Hello friends, old and new. I was meaning on catching up with everyone after the holidays, but something has come up with one of my dogs and so I'm back now...hoping that someone here has some advice for me.

I have a smooth coated Border Collie that I worked with a lot at Triple Crown and wound up adopting. Her name is Fizz and she's about 2.5 years old.

Here's the deal. Yesterday morning...she was fine. Spastically, energetically and wildly fine. Then around 10, I noticed two things that may or may not be connected to the real problem.

First, I noticed a hot spot on her back, near her shoulder blades. At the same time, I noticed that she had a highly engorged tick on top of her head. I got rid of the tick and flushed it after only a brief look at it: It appeared to be a simple female dog tick. Also, she has a very slight irritated spot on her hind foot.

I have a vet that lives with me and he got me some topical spray for her hotspot. She had a similar hot spot at TCA, and the spray worked then.

A few hours later, she was acting VERY sluggish and her hot spot looked significantly worse...it had a large, hard swollen area underneath and around the hot spot. My vet friend took her temp and it was 105.4. So we're thinking infection from the hot spot and my friend went and got her some Simplicef to treat it. Later than night she started...twitching, sort of. Little rhytmic pulses that we figured was a result of the fever. However, she was eating and drinking and her gums and heart rate were normal.

This morning, Fizz had the same temp, only now her gums have gone really pale, which is way more alarming. So my friend took her to the hospital that he works at to run some tests: initially for tick-born illnesses because the results are back immediately. She'll be staying there for more tests and fluids if nothing comes back on the initial tests.

The only other thing that may or may not be relevant is that her coat has drastically changed in the last week or so. She used to be rabbit-soft--everyone commented on it. Within the last week she started shedding worse than any other dog I've ever seen (and I have a GSD and a Corgi!) and her coat is now very coarse and dry. I figured it was because she was a Texas dog transplanted into a very cold environment and that could very well be the case, but I'm just mentioning it in case that combined with the other things means anything.

So...does any of this sound familiar to anyone? It has been below freezing for awhile up here, so where she got the tick is beyond me. I assume it was in the house somewhere. Also, we very rarely have dog ticks here...it's almost always deer ticks. However, when engorged, the dog tick and the Lone Star tick look very similar if you're not looking closely and I'm wondering if we somehow brought back a tick from Texas and this is RM spotted fever?

Anyway, I'm really concerned for this little girl. She's a spitfire and a crackerjack narc dog, S&R dog, and competition OB dog, and agility dog. She's VERY smart, well-trained and valuable in that respect. But more than that...she's a sweetheart and a lovebug and my whole family has fallen hard for her. She keeps looking at me with these soft, pleading eyes and it's killing me that she's obviously feeling so rotten.

Anyway, we're not sure if the tick and/or hotspot and the fever and pale gums are all related or just some random coincidence.

Any advice or thoughts are welcome!

I didn't mean for this to be my first post back on LB, but that's what happens, I guess. Thanks in advance, all.

Wow, scary stuff indeed, Amber. Poor Fizz. I wish I had advice or a similar experience to share with you. It sounds like you're in very good hands with your in-house vet.

I'm sending good thoughts your way...I hope they figure this out quickly and get her healthy and back home soon.

I bet the tick is involved...but I don't know about different kinds of ticks-only deer ticks. Qira's breeder told me that if a dog is ever suddenly paralyzed, check for ticks anywhere along the spinal column...I would think that her head could also cause the same thing. I had no idea a tick was capable of paralyzing a dog, but he has seen it several times. He currently lives in Florida, but has lived in KY and PA as well as Costa Rica, so I don't know what region he's referring to.

Pale gums is VERY serious...which you already know. Geez, I wish I had something more helpful to say. I can call Steve and ask about ticks, though. Sometimes old time dog people know more than they teach vets in school...it's worth a try.

Thanks Sarah, I appreciate it. The update is that she doesn't have any tick-born diseases that are common to our area. However, that doesn't include RMSF. Looks like she's going to get another antibiotic (Doxy) just in case. If it is RMSF, she should respond to the Doxy within hours. I loathe giving her all these drugs but she's VERY sick now and we don't have time to do nothing while the other tests are done.

Uhg. I hate it when dogs are sick.

 Quote: Jenni Williams

Sometimes old time dog people know more than they teach vets in school...it's worth a try.

I totally agree. And my friend is very smart, and very invested in helping her get better. But he hasn't been out of school for very long and I don't mind getting other thoughts on it. He's going to post to a vet discussion board, too, to see if anyone else in the country has seen anything similar.

Nothing she has quite fits anything. Oh, her anemia test came back normal. Totally strange.

I copied your post and sent it to him. I had never heard of a tick on the spine causing paralysis...I would FREAK if my dog seemed paralyzed. These old school tricks are invaluable, IMO.

She's not paralyzed...she just twitches slightly. It's sort of like if she had hiccups, only she doesn't. It's all very weird. We need the canine version of Dr. House.

Oh, I know. I was just saying that I asked HIM b/c he was the one who mentioned that a tick is capable of that....if they're capable of causing THAT, perhaps this is tick-related and he has some other ideas. I called and asked him to read his email and let me know asap if he has any ideas.

I've been trying to find an article I read not too long ago on dogs dying on the east coast from ticks. Not to try to panic you or anything. I've had 2 dogs with Lyme's in the past. This last fall one of my dogs coat became like yours. His coat was beautiful and glossy to falling out, dry and brittle. Wasn't himself, not eating... His tick test came back negative, but I didn't believe it, he had recently had a tick. I knew there was something wrong with him, my vet listened to me, and we did a heavy round of doxy and in a day or day and a half he was back to himself. We finished the round of antibiotics, which takes forever, but is very important. I'll keep looking for that article, I don't remember what I was looking for when I came upon it which makes it a little more difficult, and for some reason I missed saving it.

Steve doesn't know of anything that causes what you're decribing. He brought up Lyme as well. I will play around on google and see if I find anything.
http://www.mirage-samoyeds.com/tick.htm
http://blackgsd.googlepages.com/


Edited by Jenni Williams (12/23/2008 11:07 AM)
Edit reason: another link