Cocoa Update

I'm sure most of you remember, but a few months back we adopted a Chocolate Lab mix named Cocoa. For the most part she is a happy healthy energetic puppy, who is also very smart and is learning commands at the drop of a hat, well, really the drop of a treat. I mean honestly, she was the same age when we got her as our corgi Yoshi was when we got him, but it took him 3 years to learn to sit, it took her about 20 minutes.

Anyway, the point of my post. When we got her we took her to the vet because she had a small amount of hair loss on her face and legs that was either from mites or a fight she got in to with another animal before she was rescued. It turned out she had mange, a high amount of mites (which all dogs have) with an allergic reaction to them. Per the vets recommendation we treated her for 3 weeks and then went back for a follow up skin scrape. Over the course of the treatment she had scratched several areas of her face and body bald because of the itching from the mites. By the time the follow up appt came around she had grown a bunch of her hair back and the skin scrape came up negative for mites. WOOHOO!! She was clean and in the clear. By new years all of her hair had grown back and she was as cute as ever and she was most importantly healthy.

Or so we thought! Last Thursday I gave her a bath and everything went down hill from there. I took her to the vet again yesterday and the mites are back in full force, not because of the bath, they were still there before it, but thats when we started noticing the changes again. Most dogs fight off the mites on there own, but for some reason Cocoa just can't do it. The thing is that she has them so bad she is causing self inflicted wounds all over her body. She looks so uncomfortable. We are back on the meds for atleast another 3 weeks, but probably 6. We have to give her a special sponge bath every 5 days to help stop the itch, we have to give her an anitbiotic 4 times a day, and we have to feed her a high fat diet. The biggest, and by far he hardest, thing the vet said to us is that skin infections like the one she has created for herself with all the scratching can be deadly and we have to get it under control before it kills her. The poor girl. She's only 8 months old and whenever people see her they make all sorts of comments. I would hate to think of what she would be going through had she not been rescued, or had someone else adopted her. The people at the vet office keep saying that it is the worst case of mange they have ever seen and that she is lucky to have us as her owners because so many people are not willing to deal with a dog with this type of problem. The treatments aren't even all that expensive either, which makes it even more sad that someone would potentially abandone a dog because of such a little thing

The thing is that with the proper treatment she will make it through this, and once we get rid of it completely it won't be a problem for her anymore, it's just a matter of killing all of these mites once and for all. She is the sweetest most loving dog ever and I can't wait to have my snuggly little puppy back. In case anyone was wondering our other dog and our cat are not at risk, the mites do not transfer from one dog to anotherthe way lice move from person to person.

Daniel, the vet and I are all in agreement though: right now, with everything going on, she is just ugly, she's just not cute enough to make you want to pet her, but you can't help but make her want to feel better because you know that underneath all the problems is that sweet little chocolate puppy with the eyes that could melt your heart.

So, if you all hav time, please pray that our puppy makes it through this and that we are able to get rid of this once and for all.

Thanks!!