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Puppies!
Pleasures and Perils
The SPCA believes in puppies! And why not? Puppies pervade our imagination as the perfect expression of innocent, unconditional love. Who doesn’t cherish “puppy breath” or when a puppy burrows against your chest? And there are few pleasures in life greater than the pleasure of watching a puppy play with a small child.
The SPCA really believes in puppies—because people love and want puppies People love to adopt puppies, and the SPCA is determined to meet that need. But, oh, the challenges of doing so
More than 90 percent of our infant puppies come from pound facilities. The pounds are no place for puppies. In fact, most pounds actually put puppies down unless they are rescued within a few days of arrival, because the chances are great that the babies will fall ill.
The most fearful peril of being a puppy is parvovirus. This is a fairly recent mutation
in the canine world. Fifteen or twenty years ago, no one worried about “parvo.” But
today it is prevalent in the environment, and it is an amazingly long-lived virus. It can sit waiting for a host formonths. Once it attacks, it produces dreadful flu-like symptoms. The puppy stops eating and is unable to keep anything down – solid or liquid. Unless treated aggressively and early, the pup generally dies from dehydration. As with all viruses, there is no cure for parvovirus. The only treatment is to manage its symptoms.
The perils of parvo are so great that, once an outbreak of parvo is reported, somepound facilities destroy every last dog or puppy in their care. This happened last year, to much public outcry, in Grand Rapids. It happens every day of the year somewhere in America. As we write this article in late February, at least one public pound in South Central Michigan is in “lockdown” – no pets in, no pets out – until the parvo epidemic can be brought under control.
We are dedicated to the rescue of abandoned and at-risk pets from the public pound facilities of Southwest and South Central Michigan. This is what we do. We choose the perils of puppies because we choose pound rescue. It’s that simple. If we can keep puppies healthy, they bring great excitement and reward to our adoption program. A fairly high percentage of the adopting public wants to take home a puppy—to enjoy the special pleasures that puppies bring.
So how do we keep puppies healthy? Well, it takes an incredible amount of work. First of all, if possible, we try to keep puppies out of our shelter at 219 Peekstock Drive in Kalamazoo. Just as the pound is no place for puppies, so, too, is our shelter no place for puppies.
But even in the relative safety of foster homes, puppies become sick with parvo. They’ve already been exposed to it at the pound, and the virus is incubating and developing at the time of rescue. Despite our best efforts, probably 35 percent of all our rescued puppies test positive for parvovirus. Of that percentage, a few puppies will remain asymptomatic (no signs of the active disease) and others will manifest only with a mild case of parvo. But the greatest percentage of infected pups develop a full-blown parvo assault. In 2007, the SPCA had to hospitalize 125 puppies for a serious attack of parvovirus. That’s nearly 30 percent of all the puppies we rescued!
The SPCA is most fortunate to have two veterinary partners who have led the fight to save our parvo puppies’ lives: Gull Lake Animal Hospital in Richland and Dickman Road Veterinary Clinic in Battle Creek. The veterinary teams at these two animal hospitals have pushed the envelope, making significant inroads in the treatment of parvo. In 2007, the SPCA saw only 22 puppy deaths from parvo, about 18 percent of the total parvo cases. This is a remarkable achievement. Three years ago, for every two puppies struck down by parvo, one died.
Two pioneering vets have done much to improve our parvo survival rates; but we also have to thank our staff and volunteers, under the leadership of dog team leader Jack Frost, for their efforts in early detection of the disease. Parvo test kits are kept on hand at all times. The minute a pup begins to show signs of parvo, we rush to confirm a diagnosis of parvo. If the test is positive, the pup is rushed to Dickman Road Vet or to Gull Lake Animal Hospital for drug and intravenous treatment. The third ingredient in our successful battle against parvo is, of course, money. It’s the absence of money, after all, that leads most shelters to stay away from puppy rescue – and, indeed, that causes county governments to destroy puppies brought to them. There is little money for treatment if and when the puppies fall ill.
The SPCA insists upon treating every sick pet in its care – this is one of our non-negotiable priorities. In 2007, we spent more than $20,000 on the treatment of parvo, close to 10 percent of our total expenditures on health care and veterinary services. Few of these expenses are passed on to adopters.
Truly, the SPCA believes in puppies! At the end of the day, it’s the miracle of puppies that move us to confront the perils of rescued puppies. We will continue to fight the battle against parvo, despite the expense and despite the heartbreak of losing some of those precious lives. Your support will enable us to keep fighting this good fight.
SPCA of Southwest Michigan · PO Box 2676 · Portage, MI 49081-2676
269.629.0567 · info@spcaswmich.org