BLASTO

has anybody ever treated their dog for blasto, just looking for info and experiences that you may have encountered. thanks all for any help.

From what I know, Blasto is all over, especially where there is low water and shorelines are able to have the spores come out? I winter in the Tomorrow River watershed which is a hotspot. I think it is more prevalent when not froze or snow?

I have heard that the far north east part of the state is kind of a hot spot....vilas, forest, Oneida etc. I'm from shawano and there are plenty of cases around here too.

Is Blasto found all over the state? What areas specifically do you think your dogs contracted it? Can you get it all times of the year other than winter? Thanks

Best of luck Jeff...Hope Leroy makes a full recovery...he's a tough boy!

I lost a Lab to Blasto six years ago. Nothing would stop the rapid advance of this disease .He was gone in two weeks.Young dogs have a better survival rate I'm told.It's more prevalent East of the Mississippi although a friend of mine who lives in Western Iowa had his Lab get the disease.It's a fungal disease prevalent in humid areas.He spent over five thousand on medications. I don't think there's a vaccine or they'd be selling it. Hunting dogs have about a ten year life span no matter how much money you are coerced into spending.

thanks shad... Leroy is doing very well at home, wounds healing good and he's eating and walking around dandy even had a few small poo's last night which is good.

Hey we had a dog with Blasto. We got pills from Mexico and went through Amherst vet near Stevens Point. They had the contact info, maybe they can help. Their phone number is 715-824-2545. That was a number of years ago but they should still the information. Good luck!

thank you

There was another thread on LL about this awhile back. I had a black lab that contracted it when he was 9. Thought we might have to put him down, but he responded very well to the drugs and bounced back quickly. He lived for another 4 years. The meds were very expensive even from Walmart. We ended up buying the meds from Canada and it was about 75% cheaper than buying here. As someone else noted, make sure vet has experience with it. We tried 2 differnt vets before we one that could id the issue.

My Springer contracted blasto at 4 years and actually went blind in 1 eye in 2 days. It's costly to treat but meds from Canada help. 6 months on meds and a my vet sent blood (and urine sample) work to Madison and she was given a clean bill of health. Lungs cleared with no signs of the disease. She hunted until she was 13 when we had to put her down. I wish you the best of luck with your pup.

sorry for the story, this is just a copy of an email I sent to my dad so pretty much the deal as of now. thanks for all the feed back! Brought Leroy home last night he’s doing quite well eating a bland diet now before transitioning back to his normal food, just beef and rice for now, he’s on 3 meds 2x a day so morning and night he’s taking pills for pain, antibiotic, and another chewable vitamin or something. He ate his cup last nite and chowed down his cup this morning with his meds. He is peeing and it may take a few days for him to poo seeing as things need to get working again and learn how to process etc . literally our hump day for him is Wednesday usually things go aria in that time frame, leaking, infection, etc etc so if we get through this week with no problems which I think he’s fine we will be up and running again and mostly ready to go in 14 days or so to get staples removed. What happened was he had a growth in his small intestine up around the colon area it was a rather large mass bigger than a golfball; so this is a rather common surgery but invasive too so they basically field dressed him and put him back together. They cut out the section with the growth and put the two ends back together clamped off each end and filled it up with fluid to check for leaks and sewed him up, so he’s shy about 6-7” of intestine which won’t make a difference. During that they check the rest of the intestines and organs for growths or infection and put um back in and stapled him up so he’s sliced open from his balls up to about his chest and stapled I feel so so bad for him poor dog bruised red swollen belly with metal staples keeping him closed but hey it could be worse! Reasons for this vary they are testing his pee for blasto which is common in WI, they are doing a culture of the fluid that was in him for bacteria to see what it is and how to treat it, and the growth is in for histo-path to see what it is and how it got there. We hope it’s just a bacteria from a puncture from eating a stick or something and not cancer or something if it is blasto he will need a anti-fungul drug routine which can take up to 2 months. Other than that hopefully just some antibiotics and time he will be good as gold. We won’t get test results for a few days so keeping our fingers crossed, um as of last night our bill was just a little over $4,000 bux which we thought easily 5-6 grand so I guess better hahah soooo hahha like you said id pay 40,000! These boys are our life, we got do what cha gatta do ya know! I gatta adjust my work schedule some this week so I can get home earlier cuz he cant run jump chase etc cuz those staples cant rip open so he has the big cone collar on when we are gone I put a real collar through the loops and sinched it down so he hopefully cant get out of the dam thing but we will see later today, he’s been sore and sleepy which is good so hopefully he’ll just lay around when we are gone but we can’t risk getting that wound infected at this point. He’s doing pretty darn good for what he went through, dogs are amazingly tough.

Sorry to hear about your parents pup. Your right tho, short life to begin with and to be tackling such an illness at a young age. Your right about the Meds being costly. Real costly actually. We did find some relief ordering thru Canada as well. Our pup was a fighter and we weren't about to give up on her either.

My parents had a Springer with blasto, his was in the lungs.Cost of meds was outrageous. ..but this was 10 years ago. We actually got his meds from Canada and was less than half the price. He did beat the blasto, but unfortunately had a large tumor form in his chest about a year later and had to be put down. Not sure if it was blasto related or from the meds or just a coincidence. Poor pup spent half of his short life being ill.

Good to hear he's back home. Keep us posted on the test results. Our first symptom was sores on her feet. It was hard to detect since it was in the middle of bird hunting season. I easily blew it off initially as battle wounds in the brush. Over a week or so, sores were not healing. And the testing begun...... She dodged the respiratory ailments but did have it pretty bad in the eye's and joints. Darn near blind for a few days. Quick action on eye drop Meds brought her vision back 80-90% in the end. Swelling/ Arthritis is starting to set in more common after outside time. High hopes he dodges the Blasto. I wouldn't wish that upon any pup or handler. Good luck

thanks for info..... had my GWP in for emergency surgery last night, for blockage in small intestines and they are testing for blasto as a cause amongst other things I don't know a lot about it other than it is a bad and takes awhile for it to clear up, just trying to get a bit more info if that's what it is we wont know anything for a few days yet but we get to bring him him home already tonight and he's doing well. thanks for the help.