coon hound paralysis

[michigan Todd]

anyone ever have this happen to their hound? My best young hound came down with it and I am just concerned that he may end up being re infected or losing stamina. Any input would be appreciated.

[TomJr]

Scroll down and you will see a topic with same name except coonhound is one word. Looked like some decent info there. Hope he gets better fast with no lasting effects.

[twist]

Make sure the vet gives medicine to keep kidneys working. I have had this happen before he should make a full recovery.

[Jeff Eberle]

the virus attacks the dogs nervous system or spinal cord and causes it to lose control of its muscles. hound suffer from this disease in a wide range of severity. in other words a mildly affected hound will appear to be weak or wobbly for a couple of days, and a severly affected one will completely lose control of all muscles except those in the head and neck, and they will remain in that pitiful condition for several months. most sufferers are somewhere near the middle of those two extremes. at this time there is no preventive or cure. all you can do is keep feeding & watering the dog, keep it well bedded in something very soft, and roll it to a new position several times a day . eventually almost all dogs with this diease start to show faint signs of improvement, and a few weeks or months later they appear to be completely normal again. however, some never do regain their full strength and muscle tone, and some that do seem completely recovered suffer from periodic though usually milder relapses. (Got that from a book) Jeff

[Mike Leonard]

I lost the best coon hound I ever owned to this malady. Blue Moon Rock (Earl) was out of Elbert Vaughn's Blue Mack and an Earl Hill Ark Valley Blue female. I was hiude hunting hard back in those days and the coon were thick and the fur money was big for very broke young family man. I was skinning about 500 coon a fall and Earl was the reason I was cleaning up. He fought tons of coons and never suffered anything that a shot of combiotic and a day or two wouldn't fix. But I think some coons must be carriers and others are not. He came down with it. my vet being from Missouri was familiar with the problem but up front he told me he would never be the same he was right.

I had another dog that was a littermate to Van Johnson's LB dog. He came down with the same symptoms I mean identical and this dog had never seen a coon. It took some time but they finally diagnosed him with Coccidiousis. Usually picked up from the droppings of birds. This dog was treated but didn't last long either.

[michigan Todd]

Just figured I would give you guys a follow up report on the dog. He was down and unable to get up for about 3 weeks then within a week and a half he was up and going. He had little strength (crazy how fast the muscles waste away when they get NO use), but within a month he was pretty good. It has been almost 2 months I would say and the dog will run behind the 4-wheeler like nothing ever happened to him! Hope he has some bottom end left, I guess training season will tell the real truth, but right now he looks 100%. Thanks for the input. Seems like guys have had a big range of out comes with this problem. I am going to try to keep this dog away from coons from now on though.