I realized she had tapeworms on Saturday when I found the distinctly unpleasant egg casings on her poop. Tapeworms are the easiest of the common worms to treat (it's pretty much a one-and-done pill treatment, whereas most of the other worms require several days or even weeks of deworming medication), but in my opinion they are by far the grossest. Like, not even close.
So as soon as I saw that, I called up my vet, because I was not going to wait to see the rescue vet. Nope. No way. I will pay all kinds of premiums to not have tapeworms in my house.
I also wanted to have several other issues checked: the patchy hair loss, the persistently itchy skin, a gauge of just how underweight Scarlett was, and so forth.
Scarlett was an absolute sweetheart at the vet. She didn't hassle the other dogs or cats in the waiting room (although she did tilt her head curiously whenever she heard a meow), she was sweet and polite with the vet tech, she let both the vet and the tech manipulate her legs and look at her teeth and get her up on the weighing table without a squeak of protest, and all in all she was a model patient. This puppy really does have a wonderful temperament, and she showed it during that visit.
The health news wasn't great, but it was better than I expected.
She does have tapeworms (which I already knew) and the vet prescribed medication for that. A skin scrape ruled out mange (good!). Allergies remain a possibility, but the vet thought it was more likely that her skin issues were caused by a bacterial infection (her lymph nodes were significantly swollen and the red bumps along her belly and inner thighs are consistent with a bacterial skin infection), so Scarlett has a course of antibiotics to get through and a bottle of medicated shampoo to alleviate some of the itching and dandruff.
I also submitted a stool sample for a fecal test, the results of which are expected back on Wednesday.
So the good news is that all of this stuff should be eminently treatable. The bad news is that she was ever allowed to get into this condition in the first place. It remains unfathomable to me that an owned dog could live in someone's home for two months and wind up this underweight, with tapeworms and an untreated skin infection, before finally being returned to the rescue.
When we got home, Scarlett got her first of probably many medicated baths. She was not excited. She did, however, accept her miserable fate with as much dignity as possible (which was, sadly, not a lot).
And that's where we are on the health front for now. She is putting on some weight, at least. Today she clocked in at 36 pounds, which is far from excellent but at least represents some improvement.
In other news, Scarlett is also not excited about the cold and damp weather we've been having. She hates walking through the snow and picks her feet up ridiculously high in a futile attempt to avoid it, although she absolutely loves eating snow and will run around hunting down particularly tasty drifts. If we get a half-decent dump from the blizzard that's supposed to be coming in tonight, I'll take her out to see how she does in deep snow.
This week Scarlett is scheduled to start meeting with prospective adopters. It's my hope that we find her a good match and a real home soon.
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