Fighting Parvo
Overview of the treatment that I used to combat Parvo
Contact a veterinarian but this is what worked for me.
What kills the puppies are dehydration or secondary infections. The Parvo kills the puppy when they are so small that they have no reserves to draw on, or the infection drags on so long because of a weakened immune system, that the puppy loses the resources needed to recover. The immediate threats are dehydration and bacteria.
Antibiotics
As soon as you know it's Parvo you need to get them on antibiotics. Ampicillin is a broad spectrum antibiotic that works well but there are a few classes of bacteria resistant to it, so you need to combine it with Baytril which is also broad spectrum but kills everything Ampicillin doesn't and visa versa.
The vets will use ampicillin and flagyl with IVs but flagyl isn't injectable. So our vet made the mistake of giving us ampicillin with oral flagyl. But of course the puppy can't do anything oral and just vomits it back up. That's why we lost our first set of puppies, secondary infections that ampicillin alone couldn't prevent. Also they recommended doses of ampicillin that were insufficient for the threat of open intestines and small puppies with immature immune systems stunted by Pavo. So for antibitoics, intramuscular injections:
Ampicillin - 100mg/ml - 3 shots a day @ 0.4ml per shot for 5 lbs. or 0.5ml per shot for 6 lbs. puppies.
Baytril - 2.27% - 1 shot a day of 0.25ml.
Dehydration
All over the internet they'll tell you about products and concoctions you can use to hydrate your puppy and settle their stomachs. They might work on older large dogs but they do nothing for puppies, nothing gets absorbed it just gets thrown up. I had a puppy take 10cc of pedialyte every 10 minutes for an hour and I thought I was getting somewhere and then at the end of the hour everything came back up. Even after an hour of being in his system nothing got through and he dehydrated. Everything you put down their throat just makes things worse because then they have to suffer through vomiting. Likewise, enemas are ineffective. So you have to use IVs, subcutaneous injections or what our vet told us to use at home was intraperitoneal injections. She said this was far more effective than subcutaneous.
A 5 pound puppy needs 150ml of fluids a day for maintenance, 200ml/day with vomiting and diarrhea. This seems like a lot, but 8 hours after a 50ml injection you will see signs of dehydration. Tooie took a puppy to emergency one night and the vet injected the puppy with 50ml of fluids and said to come back in 2 days for another injection. One day later the puppy had died. Now, after very bad experiences, I know it had dehydrated. More bad advice.
For fluids, the best thing to use is Plasma-Lyte A. You can also use Normosol-R or at least use lactated Ringers solution if you can't get Plasma-Lyte. Our vets initially gave us a 0.9% solution of NaCl which is better than water but inadequate. Huge amounts of potassium chloride (KCl) are lost in vomiting and diarrhea so I had 20mEq. of KCl added to our Plasma-Lyte solution. It is also a good idea to give them vitamin B complex and vitamin B12. Our vet added 4ml of vitamin B12 (1000mcg/ml) to the solution too.
4 times a day using a 60ml syringe and a 20 gauge needle:
50ml of Plasma-Lyte A (from a 1000ml solution with 20mEq of KCl and 4ml of 1000mcg/ml vitamin B12 added).
Once a day:
Vitamin B complex - 0.1ml injected intramuscular
Vitamin B12 - 0.1ml to 0.2ml injected subcutaneous if not added to your hydrating solution.
If necessary:
Cerenia - 0.25ml inject subcutaneous - an antiemetic but has side effects - use only when vomiting is severe and do not use for more than 3 days.
You can also give them 50ml of powdered colostrum if you can get it, and Transfer Factor, derived from colostrum, made by 4Life, which boost the puppies immune response. I gave each puppy 2 caps of Transfer Factor a day added to their food. They all got it while they were eating, before and after they were infected if they got Parvo. Engystol by Heel is also good for boosting immune systems.
We got Tamiflu (15mg/ml) which is supposed to prevent the H1N1 virus from getting into people and it was thought to help prevent Parvo infection. It cost us $300 from Walmart and Walgreens wanted $700 for the same amount, but puppies that were getting it (0.25ml/day) still became infected and the newest study didn't find it beneficial so I wouldn't bother with it unless more information comes to light.
Intraperitoneal injection is done by lying the puppy on its back and injecting the fluids into the cavity surrounding the intestines. You inject around a finger's width below the belly button at a 30 degree angle up towards the head. There are pictures and clips of it being done on the internet. It's really important to sterilize everything really well with alcohol. Wipe the cap on the solution with alcohol before inserting the needle to draw up you hydrating solution and really wipe down the puppy's belly well with alcohol before inserting the needle.
As they start getting over the Parvo, which averaged around 5 days of not drinking for our puppies, you can try giving them some hydrating solution orally, and if they don't throw it up you can switch back to oral hydration (what a relief that is). It will take them a few days to get back to eating. I found tuna water, tuna, raw egg yolk and cooked egg white, a good start. I cooked up oatmeal and cooked liver with some water in a pot and gave them the starchy water from the oatmeal mixed with the broth from the liver and blended up clams, a good source of iron (better than meat). You can water down canned dog food to a soup so its easy on their stomach.