One of my 3 week old labrador puppies was admitted to hospital last night, foaming at the mouth having had a fit. The only different thing he has had in the last couple of days is Drontal puppy wormer but the vet said the wormer would not be the cause of the fit. My instincts tell me different. Has anybody else had a similar reaction to Drontal? The hospital are doing blood tests today and the poor little mite is currently on a drip.

So sorry to hear of your pup, and I hope that he will be ok, how frightening!

I have used Drontal puppy for 3 litters with absolutely no adverse affects at all, my mother has always used it, as many other breeders I know.

As with all products and medicines there may be exceptions, but personally I find it to do a fantastic job, never had any ill puppies or worms at all.

My thoughts are with you and your poorly pup, I hope he recovers and is well again soon.

Let us know the outcome of the blood tests.

Our pup was wormed at 10 weeks with Drontal and had a terrible bout of mucousy diarrhea which the vet said was caused by the wormer. We now only use Droncal once a year and use Panacur in between on his advice.

Hope your pup makes a swift recovery.

Last year our 3 week old pup had a reaction to the wormer we gave her and she was very sick and inhaled it , it was touch and go but a year on shes with us perfect just tiny :D the vet said it was the wormer to blame for the illness and how small she turned out . we used Milbemax from that moment on and Ive had noo problems with it
Hope your little one gets better soon

It's like everything in life one suits one person won't suit another.  Unfortnately until your dog has a reaction to something there's no way of knowing.   Most breeders seem to recommend Drontal over any of the other wormers.

Hi Beverley,
I've luckily had no experience personally but had a friend whos cat reacted badly. Fingers crossed for your little one.

Marie

Until my recent litter I've always used the Drontal Puppy Suspension with no ill effects.  However with my last litter, they were fine with the first does at 3 weeks but when I gave them the 2nd dose at 5 weeks they were very sick but thankfully not as bad as your little mite.

I personally would contact the manufacturers & inform them.  I had to do this with Panacur last week (my fault :rolleyes: ) plus Frontline a few weeks back & both companies were exptremely helpful, spoke to my Vet & then logged the reactions.

I hope your little one is soon well again & back home with you.

I have no doubt some puppies are quite affected by differing worming treatments after all we are talking about chemicals required to kill another living creature but I wonder if it is possible for puppies to suffer from febrile fits like human babies can before they have fully developed temperature control.  Does anyone know?  I don't know where you are but most of the UK has had very high ambient temperatures lately.

Thank you to everyone for all your replies and concern. My pup is still in hospital, the blood tests did not show anything and he is still on a drip but has been lapping a bit of milk today. I am in the north of England and today's temp has been 95 degrees. I was hoping the vet would suggest the heat to be the cause of his seizures, although the whelping box area is being kept cool with fans and I have been syringing water into the pups' mouths. The vet is still completely ruling out the wormer as the problem and to my dismay is now suggesting that there may be little that can be done for him.

So sorry to hear that Beverley - keeping fingers crossed that he shows improvement soon!

I hope your pup is feeling better x

I use Drontal, but I dont start worming my pups until they are 4wks, 6wks and 8wks, I dont have a large breed and find starting worming at 4 wks is fine. I will not use Pancur as its been known to cause lots of problems.   I do hope your pup pulls through its really worrying when pups are ill, could the pup not have had an epilectic fit? I don't know if pups as young as yours can get fits.  I know my friends yorkie has been spayed due to having epilepsy from a young age.

I'm so sorry to hear about your pup Beverley and hope he gets better soon.  I do think you should go with your instincts on this one - it is the wormer that's caused the problem.  Do report it, it's all too easy to let it go because you are so upset (quite rightly) but do report it!
From my experience it's almost impossible to get anyone to admit that a drug they have either administered or prescribed would cause any harm!
Maria

I have to agree with everyone here.
IOf you think it is the drontal...report it. Last year I had a rescue puppy who was perfectly fine until he had Drontal suspension. The vet says he had a large worm burden but I am not sure. He ended up in vets on a drip over 7 days . Tests for normal puppy disease was negative (parvo,camphlobacter etc).  The rest of his litter were all wormed a week later with the same stuff and all took very ill and we actually lost 2 of them.  It took those 7 days on a drip and a further 2 weeks of force feeding before he was on the road to recovery. Even at 9 months he seems to have some intestinal problems from the whole inicident.....(he took a bloat twice and he is still a young small mix puppy)  My dog is corgi/jack russel mom with a full border collie dad. So maybe it was the collie part who was reacting to the wormer....

Cheers
Julei

My breeder gave me drontal plus to give to Roscoe.  At 8 1/2 weeks I broke it and gave him a quarter tablet as instructed,  approx 3 hours later he vomited.  This made me quite concerned and having read previous threads on CD I see several other people have had the same result.  When I mentioned it at the vets the receptionist said that she had heard of this before.  Our vets use Milbemax which I will be giving to Roscoe next time hopefully without any ill effects.

I hope your pup recovers soon

Clare

Many thanks to you all for sharing your experiences. I now have my pup back at home with Mum and although he is weak, he does wag his tail at the smell of his Mummy. All the test results showed no cause for his problem, so I am non the wiser as to what might be the matter with him. We want to give him the best chance, so we will monitor him closely and hope he doesn't suffer any more fits. I will obviously be changing the wormer for the whole litter and at the end of all of this trauma, we are going to keep him here with us.

So glad to hear he's a lot better!  - hope he keeps improving :)

Glad you have got the puppy back home again and that he keeps improving dailly.

I'm so pleased your puppy is at home now and much better!
Have you thought about using homeopathic wormers for him in the future?  The reason I ask is that if it was the wormer that caused the problems in the first place, then they are much more likley to cause further problems for him in the future. 

It generally seems the case, certainly from many posts on here, that where one wormer does not suit another will.  Worms can be a serious problem for a puppy and veterinary prescribed medications are the only ones with scientific evidence to support their efficacy.