I’m so sorry to hear about your struggles to cure Kyrie - I know it can be heartbreaking to watch your baby suffer. I have a question for you all since my own dog has been sick off and on for years now and the vets haven’t been able to figure out what is going on exactly. Through my research, I’ve been to make an educated guess that she is at least defficient in zinc, which is apparently common in huskies and whose symptoms matched hers with itchy red skin that can break out all over when she has a crisis outbreak about once a year. Normally, it just stays on her paws and doesn’t fully go away. I have a very difficult time to keep her from licking them constantly and hate to subject to her to booties and the collar to stop her all the time, but unfortunately it is the only thing that works. She is currently having one of her outbreaks and is barely eating on her own. I’ve been reading about wild oregano oil and was wondering if it is something you tried. If so, did it work and how much did you give her…I bought a highly concentrated version of the tincture and I’m hopefull. Any advice anyone is willing to give is more than welcome.

Keep your Courage and Hope alive Christie and all my prayers for you and Kyrie

Re: hypothyroid; I have had two goldens who tested low normal for thyroid with no hypothyroid type symptoms. They were both showing compromised immune systems at the time - we did a short course of thyroid and both got better. Since then I believe it was Jean Dodds who wrote that there are different breed normals for thyroid

Re: treatment with Baytril
My doctor now uses Zeniquin in place of Baytril. We used it for 8 weeks on a suspected deep dermal infection which later turned out to be something totally different..however while on 8 weeks blood tests remained normal

O3: I think I read somewhere that hospitals are using hyperbaric chambers now for bad cases of MRSA and also hospitals are starting to use “O3” for sterilizing.

Your vet or local hospital might know if “O3” is available for use in animal treatment

Katie

David Winston is a very well-known herbalist and is speaking on MRSA at an herbal medicine conference in MA soon. He has been writing on the subject. I haven’t tried to treat MRSA but two things…slathering honey on the wound is a definite possibility and is non-toxic for your pet. However, doesn’t work for internal. I don’t know if dogs can handle Oregon grape root tincture. Check with some herbalist vets. But there is some very good work on the synergy of two compounds (one a very weak antimicrobial and the other an inhibitor of the MDR pump) in Oregon grape root. Companies are now working on using this idea from nature for the surfaces of tables and such. See David Winston:

http://www.herbalist-alchemist.....WMay08.htm

My Collie had absolutely no signs of hypothyroidism either—except his inability to fight off the MRSA infection. A brief course of thyroid supplementation will not harm Kyrie even if her thyroid is normal. If I hadn’t tried thyroid supplementation with my Collie, his MRSA infection would have killed him.

We did try essential oils in the beginning, and they had no effect whatsoever. I used a number of herbal remedies, salves, washes, and teas, as I’ve been studying essential oils and herbal medicine for over 20 years. This thing laughed at everything I tried, which is why I ended up at the vet in the first place. I’d never seen anything like it.

The initial diagnosis was a spider bite, however, when I investigated this, I found that we have no brown recluse spiders in San Francisco, that nearly all MRSI infections in dogs are initially misdiagnosed as a spider bite, and that was actually a highly, highly unlikely cause. Then the culture revealed not one but two strains of drug-resistant staph, one in very large numbers… so I think we can rule that out.

We did test her thyroid and it was a tiny bit low, although her vet said that was probably sick euthyroid syndrome, and I agree. We are going to run the full Michigan panel soon, but the truth is, Kyrie has absolutely zero symptoms of hypothyroidism. I’m not saying she doesn’t have it, but there is no sign of it — she’s skinny and active. But we will be checking.

I’m a confirmed colloidal silver skeptic. I’ve tried it for many things, including my own rashes, over the years, and it’s never done diddly for anything. And every time anyone I know mentions that the CS they tried had no effect, we’re assured that we were just using the wrong concentration, the wrong brand, we have to make our own, we have to use this kind… I’m sorry. At this point it would take some really compelling scientific evidence to make me reconsider colloidal silver. I honestly think it has, at best, a mild anti-microbial effect, as do many, many other substances that have far more in the way of evidence to support their use.

I have ordered some medical grade honey and intend to try that. I’ve also been looking into some of the clays. I agree that these bacteria wouldn’t be causing symptoms if Kyrie were completely healthy, and yet — she’s 9 years old, never been sick a day in her life, has been on a homemade diet since she was 7 weeks old — other than the slightly low thyroid reading, all her bloodwork is normal, in fact, her vet said she has the bloodwork of a one-year-old dog. Kidneys in great shape, heart sounds good, liver normal … no clues that she could have some lurking immune problem or underlying disease.

I’ll definitely keep everyone posted and thank you again for all your help!

This happened to my dog. He had an abscess form deep in the neck tissue with an extremely thick barrier around it. A microscopic fistula tract was present leading to the skin surface where the infection was visible. This is the bodies way of trying to expel the invader if it can.

The abscess was discovered and it was surgically drained and opened so there was no longer a hiding place. He had to have a drain in his neck after to keep the area open so the drugs could get all the bacteria. Had we not found this, the infection would have returned to the skin surface through the fistula tract after treatment for sure.

Also, he had cultures for both aerobic and anaerobic organisms and sure enough he had both. Anaerobic organisms survive within the body without air so they were having a grand time in the abscess. So you have to check for both. It was the pathologist who discovered the fistula tract because we did a surgical biopsy of the infectious mass that presented at the skin surface.

I am just throwing this out there as something to be considered due to the recurrent nature of the infection. You can check the body and organs with scans, perhaps a sonogram or possibly certain blood tests I am not sure.

I am so sorry to hear about your pooch.

I’ve never been through this with my pets, but my daughter neearly died seven years ago from a drug-resistant bacteria.

The CDC was involved growing cultures and testing different antibiotics. After 16 days in a Children’s ICU and two surgeries, they gave her an antibiotic that had not been used in 12 years.

Because the bacteria and never been exposed to the antibiotic, there was no resistance to it and 5 days later we came home.

It may be the case that your vet should look to the past for a treatment.

Good luck! Ya’ll are in my prayers.