Tessa is an 8 month old double dapple dachshund female. She presented initially on 4/13/07 with a severe case of demodex and a secondary bacterial and yeast ear and skin infection, not to mention lots of fleas. Tessa has been on oral ivermectin for her demodex, but she became lethargic and began vomiting because of the medications. We stopped all the medications and she got better.

After a short time, we tried to restart the ivermectin, but she had another reaction to the medication so we discontinued it and just used medicated baths to try to treat the demodectic mange. Tessa is just simply very sensitive to most medications that other dogs could take without problems and we would need to be very careful in the future with any medications that she needed to take. She was spayed in hopes that it would help clear up her demodectic mange and she had an umbilical hernia repaired at the same time.

Shortly after her spay, Tessa began coughing. She had been exposed to kennel cough somewhere! So, for almost 3 weeks, little Tessa was on oral antibiotics and cough suppressants for her infectious tracheobronchitis infection. The following month, we rechecked her skin. We still found lots of demodex mites and another secondary skin infection and restarted the medicated baths and more oral antibiotics. Her skin infection was getting worse despite the antibiotics and the medicated baths, we decided to treat Tessa with Mitoban dips (an alternative to oral ivermectin for demodectic mange). We have been doing weekly Mitoban dips and continuing the oral antibiotics to try to clear this mange.

She has had a complete blood profile to rule out any sort of metabolic disease that could be causing her to not heal properly. Just when we thought that we might be seeing the light at the end of the tunnel... Tessa has a musculoskeletal abnormality.

The Radiologist suggested that this is probably a congenital problem given all her other medical issues. She has a luxated bone in her hock (or her ankle). Tessa will eventually have to see an Orthopedic surgeon for this new finding. So at this time, Tessa is still battling her demodectic mange and it looks like she has to also battle a congenital skeletal abnormality as well.