This is 小白 ("Shao Bai" ["Little White"]) at the vet's clinic on thursday morning. He has been diagnosed with canine distemper - a disease which is infectious and for which the treatments are generally ineffective (and prohibitively expensive); the vet expects him to die within a month or so.
Needless to say, I am distraught.
First thing tommorow morning I will go and see him and get the other dogs checked out (they aren't showing any symptoms, but I want to be sure). He and each of the other four puppies had all of their injections shortly after they were first abandoned, so I am somewhat shocked (it may be that when they were abandoned they were already slightly too old for the type of vaccine they were given). According to this messily written wikipedia entry there may be some hope in administering high doses of vitamin A - but the papers referenced in that article don't seem to be available online. The thing is as well, he'd pretty much have to stay with me every day for a month or so if he is to have any chance, but he might end up infecting my dog. What I might do is get my dog sorted out with revaccination first thing in the morning (Friday morning), and then think about keeping Shao Bai with me on my west-side balcony. I could put him on high-dose vitamin A supplements along with plenty of chicken and biscuits and he would stay dry and get some sunshine. Naturally, I'd have to keep the balcony doors closed and keep him strictly separated from my dog.
I'm not optimistic, but the little fella has only been alive seven or eight months, and I'll be damned if I don't at least try to do what I can for him.
There are other pictures in these posts here, here and toward the bottom of this post here.
Update: apparently the vet has been giving Shao Bai high doses of vitamin supplements already and he is doing better than expected - I'll go to feed him some fresh chicken tommorow morning and every morning this next week. I want him to know he hasn't been abandoned. If he makes it through this next week, he's coming home to live with me.
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