Tapeworm!

Well, add it to the list of trials. Today, perhaps giving away my strange nerdy-ness, I went to inspect Jax's stool after he finished his morning pass. What did I see but a little white body. Upon using a stick to probe the stool a bit more thoroughly, I discovered not one but a few of these small white bodies, moving ever so slowly. You guessed it: tapeworm segments.

So, I hit #1 on the speed dial (because that's the vet these days) and asked what action to take. Happily, it's no big deal. For $12 I got a couple of vermicidal pills and the prospect of seeing my dog pass a dead tapeworm very soon.

I thought I was getting a puppy. I got a walking biology lab.

The next question is obvious, I think. Why did he get it, and where might he get it again? I can think of three possibilities. According to the vet the tapeworm is transmitted by flees and rodents (our own little Plague!). Jax can get the worm either by ingesting an infected flea or rodent (I think the also "ingesting" applies to the rodent, but not clear). The first possibility is that Jax got the worm from a decomposing squirrel head that he found a few weeks ago. A singularly unpleasant trinket to take away from him, I assure you. The second possibility involves our back yard. Just about two weeks ago I saw some sort of rodent bouncing around our yard. I'm really not sure what it was, but my guess is a vole. I saw it again two days ago. So, there is the possibility of flea transference, or that Jax has found at some point the by-products of natural selection in the vole community. I dunno. And the final possibility is that he got the worm during his stay at the animal hospital after the mitaban dip. The only reason I suspect this is because he had been noticeably putting on weight just before we took him up for the vaccines and dip, and has been thinning pretty much since then. We'll see. I may go on a crusade against voles in the yard. I'm not sure.

Anyway, the ivermectin is treating him very well. We're up to the full dosage now for his demodectic mange. No nasty neurological side effects that we can tell. If anything it makes him hyper. He's reached the terrible adolescent stage and I'm feeling pressure to quash some troublesome behavior (like his little fits of insane exhuberance when he meets strange people or dogs) before it's too late.

But for now, I have to continue writing a paper on the nonlinear dynamics of rainfall. My self-imposed deadline is this week and I'm woefully behind.