Valley Fever in Dogs

April 30, 2009 | By Kelley Koehler | Filed Under Odds and Ends 

FloydThis is my brown boy Floyd.  He’s been a proud member of the Housechick family since 2000 when we adopted him from FAIR, the Foundation for Animals In Risk.

A couple of years ago, he was diagnosed with Valley Fever – fairly common in dogs, at least in my experience.  We didn’t catch it until his infection level was crazy high – Floyd never shows any of the typical symptoms, so we only find out when things get really bad.

Last time, he was on medication for nearly two years.  Which is painful, as the pills are expensive.  Floyd loves it all, of course, as he gets a spoonful of "crunchy" treat twice a day for two years.

And here we are again.  I took him in for vaccines and figured we might as well do the blood work for a Valley Fever test, since it’d been a while – and my past experience with my pets tells me that it can recur.

And it’s back.  And of course he’s showing no symptoms.  But the level is so high that they did a chest x-ray to make sure he was okay.  And he will be.  Here’s hoping it won’t be 2 years of pills again.

Valley Fever is technically a fungal infection: Coccidioidomycosis.  It lives in the soil and usually infects both pets and people by breathing it in.  Many will become infected and only have mild symptoms, if any.  Others will develop more severe infections and require treatment.

Symptoms in pets include coughing, loss of appetite and weight, skin lesions, and lameness.  In bad cases, it can kill them.  I’ve yet to own a pet in Tucson that didn’t need Valley Fever treatment.  Keep an eye out, pet owners.  Non-natives haven’t always heard about this infection, but it is pretty common in Tucson.

Comments

2 Responses to “Valley Fever in Dogs”

  1. tucson web design on May 7th, 2009 8:13 am

    Scary! We have 2 dogs but luckily they’ve never had valley fever. I wonder if some breeds are more prone to it than others?

  2. Larry on May 10th, 2009 9:39 am

    as one of those ‘non-natives’ you refer to it was fun to do the research to figure out what you were tweeting about on your way to somewhere – might have been the Vet. Thanks for making me smarter. BTW up here if you stand still long enough you will get attacted by moss – something to do with the rain me thinks. :>)

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