Candy (Lucy) died of Distemper a month after we received her..

 Ms. Bianca Suwanasung from www.preciousmaltipoos.com, San Antonio, Texas sold us our puppy on the 10 of January. After we had decided on which puppy we wanted we asked her about the parents. She said they were healthy and that the mom was energetic and the dad was the calmer one, so we bought the puppy. We asked if she could lower the price, and she answered that if we paid in cash she would sell her for less. (From $799 to $700) Then we asked if we could go to San Antonio to pick the puppy up the next day- Sunday the 11th. She responded that she was coming to Houston to bring another puppy to the airport, so she could bring us the puppy. We accepted and the next day we picked her up at a close by mall. She looked normal when we picked her up. Like we were recommended by Bianca, we took her to the vet 1/12/09 where she had a fecal test. The vet said she had coccidia and gave us some medicine. On 1/13/09, one day later, we noticed that she wasn't eating or drinking, and that she had blood in the stool that lasted for a couple of days. The next time we took her to the vet, 1/19/09, she had lost weight. She was tested for giardia which came out negative.

Candy's appetite was very low so we tried several things including mashing the food up into little pieces, changing from Pedigree Puppy Food© to Iams Puppy Food©, and finally we managed her to eat by wetting her food with homemade chicken broth. She had fewer days in which her appetite was low, she gained some weight and started to grow. There were two symptoms that were constant from the very beginning, a short kind of choking cough and discharge coming from the eyes.

She looked better until last Wednesday morning when our son noticed she was having foamy salivation, and things turned ugly very quickly. She started having seizures with involuntary twitching of her leg muscles and jaw movements (chewing gum fits), after which she acted much disoriented. We took her to an emergency center and she was examined and treated overnight but the seizures never stopped.  The next day, on Thursday, we took her to our vet and continued the examination and treatments. Her sugar level in the blood and, the liver were normal. Also, her skull exam was normal.

The vet suspected that Candy had Distemper which left us with no hope and finally we had to let her go. Our vet got a confirmation on her diagnosis from a neurologist at Texas A&M.

When Bianca delivered the puppy to us she had one vaccination done, but not the one against Distemper. Our vet vaccinated her with Distemper/Parvo on January 19 when she was 9 weeks old. However, it is now clear that at that time Candy was already sick.

We talked to Bianca on Thursday and she said she was sorry and that if Candy dies she would give us a new puppy. Yesterday, after we buried her, our daughter discovered in the internet that other families were going through the same painful process. We tried again to contact Bianca but so far we haven't had any luck.

We hope that by sharing our case will prevent other families to suffer emotionally and financially as we have had.

 Brusal