touched. We're now bathing him every night but that's about all we can do. He'll never cope with steroid treatment with such a compromised immune system and I'm not sure what else we can do except ask the powers that be to help me along a little here.

Monday 24th November: Disaster just struck, I've found live mites. I'm just hoping now that the vets will let me dip him, but they may feel that his skin is too open and sore to cope with what is technically a poison. He now has lots of blood blisters under his chin and round his neck, I burst one of them and then did the scraping around the edge of it, there was no mistaking the mite was alive, you could see his mouth parts moving under the microscope and his little legs paddling in the liquid paraffin. I'll get him to the vet tomorrow, but I have a sinking feeling in my heart. He's just eaten and he's fine enough in himself but his colour isn't great.

Tuesday 25th November 2008: Straight to the vets this morning, the vet agrees that the skin is too sore to dip, he'd absorb too much of the aludex which would almost definitely result in seizures which could lead to death, but the mites on the slide were still alive this morning - little blighters had all gathered around the blood pools (you have to scrape until the skin bleeds) in order to feed - I'll give them 10 out of 10 for sheer bloody determination if nothing else! There is a new treatment which is not yet licensed for demodex but is worth a try, even if we can keep the mite population under control long enough for the skin to heal so we can dip with the aludex. they've ordered us some which should be here tomorrow so fingers crossed it makes a difference - even a slight difference will help at this stage.

Thursday 27th November 2008: Billy had a tea tree bath last night, I figured it wouldn't do any harm to miss a disinfectant bath and give him something that would be a little kinder to his skin which is becoming quite dry. We gave him his first treatment last night too, it's called ProMeris Duo, currently only licensed for the treatment of fleas and ticks but from what I've read it can be a little strong for routine treatment of those but has a very good reputation for killing both the demodectic and the sarcoptic mange mites. He's a little lethargic this morning so we'll keep a close eye on him but one report I read cured demodex on an Olde Tyme Bulldog pretty much straight after the first treatment, although it did say that when they stopped the routine treatment it came back - either way anything that helps alleviate his discomfort will be a god send as he's starting to become wary of me which is very upsetting, but then I guess all I am is the one that tortures him!

Friday 28 November 2008: I can hardly bring myself to write this, but at 7.30 last night Billy was peacefully laid to rest. in  my arms and today will be buried with his brother. To be fair they were both doomed from the start and to understand why I called time I need to explain a little bit about how demodex works. The mite is controlled by the immune system so both dogs (and probably every dog in that litter) had a compromised immunity, so what started as signs of demodex as very young pups (8 weeks old) was already a sign that they were not the strongest of pups. The initial treatment for the demodex worked - all the mites were killed at the end of the 2 month treatment. That took them to around 4 and half months old. The secondary skin infection, which is what we've been battling with, was so severe that the levels of antibiotics needed to try and combat it put an additional strain on an already struggling immune system. They came here at 5 months old with no live mites but incredibly infected skin, but it really shouldn't have come as a surprise when we found live mites on Monday night because it's the immune system that controls them and no matter what we had done with regards to treating the skin infection, the immune system was weaker than ever and simply couldn't keep the mites under control. We tried a neck spot treatment on Wednesday night and his lethargy yesterday was put down to that, but by last night the blood blisters that had come up on his face on Wednesday had taken over his face and touching them made him scream in pain, it also became apparent that wherever you touched him on his body blood rushed to the surface, and if you squeezed it would burst through the skin. So I called the vet who confirmed he was 24 hours away from septicaemia which is what took his brother. The decision was made to call it, the hardest thing I've ever had to do and a decision that even this morning I'm battling with. Thank you to everyone that helped with both Billy and Bertie's treatment but the vet confirmed that the vicious circle would have continued, as fast as we were clearing the infection on one part of the body, it would come back on another part that we had already cleared, just going round and round in circles on a poor pup that was getting sicker and sicker - forgive me Billy

This is Billy last night as we were waiting for the vet to call us back. This happened in less than 24 hours!

Rest in peace my sweet boy, I tried so hard to save you

THANK YOU TO EVERYONE THAT DONATED TOWARDS THEIR VET BILLS. THE BULLDOG BARBERS IN WORKSOP, NOTTS RAISED JUST OVER £100.00 FROM THEIR CUSTOMERS WHICH HELPED TREMENDOUSLY. THANK YOU

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