he he he, keep calling Gnasher 'old' she won't have it she is older than I am She should be on soon, and she will be able to tell you all about EH and what happened then!!!

Thanks T, that's what I thought, the wormer might be giving him some jip then? Poor boy. I just picked up his collar and he shot up off the floor, so I'm not too bothered. Then I threw them both out into the garden for a play and he was walking around, had a wee, and a nice roll and sloped back in to take up his position right across my kitchen floor once again, all 55 kgs of him!!!! That takes some stepping over I can tell you!!!! He just went back out for a poo, bet he feels better now, and it was brown, with only a small amount of the yellow stuff, so they're both definitely on the mend now!!!

Lol! I meant it in an "endearing" kind of way, she doesn't sound old to me in the slightest (grovel, grovel.... )

So glad to hear the dogs are on the mend! and pleased to report that as from today, Coco is totally back to normal!!

yes often wormers upset the tummy.but its them doing their job,dont be alarmed.plz keep us updated.x

Oh that's great news Wendyann, I was wondering how the dear Coco was getting on with his! I think you and me both ought to think about putting pro-biotics into our dogs to keep up the good bacteria in the gut, thereby not allowing the bad to gain access! Even by way of those Probiotic treats should do the trick! Good luck with Coco let's hope we have no more of this. Georgie just did me a nice solid brown one too, so both of mine are on the mend, but I'm still very interested to hear my results just to see what it WAS, so I'll let you know.

I thought as much from what I used to see when I wormed the horse so often, although thank God Zena doesn't seem to be showing any ill effects from this 2nd dose today. Thanks for the reassurance, it has put my mind at rest!

Helena : hi there darling ... Tawneywolf has just hit a very large milestone and thus is FIVE YEARS OLDER THAN ME ... so she is telling porkie pies and YOU MUST IGNORE HER. She WAS one of my bestest friends, but now is relegated to the ranks of friend. (TW : I will sort you out later, may God forgive you for the lies !!)

Tai did indeed contract Giardia from the human sewage sludge that the farmer spread on the fields right on the edge of which we live and exercise him twice a day. He was ill for several weeks before I eventually managed to persuade OH to take him to the vet. OH and I were ill too, with blinding headaches for no reason, nausea, diarrhoea interspersed with chronic constipation (something from which we never normally suffer because we have such a healthy diet). We had done our homework on the internet, and actually thought that Tai had stapphylococcus aureus, but it actually turned out to be Giardia and the vet told us we must get to the doc immediately because we would have it too. We did, we had to take 3 fecal samples in for testing, taken every other day over a period of 6 days. It is notoriously hard to diagnose in humans, but easy in dogs. Mine came back positive, hubby's not, but the doctor treated him too because it is so infectious he was bound to have it too. Giardia is a protozoa found in human sewage, and it is very rare in this country for humans to catch it. Most human infections have been caught abroad whilst on holiday. It is directly traceable back to the disgusting but legal habit of spreading partially treated human sewage sludge on arable fields as far as human infection is concerned. For the dog, he most likely caught it off the sticks that we used to throw for him on the set aside around the arable fields which have been fertilised with the HSS. Giardia is found in human sewage in this country ... you only need one human being excreting Giardia-infected faeces out into the local sewage farm for that farm to quickly be badly infected with the protozoa. It spreads via cysts ... when the giardia is present in the intestine, it reproduces by causing "explosions" of these cysts. This is why it is so hard to diagnose in human faeces ... you have to have a sample with the cysts in apparently to diagnose it. No dog and certainly no human should be infected with Giardia in this country. It is only contracted from faeces. So it is not a good practice at all to spread human poo on the fields !!

That said, how do you treat it. Panacur is the only "wormer" that will kill protozoa like Giardia. Our vet recommended we use liquid Panacur, and for a dog of Tai's weight we had to dose him with 30 mls once a day for three days. This is a very strong dose - normally, when we dose him for worms, we would only do it once of course. Obviously with Zane, Helena, your vet will advise you of the dose, but this is what our vet advised. I think actually on the Panacur box it tells you what to do for Giardia, and the dosage rate is once a day for 3 days, and then so many mls per pound of body weight. Basically, for dogs that's all you have to do. With Tai, the Giardia reoccurred 3 times, so 3 times more we dosed him with the liquid Panacur as per the above recipe. It is about 10 weeks now since the last session, and touch wood he has remained well. We think this is because that bitterly cold weather we had in March/April with all that snow killed off the remaining spores on the land. However, they are just about to cut the barley, and the farmer will be spreading this poison again. We cannot avoid it here, because my kitchen window is literally a few feet from the set-aside where this human **** is dropped by the tractors as they spray it all over the arable land! It is absolutely disgusting, we have had Environmental Health out to interview me, but they say until more humans than just me and OH get sick, there is nothing they can do. Animals don't count apparently. We have got Tai with Giardia, next door's labrador has been very ill with camplylobacter, the other side's GSD has been very ill and was dosed for Giardia which sorted him out, next door to him there is a retriever who is very ill with some sort of gut infection, so it's no joke. But they are only dogs, so they don't count

OH and I have done everything we can to stop the farmer spreading this stuff again, but because it is legal we cannot stop him. It will eventually be banned in this country, like it is in Holland and Scandinavia, but for now it is legal. There is a Code of Practice, which our farmer broke, but it is only voluntary, not mandatory. I was so ill myself and the treatment was so unpleasant that if I get ill again, I will be suing !!

