Survival from this virus as a puppy (especially one that has had no vaccines) is tough and especially since Gus appeared to have been suffering for some time, the odds were stacked against him.  One of the vets seeing him said “this is one of the worse cases of Parvo I have seen in a long time”.  However, Save-A-Pet always gives every animal the opportunity to fight for their lives and Gus showed us, with little improvements each day, that he wanted to live.  Gus required intensive veterinary care, plasma transfusions, and a feeding tube but his spirit did not die so Save-A-Pet told the vet to keep going. 

After a full week of hospitalization and treatments, he was stable enough to come back to Save-A-Pet for care on Aug 1^st.  He came to us to continue his treatment/recovery with our trained ‘round the clock Animal Health Staff.  However, just a few days after he was back, he started to decline again.  His parvo test was now negative but we were worried that the damage done was going to be just too much for him to bounce back.  We sent him back out for emergency care because we suspected a congenital liver disease of some sort. He then had to be transferred to a different veterinarian group.  He was fully evaluated and a liver condition was thankfully ruled out but he had developed a secondary bacterial infection in his gut that was possibly going septic. 

Gus still wanted the chance, so on we went with continued treatments and hospitalization as recommended by the vet from Aug 6^th-Aug 15^th until we were finally able to bring him back with normal stools and voracious appetite.  However, Gus was so weak that he could only stand for short periods and was unable to walk although he could play a pretty great game of tug-of-war with his favorite stuffed animal after a good nap.  Gus was back in the game and now all that was left was TLC and recovery.  We found a wonderful foster home for him where he is doing fantastic and starting to gain his strength, weight, and mobility back!

 We haven’t received all of the invoices yet, but estimated expenses for his 3 vet visits with Save-A-Pet’s discount is around $18,000-$20,000 to cover 17 days of hospitalization, intensive care, and treatment at Premier Veterinary Group, Companion Animal Specialty and Emergency, and Veterinary Specialty Center (all 3 of our cooperating Emergency and Specialty Vets). It is vital that we get these bills covered so that we can continue to offer the same level of care to the next animal in need. Please click here to donate today. Thank you for caring about little Gus and all the animals at Save-A-Pet.

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