1 April 2012 I previously wrote about brown dog, a stray with severe mange. This update is long overdue but I'm pleased to inform that brown dog has since fully recovered from mange, after 2 months of treatment with ivermectin! Thanks to Sharon and Ruth from Noah's Ark CARES, I was given the much needed medication within 2 days of asking for help! I started brown dog on 1.2mL of ivermectin 1% (at 0.6mg/kg) in mid Jan 12, after uptitrating from two initial lower doses of 0.8mL and 1mL. I also treated another dog (black mum), who lost much of her fur due to mange. Her tail was looking like a lion's tail (only has fur at the tip). Initially, we fed them everyday for 5 days to get the drug within the therapeutic level fast. After that, I read that ivermectin's half life (time for the drug to reduce to half of its concentration in the blood) in canine is 2 days. This allows me to give the dose on alternate days instead of daily. It reduced our load because it's quite taxing going to the site and feeding them everyday. Black mum recovered quite fast. Within 2 weeks, her fur on her belly grew back and her tail was not furless anymore. KL their regular feeder was pleasantly surprised to see such improvement.  Black mum with full fur coat and lion-tail no more Brown dog's recovery was slow. For the first 2 weeks, we could only see the lesions on his neck clearing up, but nothing further. Slowly but steadily, after 1 month of ivermectin, his fur on his back grew back, and the lesions on his legs faded. But the lesions on his belly proved to be really resilient.   It's only after 1 month of treatment that we saw the breakthrough. Suddenly, we saw improvement after improvement, every 2 days we fed him. "We never knew he is so handsome," said KL the feeder. Towards the end of Feb 12, brown dog's mange was almost clearing up. I left the task of medicating him to KL when we went on a 2-week vacation. When we returned, brown dog has turned into one happy and handsome chap! We fed for a further 1 week to make sure that everything is gone. Well, our persistence paid off! Now, we are feeding the pack flaxseed oil to boost their immunity. |
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