Good luck with Zane, Helena. Let me know how you get on.

I didn't want to muddle the two issues Helena, but basically if Zane eats cow, horse or sheep poo, none of these will hurt him. Dogs do not catch the same worms as herbivores with the exception of tape worms, but these they will mainly get from pigs. If you worm Zane regularly, you never need fear that he will "catch" tapeworms. Pigs are different, as they are omnivores, and do carry some nasties apart from tapeworm that dogs could potentially get. I have never known a dog to eat pig poo, but I guess it could happen.

Another thing that this is telling you is that there are some vital nutrients missing from Zane's diet. I really would consider putting him onto the BARF diet ... being a GSD, he will be more sensitive to a diet heavy in carbohydrate, such as a commercial dry or wet food. It is very common for GSDs to be unable to tolerate commercial foods, and I am proud to say that I have probably saved the life of more than one GSD alone by recommending the BARF diet.

Any dog that shows more than a passing interest in eating herbivore poo is trying to tell his owner that his diet is an issue. Even Tai, who is BARF fed, will have the odd nibble on horse poo, and I let him. At the same time, it makes me examine what I fed him over the last few days to make sure that he has had a good balanced diet of raw meat, bone, fruit and veg. I hope you don't mind me mentioning it.

Blimey That is dreadful!!! but a very interesting read I have to say. From what I gathered it seemed to me that it was NOT used in this country at all, mainly Nigeria (wonder why???? They only have to look at the streets to find it!!!) and Asia, so why oh why are WE allowing this to be spread willy nilly around our Countryside then, with public rights of way going through the land. This must be an awful situation for you to be living in, so I feel for you, and it's a blooming good job that farmer doesn't have the likes of me living in your house, although knowing you as I do, it's probably just as bad for him having YOU living there if I know you!

When all this has settled down with Zena, I'm definitely going to consider the raw, I've always wanted to do it and I always said, if I ever got another gsd puppy, then that would be the wtg with it knowing what I know now about raw feeding. I hasten to add, since that one episode of tucking into that cow pat, she has always walked straight past them ever since, and she never eats horse poo and never has, even though Georgie relished it when he first came here, he doesn't bother now. At the moment, it's the rabbit poo in the garden from that wild rabbit, and tonight it was a big dollop of (I hope!) bird poo, coz it was black/white, Georgie scraped the ground where it was, I rushed to get a bit of kitchen roll, but by the time I got back to it,it had gone (into Zena's gob) and she was taking great delight in rolling in the remains, so I suspect even that could have been maybe a hedgehog coz it didn't smell of fox and nor does she!

I've been given the equivalent of Panacur (Gramofen) and the correct dosage of 12 mgs for Georgie per day and 6 for Zena per day for 3 days. During my Googling I realised that if it IS Giardia, then the only way to get rid of it completely is to do this treatment, because the ab's will only temporarily eradicate it and it will keep coming back. I also learned that it can live in the ground/soil/body for months/years (I think I am correct in saying up to 9 years in the soil ) Like any puppy,Zena was eating her own poo if I wasn't quick enough but only the very first one of the day. I'm also worried about having visited mum in the care home, you never know what could have been on the floor do you in those kind of places! Our own house is spanking new with all the conversations, refurbishments, carpets etc. and so is the front garden (the old one being completely dragged out and replaced) the rear yard the same, everything was dragged out by digger and replaced with new limestone chippings, so I really am at a loss to know exactly where she could have got such a diabolical protozea or whatever it's called! I might not even be that yet, I don't know until I get those results, but no wonder the vet asked me if WE had been ok in ourselves, which we both have, nothing has changed with either of us, so that's relatively good news.

Thanks very much for putting all of that info up for me Gnasher, and I'm truly sorry you have to endure living in such diabolical circumstances, and those poor dogs suffering around you let alone your own, it's just not acceptable is it. Too right, if you're ill again, you sue the pants off that mindless hard up farmer (it's very cheap ya see, I found that out too!!!!).

This giardia is rife in puppies because they can get it from the mother and her faeces, and considering this is the only way to cure it, other normal wormers I've been using just wouldn't work, then you never know, she could have always had it and given it to Georgie. I have to say, her poo has always stunk to high heaven over the past couple of months, and yet since today, it doesn't have that smell, and that in itself is quite strange to me. I'm guessing the worming programme we're on has killed off whatever bacteria was inside her and hopefully the last dose tomorrow will get rid of it forever, be it giardia or whatever. I can't wait to get those results it's going to be really interesting.

Thanks again, much appreciated Gnasher, and I take no notice of that June anyways, even her dogs are known tell porkies!!!!