ooh that sounds weird about the things under the pool, hope you find out what it is x

My mind is boggling now, and it could be the larvae from how they describe them, and what worries me is, Zena used to eat great big chunks of this turf and always has before I can stop her, she's often got a piece dangling from her mouth. I don't understand what the ants are doing with them though, and ants also produce these white larvae but they don't move, but these were heaving! I will look in the bag later and see if they're still alive, it'll be warm and moist in there just like it was under that pool. Nothing has appeared on the bald patches of grass now though, but that's good! We had the whole garden returfed two years ago and he brought in mega amounts of topsoil and you just never know what could have been in it do you!

The dogs are fine though which is a good thing. The only way to kill this if it is in the soil is boiling water, and that's a heck of a lot of kettles for my big lawn!!!

That sounds like ants nests and the white dots maybe the eggs. I have sat and watched ants carrying the eggs around in their thousands in and out of their nests. Sad old bird aren't I.

Sure they aint maggots

Too small for maggots, they're tiny, smaller than a grain of basmati rice, and Dave just looked in my little bag and said they're ants eggs! That's good though, at least they're not this giardia larvae then!

Just learned that birds are the worst culprits for carrying this giardia and I caught Zena eating pigeon poop on the lawn yesterday and then rolling in it! Bladdy pigeons, I need a 12-bore now, we're allowed to shoot the pigeons around here coz they carry diseases and we have loads of them, wood pigeons, always sitting on the fence, and I'm a very good shot with an air gun, so a 12-bore it is then! Apparently a 2.2 will do the job or a 177 maybe then, I'm off shopping now.

this is getting like a Miss Marple Mystery

Helena, Giardia is a micro-micro-microscopic single celled protozoa, akin to an amoeba. There is no way you will ever see their larvae even if they did produce them !! These sound very much like ant eggs that you saw.

One of the reasons Giardia is so hard to diagnose is because you need an amazingly powerful microscope to see them - they reproduce by "exploding" cysts, a bit like those wonderful films we see of flowers producing pollen, which are of course even tinier than the actual Giardia.

Ahhhh, I see now! I remember reading about the way they explode! Did you see that my results are negative? I might take some samples in next week when all the medication has ceased just to see whether I get a positive, it might be worth a try. I'm now desperately hoping it's not EPI, and if anything, that tli test will come back borderline just like Talassie's has which is probably only because of all that's going on inside.

Did you get negative results initially with the Giardia or were they positive first time around? Did you do 3 days on the trot for the dog, which of course, I haven't done, I only did the one coz I was so desperate to get a sample to them. I'm actually now wondering whether tomorrow might be a good one because we have finished the 3 day course of Panacur today so surely, if they had it, there would be dead ones in the sample,and that way, they could tell if they had had it? I'll be blooming glad when all this is over, so I can get my life back!!!! Bet you thought the same, and probably still are!!!!

If you've Panacur-ed Zena then there is no way you will get a positive result for Giardia if she did indeed have it. I would save your money Helena and buy a bottle of wine instead !!

Tai tested positive first time round. He had been ill for several weeks and I had been nagging OH incessantly to take the dog to the vet. We are insured, but because there is a £60 excess, he was being his usually tight *******-ness ! We had wormed Tai previously to the vet visit with Drontal about 3 or 4 weeks previously, but this would have made no difference to the result either way because Drontal will not kill protozoa.

Since Tai's initial diagnosis, we have dosed him 3 times with the liquid Panacur on a 3-day basis of 30 mls each day. This is a very robust dose, but it was necessary to do it twice more after the initial session because the Giardia reoccurred. We didn't have him retested, we just knew it had come back because of his symptoms. These were mainly horrendous breath, vomiting or retching, general malaise and a rictus appearance to his mouth.

He has been completely well now for about 8 weeks or so, full of the joys of summer, and eating well again now after a week or so of being off his grub because his number 1 girlfriend, a miniature schnautzer, was in season, and kept staging break outs and coming to call for him at our garden gate! She is back to normal now, and so Tai is tucking in to his grub once again!

Oh that's great to hear that Tai is back to his old self after what you must have gone through. I'm thinking the same myself, if ever, I get indications of this coming back, then I will be doing this 3 day treatment again, because there were no ill-effects, in fact, I had worse ill effects from using the Drontal's that I had previously used, this Panacur was a breeze to administer and I could sleep soundly at night knowing it wasn't going to give them any ill-effects. I suppose I will never know now then, just a shame that I went to the vet on a Saturday when samples couldn't have been done, but next time, at the very first signs of anything I will be potting it and taking it straight down there now that I know the ropes with this.

On looking back, Zena was often wretching for no reason, usually in the mornings and I mentioned this to my breeder, so we decided to give her a bonio or markie before our morning walk in the hope that it settled her stomach, but I changed that to a bit of live yoghurt which seemed to do the trick. She also vomited if she ate too quickly, i.e. a bit of sunday roast joint added to her kibble would sometimes be thrown up, that meal the other day when the vet nurse told me to give her a whole cupfull of that RC kibble which I knew would be too much for her in one go, she's not used to that amount of food, her own kibble is heavier and because she has 4 meals a day, her meals are quite small and I prefer it that way.

This has been more than an interesting thread to me, it's taught me a lot, it's taught me what to look out for in the future too, but hopefully, we won't have anymore of it anyway.

Tonight's poo was almost totally normal with Georgie and has been that way for 2 days now, and Zena did a fully formed one tonight be it a bit of a weird colour, at least we're getting there. Once we get rid of the SIBO with the ab's and start getting the pro-biotics into them I'm sure things will be totally back to normal. Oh, and those pigeons, they're gonna go too!!!!! Thanks again Gnasher, most informative, I wish you all the best for the future with Tai, but knowing what you know, at least you can keep it under tight control hey! Good luck, and thanks again.