Luna, a healthy 8-yr-old yellow lab, contracted leptospirosis in her own wooded suburban yard in the Pacific Northwest, and passed away after a two-week battle involving hospitalization and a multitude of test and treatments. She was not vaccinated because the owner was unaware that a vaccine was available. Would vaccination have saved her? Sadly, we’ll never know.
We first noticed something was wrong on Wednesday December 20, 2017 when she started having trouble walking and her left hind leg seemed to be injured. We took her to the vet, who examined her leg and felt it wasn’t broken and was most likely a strain or pulled muscle. Over the next two days, she started vomiting and was lethargic. We took her to the emergency vet hospital where she remained for the next four days over the Christmas holiday. An ultrasound revealed an ulcer (unrelated?) but the more significant concern was that her kidney and liver function test results were abnormal. Many tests were conducted, IV fluids and antibiotics were administered, lymphoma was ruled out, and a sample was sent for leptospirosis testing. However, testing for leptospirosis takes a very long time (especially over a holiday) and she started to show improvement, so she came home on Dec 26th with a lot of prescriptions. She was still not interested in eating much, which we assumed was because the antibiotics were making her queasy. She appeared to be recovering over the next week, but then started to seem more lethargic again and we took her back to the hospital on Jan 2. She was put on a leptospirosis watch with appropriate medication protocol, but testing revealed continued abnormalities, which worsened over the next 48 hours until she went into renal failure. Euthanasia was administered on Jan 4, only 15 days after the first indication that something was wrong. We received the leptospirosis test results a couple hours after euthanasia, which confirmed the suspicion.
Luna was the light of our lives, and we will miss her forever.