This entry was posted on Sunday, August 3rd, 2008 at 1:05 pm and is filed under Parvo News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
Parvo (which is correctly known as Canine Parvovirus) is devastating, not only emotionally (words simply cannot do justice to how it feels to see your cherished dog healthy one minute, and incredibly sick the next, with vomit and foul-smelling, blood-filled diarrhea everywhere), but also financially.
From the minute you notice your dog is sick, the typical vet’s costs associated with treating Parvo just keep adding up (and up).
To start with, you’ll probably need to pay between $25 and $50 for each office visit, and there will be several.
Then, your vet will more than likely want to do take a fecal matter sample for an instant, in-office test, or a sample of your dog’s blood to send away for a full work-up, or even both. These will cost you anywhere between $25 and $100, depending on the type of test. (Be warned, however, that these tests may not even be accurate - with the latest 2c strain, a dog with Parvo may still end up testing negative.)
If it turns out your dog actually has Parvo, then you should expect a bill in the region of $500 to over $10,000, per dog. These costs include items such as overnight stays ($50 a night), blood transfusions ($200 a time), medications ($100 - $200), etc. (And your vet will only give your dog a 50% - 80% chance of survival.)
Lastly, if the vet is unable to treat your dog successfully, you will frequently be presented with every pet owner’s worst nightmare - the decision to have your dog put to sleep, which will cost you up to $300.
So, in total, your vet’s bill for Parvo treatment will be between $850 and $10,450 - for just one dog. (As many people actually own two or more dogs, and when one of your dogs is infected by Parvo, the chance of any others on the same property getting the virus is very high, you can probably double these figures, at least.)
To put this in perspective, the average cost of owning a dog over its 11-year expected life is about $13,550, so you could spend up to 77% (i.e. just over three quarters) of this amount treating him for a single illness over a period of a week or less.
But, there are other options - you can both prevent Parvo and treat Parvo using safe, chemical-free products such as Parvaid, Life Cell Support and Vibactra Plus for a fraction of the cost of taking your dog to the vet’s, and with a much higher chance of your dog surviving the Parvo virus (typically, 90% or better).
Parvo prevention usually begins when your dog is just a puppy, in the form of vaccinations.
The whole topic of Parvo vaccinations, and vaccinations generally, is much debated at the moment, and there are, of course, many pros and cons.
But perhaps the most serious downside, where Parvo is concerned, is that most current vaccines (excluding PROGARD and Continuum, which are made by Intervet) are not effective against the latest 2c strain of this dreadful virus.
This means that you need other measures, because you cannot take it for granted that your dog is safe just because you’ve had him vaccinated. Since early 2007, there have been many stories in the press of fully-vaccinated dogs, both puppies and adults, being infected by and dying from Canine Parvovirus.
If you want to know what these other options are, you’ll need to look out for Part 2 of this article!
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