Has anyone else had a dog that had this? It is described to me by my vet as a severely drug resistant staph infection. We are seeing a dog dermatologist for our 2 year old Shih Tzu's skin infections.
This all started after we had her stay at a dog trainer's house while we were on a cruise. A few days after she got home, I noticed what looked like a crusted over bug bite on her stomach. We took her to our regular vet who said that she thought that it was a bug bite and gave her a steroid shot.
It went away but about three weeks later I noticed Gracie getting sores again. They are pimple sized bumps that are pus filled and break and crust over. We went back to our regular vet practice and saw a different vet who agreed with me that it was a staph infection and put her on an antibiotic which did clear up the sores.
Gracie was still scratching constantly, though, so I looked up a vet dermatologist and took her to see her. She took skin scrapings to rule out mites or ringworm which came back negative so the vet decided to do a food trial to see if Gracie had developed a food allergy.
In the meantime, the sores came back with a vengence so back we went and this time the dog dermatologist took a culture of the pus and sent it to a nearby research university where it was cultured. While waiting for the culture results, the vet put Gracie was put on a different antiobiotic that didn't seem to be working.
We just found out on Friday that she has MSRI (the dog version of MRSA) and needed to be put on the only antibiotic (Chloramphenicol) that the lab showed would work. We have to use gloves to even touch the pills (according to the web, humans can develop aplastic anemia just from touching it). That freaked out my husband since his dad died in the 1950's from aplastic anemia resulting from antibiotic use.
How the heck can that be good for my dog? But what choice do I have? I have done extensive web research and this is evidently becoming more and more common in pets.
Have any of you been through this? Was the dog cured?
Kathy
This all started after we had her stay at a dog trainer's house while we were on a cruise. A few days after she got home, I noticed what looked like a crusted over bug bite on her stomach. We took her to our regular vet who said that she thought that it was a bug bite and gave her a steroid shot.
It went away but about three weeks later I noticed Gracie getting sores again. They are pimple sized bumps that are pus filled and break and crust over. We went back to our regular vet practice and saw a different vet who agreed with me that it was a staph infection and put her on an antibiotic which did clear up the sores.
Gracie was still scratching constantly, though, so I looked up a vet dermatologist and took her to see her. She took skin scrapings to rule out mites or ringworm which came back negative so the vet decided to do a food trial to see if Gracie had developed a food allergy.
In the meantime, the sores came back with a vengence so back we went and this time the dog dermatologist took a culture of the pus and sent it to a nearby research university where it was cultured. While waiting for the culture results, the vet put Gracie was put on a different antiobiotic that didn't seem to be working.
We just found out on Friday that she has MSRI (the dog version of MRSA) and needed to be put on the only antibiotic (Chloramphenicol) that the lab showed would work. We have to use gloves to even touch the pills (according to the web, humans can develop aplastic anemia just from touching it). That freaked out my husband since his dad died in the 1950's from aplastic anemia resulting from antibiotic use.
How the heck can that be good for my dog? But what choice do I have? I have done extensive web research and this is evidently becoming more and more common in pets.
Have any of you been through this? Was the dog cured?
Kathy