Dog Protozoa Infection
There is an organism called protozoa, thought to be the lowest form of dog life. There are several forms, of which the sporozoite named coccidia is the most important. These one-celled minute organisms live among the cells of the intestinal lining. Their life history is exceedingly complicated, and the damage they do is accounted for by the enormous numbers that develop before the body eventually overcomes them. Two other types, babesia, and toxoplasma cause considerable damage as parasites of pets.
Each species of dog and bird is infested by specific types of coccidia, but some have more than one. Dogs and cats have three principal forms affecting both species. Rabbits, poultry, and even reptiles are afflicted. All types of coccidia are extremely prevalent, the year around in warm climates and in the summer in cooler climates. This disease, coccidiosis, affects dogs of all ages. It is self-limiting and usually passes with no treatment just about as quickly as wills any treatment devised to date. Any dog, once recovered, will never again have the disease caused by that particular
Three common types as they appear when enlarged through a microscope.
Puppies are usually quite severely affected, while mature dogs may show no symptoms other than impairment of appetite and loose stools. Symptoms to be watched for are loose stools, often with bloody color, maturating eyes, elevated temperature (about 103°), loss of appetite, and general unthriftiness. In severe cases, weakness and depression are apparent as well as emaciation, dehydration, and death.
In size, coccidia is microscopic. The form found in the feces, the egg, or oocyst, is roundish and wills a nucleus inside. Some oocysts show divided nuclei. The forms infesting dogs and cats are Isospora rivolta, I.bigemina, and I. fells.
After it has been outside of the host for several days, the coccidium egg form develops into the infective stage, provided conditions are favorable. Flies carry it to feeding pans or dogs pick it up by licking their feet or by getting feces into their mouths. Inside the dog, the coating of the egg form is digested and the infestive forms that have developed in the egg are released. These bore into the cells lining the intestine and develop until they divide into other bodies.
This division and growth damages or destroys the cells, but the new forms now enter other cells and repeat the cycle. This goes on through several divisions and attacks of new cells until at length male and female forms are produced. The males fertilize the females and thus produce the egg form that is passed out with the feces and deposited with the loose stool to infest another dog.
Coccidiosis is a disease not easily differentiated by external symptoms from some other diseases. A microscopic investigation is necessary to establish the diagnosis. Puppies affected during the teething period (from three and a half to five months) may be left with pitted teeth, as they may be from distemper and other febrile diseases.
When nursing puppies are infected they seem to have mild cases. It affects them much more severely after they have been weaned. Whether this is the result of changing from a diet rich in fat to one with a very low level of fat, as is so often done, or whether the mother’s milk possesses some antibody, or the puppies possess some maternal immunity, we cannot say. It is known, however, that puppies weaned on a high-fat diet survive the disease with less loss of physical condition and weight than those on a low-fat diet.
Puppies can contract the disease from their mother’s breasts. They also pick it up from infected quarters. Coccidiosis has been called the”pet shop disease,” because where puppies are placed together indiscriminately there is likely to be one or more infected. Not being house-broken, they drop stools into which other pups are bound to walk, and infection is a certainty in that case. When direct contact is not responsible for the infection, flies are usually the cause. Even in kennels where the environment is immaculate, where puppies are raised in wire bottom cages, coccidiosis can occur regularly as long as other dogs in the kennel are carriers.
PREVENTION: By thoroughly screening pens and cages and by thoroughly cleaning one’s bands and feet, it is possible to raise pups in kennels and to keep them free from the disease. However, it is difficult to realize that what we can’t see may be present.
Most parents are not greatly disturbed when their children contract one of the so-called children’s diseases. They feel that children should be immunized early rather than be subject to these diseases later when they may be more difficult to deal with. You don’t need to be unhappy when your kennel dogs have coccidiosis and recover. They will, in all probability, have it anyway, so perhaps we should not complain of the loose stoolsindicative of the disease. The danger is that the puppies might have more than coccidiosis. When several diseases strike at once, puppies may not recover. If they have to have it, they should have passed the young-puppy stage, for when they are a little older they will recover from coccidiosis quite easily.
From the life history of the infecting organism, it becomes obvious to us that for a puppy or a dog to have the lightest case it must get as few reinfestations, one heaped on the other, as possible. The first is had enough, but if every day it is exposed to new eggs in large numbers it has far less chance of recovery.
The wire-bottom pen is the best possible insurance against heavy infestation. If it is screened on the outside down to the ground, flies cannot continue to carry eggs from feces to food dishes or lips.
TREATMENT: Almost all cases of coccidiosis that are treated are already on the way to recovery since the whole duration of the disease is only about three weeks. Let’s assume your puppy shows definite signs of sickness. Its eyes maturate; it has a fever of io3° F; its stools are watery. You may reasonably think it has coccidiosis. Your veterinarian makes a fecal examination and finds thousands of coccidia eggs. By that, time the pup is at the height of the disease. If you give it brick dust, cobwebs, sulfa drugs, vinegar, and molasses, or any other remedy, the puppy will probably recover but not because of the treatment. The puppy is getting well anyway.
As one scientist has said, “Coccidiosis is the disease about which inure foolish cures have been reported more than any other disease of dog.” Every so often a study reports a new cure, but usually, the investigation has been made without untreated controls for comparison. However, some promising treatments are now under scientific investigation and your veterinarian will tell you about them if they prove satisfactory.
Feeding wholesome food with rich milk and fat constituting up to 25 percent of the diet is a good treatment. Here again, a diet of one-third each of cooked hamburger, boiled rice, and stewed tomatoes is a helpful supportive treatment. Antibiotics are recommended, not to treat this protozoan, but to treat or prevent secondary invaders which may set up housekeeping in the damaged intestinal lining. The addition of a heaping teaspoonful of bone ash mixed with the food, for a puppy the size of a five-week-old Cocker Spaniel is helpful. A tablespoonful a day is the dose for a large breed puppy. Remember that bone ash is not bonemeal or steamed bone. It is an entirely different product obtainable through your veterinarian or druggist.
Immaculate cleanliness is as important as anything. If the pup uses paper for defecating purposes, destroy the stool before it can walk in it. If you prevent reinfection, the chance of recovery is better than no percent.
There is a scientific question about the possibility of one type of coccidia being the same protozoa as toxoplasma.
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