Glory’s Story: Neosporosis & the Breeder Factor (Pt 2)

One little word turned my whole life upside-down: Neospora. A protazoan parasite from the Coccidia family.

I googled it again and again, in utter disbelief that the allergies, skin and ear infections, pneumonia, liver failure, inappetence, and heart arrhythmia experienced for the last six months by my beautiful puppy could be caused by a parasite.

The bread-crumb trail that my breeder left us was complex and began to unravel as I reached out to the online community of dogs. This is what I learned in the fullness of time:

• Raw beef was fed to one or more of the Mountain Pride Vizsla breeding bitches
• In 2014, an entire litter was diagnosed with Neospora infection as adults after one female died from it at approximately one year old
• In 2015, yet another litter was whelped with 4 of the 6 dying from Neosporosis. At least 2 of the deceased pups were buried on the breeder’s property. One of the two surviving pups, a girl, was retained by the breeder
• The infected female pup, along with the originally infected bitch(es), all lived in the same close quarters with every subsequent pup the breeder bred and raised and sold.
• The infected female pup that Glory’s litter was raised with died of Neosporisis at 3 years old

Glory’s litter was born on May 1, 2016 and at 5 weeks old were all diagnosed with Coccidia, an intestinal parasite from the family of protozoa that includes Neospora. The entire litter was left untreated by modern medicine and sent home to various families at 10 weeks old. We were informed that Coccidia was common among puppies and not to worry. All the pups in her litter were painfully underweight.

Despite my constant contact with the breeder starting literally the day after we brought Glory home, not one scrap of this information about the deathes or illnesses was ever mentioned. I exchanged over 500 calls and emails with her over the ensuing year and not once did she mention the prevelant parasite plaguing her entire kennel.

I had two clues to go on though: the casual mention of Glory’s mom having a “skin parasite” and an oblique note on her website about the girl pup she had kept from the largest fatality litter in her kennel, who “ ended up with a parasite which is transmitted to her puppies through her placenta. Parasites can be found in any meat (any food?)”.

Armed with this clue I began to research latent, multi-systemic Neospora infections, discovering that once dormant the parasite often presents as dermatitis, pneumonia, and in almost every post-mortem autopsy, are found in the heart.

Neosprosis is a dog parasite, and can be transmitted through the raw meat of an intermediate host (cows, sheep, etc) or through the placenta of an infected bitch, or from the feces of another infected animal (dogs, cows, etc).

My girl was raised with at least three dogs with active cases of Neosprosis, most likely every dog on the property was infected.

I had my heatbreaking answer.

My girl was suffering from Neosprosis, contracted from the breeder’s kennel, a known, forseeable and utterly preventable infection that would surely end badly for my baby.

https://medium.com/@hmwe46/could-this-deadly-parasite-be-quietly-killing-your-dog-6ac0dbc5b365?source=linkShare-888491cd9d22-1536532925