Lizzie says:  What the heck is going on with this diarrhea thing lately? My Mom has seen so many animals this summer with bad diarrhea…some of them looked pretty sick, too, so I ran to the back of the clinic and stayed clear of them! I decided to check out what was new in doggie diarrhea on my computer (and I also eavesdropped on my Mom while she was doing rounds with our staff) and here’s what these two little paws and ears turned up for you:

GIARDIA is a kind-of-new and BIG cause of doggie and kitty diarrhea in our area. This is a parasite that lives in the small intestine of lots of animals (and people, too!). It is capable of reproducing big-time in infected individuals, and whoever is infected sheds a LOT of baby Giardia in their BMs - up to 900 million babies daily! These babies are all closed up in a little hard protective cyst that can live in wet areas, like in a field or around your pool, for up to 2 months. So anyone that comes in contact with these cysts - dogs, cats, children, farm animals, rats and mice, coyotes and other wild animals - can get infected. The cysts grow up to big Giardia in the intestines, and then every time someone infected poops, they spread more cysts, and pretty soon there are zillions of cysts in the area for everyone to tromp around in.

Ewwwww.... Animals can be a source of infection for people, but people can infect other people, too. Especially people who care for other adults or children - they take the biggest risk. One of my Mom’s clients is an infectious disease Nurse and she told my Mom that they are seeing a lot of Giardia in hospital wards. So what happens when a person gets Giardia? Well, nothing for about 2-5 days - and then, people can have diarrhea, bloating, and belly pain. Some people nave nausea and vomiting, too. And in people with bad immune systems, the illness can last for months and months, with symptoms that come and go. These people can even get hives from the Giardia.

And what happens to animals? Well, farm animals have it the easiest, with usually only a little diarrhea. But dogs and cats can get really, really sick. Some even have to stay in the hospital and have IVs and lots of medicine if they get dehydrated from all the vomiting and diarrhea. The hard part is that when we are sick, Giardia isn’t always the easiest thing to find. The best way to find it is to look with a microscope at a stool sample, but sometimes the cysts aren’t there every day - just like chickens don’t lay eggs every day, the cysts may not turn up in a BM every time there is one. And the cysts are really tiny, too, and they "float" in a different layer of a stool sample than many other parasites - so they are easy to miss if there are just a few.  That’s why you should ask your Doctor to have the stool sample sent out to a lab, because the lab is much more likely to find the Giardia than when the stool sample is run right in the hospital. That’s how we run all our stool samples at my hospital (my Mom thinks it is HER hospital, but of course it is mine since I show up with her every morning to guard it all day!).

Once the Giardia is uncovered, it is actually pretty easy to treat. In a dog, we use a pill medicine, but cats think the medicine tastes really, really bad so we have to disguise it for them. One way is to have a pharmacy make it up as a flavored liquid and another is for the pharmacy to change the medicine a little (it’s a chemistry thing) so it doesn’t taste bad to kitties.

What about vaccinating for Giardia?

Both my Mom and the American Animal Hospital Association think this is a bad idea. You can look at AAHA vaccine guidelines for more information, but the short story is that I think the vaccine is a pretty crummy one. It doesn’t prevent infection - it just (and even this is a maybe) - slows down the cysts from passing into the stool. There is also NO data on how long the vaccine even lasts if you get it, so my Mom says to pass on the vaccine.

So how can you prevent Giardia?

Well, picking up after yourself is a good idea. If you MUST poop in the woods, Mr. and Ms. whoever-you-are-with-hands, you shouldn’t leave it there! And of course you should pick up after pets and keep your yard as clean as possible. Always wash your hands after cleaning up the yard, too. Taking your shoes off whenever you come into the house can prevent the cysts from being tracked all over the house (we do this in my house). If you have standing water in your yard, drain it if possible and keep pets and kids out of wet areas if you can’t drain the area. When traveling, drink bottled water when possible, because even chlorine doesn’t kill Giardia cysts. And lastly, my dog and cat friends, when taking a walk with your human friend, don’t drink out of creeks and ponds – that’s a great way to get infected. Make your humans share their bottled water with you!