What diseases do dogs get at day care, boarding or dog parks?

Question

My puppy has giardia for the 3rd time. We went to the vet 4 days ago. The last time he was checked and the test was negative. My puppy is 11 months. With your experience with diseases, do you keep your dogs away from any of the following: Dog Parks, Dog Beaches, Day Care or boarding, Ponds/Lakes? I am tired of the giardia problem and not sure if I want to take him anywhere now. Two months ago he was badly attacked by a boxer / pit mix at the dog park also so never going back there.

Answer 1

yes.  NEver take them there.  kennel cough too.

***ADD

Put non fat plain yogurt in his/her food to reset an active bacteria in his digestive system.

Answer 2

Giardia is best known near stagnant water sources. They walk into it and l**k their paws and contract it usually this way.

Puppies really should not go to community dog parks until all their shots are done. They need to build an immune to them before they are exposed to them.

If your boarding your dog or allowing him to go to public dog environments get the bordatella shot. These shots prevent the well known kennel cough.

Also make sure they are on a heart worm prevention that also takes care of hookworms and roundworms. Heartguard takes care of all three of these nasty pests.

The giardia thing is honestly nothing you can really avoid because they can pick it up anywhere.

Hope this helps and enjoy your puppy!

Answer 3

Dogs can get whats called kennel cough from other dogs and its pretty much that they get a bad cough.

Answer 4

The list is pretty long as a dog can catch ANY contagious disease in places where they are in close contact with other dogs.  Most commonly is probably bordatella (kennel cough) and intestinal parasites.  Day care and boarding facilities are actually not that risky for contagious diseases if they are a good facility as these places will REQUIRE any dog staying with them to be up to date on all vaccinations (DHLPP, bordatella, and rabies) or vaccine titers and should also require a negative stool sample at least yearly.  Some facilities do not require these things and I would be more than a little hesitant to take my dogs there if that were the case.

As for the giardia, it is easy for a dog to pick that up nearly everywhere.  Stagnant water is a common source as is simply walking through an area where infested f***s are (and that could be anywhere in your neighborhood in addition to places like dog parks where lots of dogs go).  Also, if your 11 month old puppy has had it three times in the 9 months you've had him (assuming you got him at 8 weeks) I would start to suspect that you have never fully cleared the infection.  When we got our first dog, she had intermittent diarrhea or soft stools for the first four months we had her, then regularly had intermittent GI issues for the next three years.  Fecal checks never really turned up anything more than bacterial overgrowth and my vet wrote it off to her having a "sensitive" stomach (although sudden diet changes never seemed to trigger soft stools and one of her favorite treats was wasabi peas).Then we brought home a new puppy.  Shortly after the new arrival, both dogs had diarrhea.  Took in a stool sample and the vet had recently added a giardia snap test (instead of the fecal wet mount) to test for giardia and both dogs tested positive.  My vet now thinks that our first dog had giardia the whole time and when we were treating her for bacterial overgrowth she was getting just enough antibiotics to knock the infection low enough to put an end to the clinical symptoms but not enough to clear it (and when we brought home the puppy she gave it to him).  A longer round of antibiotics at a higher dose took care of the problem.

Answer 5

I still take all of my dogs out...You can't live in constant fear of diseases. You are past the parvo concern, no worries about rabies, shouldn't worry too bad about worms... The best thing you can do is familiarize yourself with, in your case where giardia comes from...(dirty, still water).

Answer 6

Kennel cough