K9 Journal

Rae and Mark August 4th, 2008

Parvo (more formally known as Canine Parvovirus) is devastating, not only emotionally (words cannot describe how it feels to see your beloved dog healthy one moment, and incredibly sick the next, with vomit and blood-filled, foul-smelling diarrhea everywhere), but also financially.

As soon as you notice your dog isn’t well, the vet’s costs that are typically associated with Parvo treatment 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 usually be more than one.

Next, 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 can expect to pay anywhere from $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.)

Finally, if the vet cannot treat your dog successfully, you will often be presented with the option every pet owner dreads - the decision to have your dog put to sleep, which may cost you as much as $300.

So, all together, your vet’s bill for Parvo treatment will be between $850 and $10,450 - and that’s just for 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 in the same household 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 expected life span of 11 years is about $13,550, so you could spend up to 77% (i.e. over three quarters) of this amount treating him for just one illness in a week or less.

But, it doesn’t have to be that way - 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 (on average, 90% or better).

Parvo prevention normally starts when your dog is still a puppy, in the form of vaccinations.

The subject of Parvo vaccinations, and vaccinations in general, 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 vaccines available today (excluding Continuum and PROGARD, which are made by Intervet) are not effective against the latest 2c strain of this dreadful virus.

You therefore need other solutions, because you cannot assume that your dog is safe simply because he’s had all of his shots. Since the beginning of 2007, there have been many stories in the press of fully-vaccinated dogs, both puppies and adults, being infected by and dying from Parvo.

If you want to know what these other measures are, you’ll need to look out for Part 2 of this article!

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