Have had a friend on this morning that has a puppy from me. He has been having issues with diarrhoea that clear up while on AB's but comes back again. They have now gone down the route of having sample tested for everything. This morning he has started again with diarrhoea and she has rung the Vets. Most of the tests are back but are very confusing so the Vet is going to try to speak to the Lab to fully understand what they are saying. However, he has tested positive for Parvo! Now the Vet says don't worry as most pups will test poitive for this as they have recently had the live vaccine, but, we are now starting to think that he may be vaccine intolerant. She is talking to the Vet again after surgery and will be asking more questions and hopefully the Vet will have more answers from the Lab, but, I would be interested in anyone having had this type of problem or any input  about this. The puppy is bouncing around, no issues other than when he goes to the toilet he is loose. He is showing no signs of illness, no lethargy and is still putting on weight and has plenty of body on him. He is now 4 months old. The rest of the pups are fine, she has a good friend who also has one of the pups and she sees her every day, that pup has had no problems with her toilet and I also have one of the pups who has had no problems.

I had a positive parvo result come back in a litter that i bred when they were 6 weeks old. Only a few of the litter were affected (sickness,diarrhoea with blood)) but it turned out to be a FALSE positive which apparantly is quite common with the vets testing. We were suspicious of the false positive as they did not seem poorly enough for Parvo and we had the PCR test done which checks the DNA in the puppy to see if they have had the virus.This came back negative thank goodness and the lab told us that often tests come back positive for Parvo when it is  some other type of virus .Maybe if your friend is still worried she could ask them to do the DNA PCR test.Has to be sent away and takes a while to come back but gives you a definite result.

He doesn't sound poorly enough for Parvo....just my own opinion as when my litter had the false positive i had a weeks wait for the DNA result to come back,which was hell, and spoke to so many people,some of which had experienced it and was told it goes through them like the black death so i think if it was a true case of Parvo he would be alot sicker by now and the diarrhoea has a vile,putrid smell which you never forget.

Hope the little man improves soon

Ali

Ive also had a foster pup arrive here with the same type of symptoms, she was tested positive for parvo, however it wasnt, it was campylobacter.  Blood testing shows positive for parvo in campylobacter http://www.affieloverbreedclubs.co.uk/campylobacter.htm

It needs a much longer course of AB's and it can get sorted quickly. 

Hope pup feels better soon, my foster pup really picked up quickly once the right type of antibiotics were given.

Brilliant, thanks for the replies. My first thought when his poo wasn't clearing up was to have him tested for Campylobacter and so is one of the reasons that she asked for all the tests to be done. I am now even more convinced that that is what is wrong with him but I wasn't aware that they can get a positive reading for Parvo, so once again thank you for the info. I have tried to telephone her but she isn't in at present but have sent her the link so she can read it herself.

Sounds like Campylobacter, which can be very resistant and hard to eradicate often needing several goes with AB's.

I don't know if Campylobacter has the same smell but real Parvo has a smell that fills the house. It is a smell you will never forget.

On the link it mentions it doesn't have that 'foul smell'. If it's not this bug , then I would look at diet , or even the water.

Giardia infection (can be treated usign panacur at a longer dosage timescale) can cause prolonged dire rear.

If this were my pup and he was showing no signs of illness, and growing ok, and the above mentioned conditions all tested clear,  I would not persist with antibiotics, I would let his system sort itself out.

No there is no really bad smell about it. She is going to e-mail the link to her Vet and get him to ask the Lab to be more specific about the results. Funnily enough the results so far are so confusing that even the Vets are struggling to understand anything specific on them. Obviously though they can't talk to the Lab until Wednesday. Once again thanks for the input, I always know that there will be someone (or a few people) who can give me some answers. Always learning, and a great site to learn from!

> No there is no really bad smell about it.

Giardia has a smell too - like rotten eggs. So at least you're slowly working through what it isn't, even though you don't yet know what it is! Hope the lab get to the bottom of it (whoops!) soon!

Has it been considered that the diet may not be suitable that the puppy is fed? Even if it's a good quality food, it could be that the pup is sensitive to one or more of the ingredients?

UPDATE:

The tests are all back and the pup has Clostridium. The test had to go to Germany. He is clear of Campylobacter and Giardia and as for the Parvo the Vet says that he would expect to see Parvo in the results because of the live vaccine (only last vaccinated 7 weeks ago). The count for the Clostridium is massively high so that is why he is having such bouts of diarrhoea. He is on the correct AB so all should be well. However, the Vet did say that mostly they don't test for this and so it is often missed. Always worth knowing about. Thanks to all for you input.