Courtney (Bradford, Ontario) on 06/05/2012:

On Sunday during the day, he vomited up some grass, and he had diarrhea (still no blood). By Sunday evening, he was so lethargic however he would not even move. He would barely even lift his head and I worried he would not make it through the night so I took him to an emergency vet clinic. It cost me $250 for the vet to test his feces, and tell me he was positive for parvo. She gave me two options. He could stay the rest of the night, at a cost of $1200.00 and they would treat him with IV and blood tests and we would have to pick him up in the morning and take him to another clinic, or we could put him to sleep.

Prior to taking him to the vet, I did not know what parvo was, but I googled his symptoms and ended up at this site. I had a pretty good idea my dog had parvo. I had read about this charcoal thing and tried unsuccessfully to find it at Walmart, Shoppers Drug Mart, or any health food store. But when our only options were to fork out thousands of dollars or put him to sleep, we just paid the $250 for the visit, and brought him home against medical advice.

I stayed up most of Sunday evening trying to get my dog to drink water, and around 2:30 in the morning, he started to swallow instead of spit it out. I woke up at 5 in the morning, and he was still alive. I continued to push fluids on him and throughout the day, after drinking, he was able to eat a little bit without vomiting it up.

Because we couldn't find any charcoal, my boyfriend bought Active Carbon, which is supposedly the same thing as Charcoal, from Walmart in the Aquarium Section! It is used to clean fish tanks. It cost him 4 dollars. We bought some Gatorade and made a mixture of Gatorade, Water, and Charcoal, and used a syringe to get him to swallow this at first. Within a half an hour, his appetite was in full force, and so was his energy level. We continued to feed him this gatorade, water, charcoal mix throughout the night, and today - Tuesday - he is nearly 100%. While he is still laying down relaxing more than he typically would, he is wide awake, fully alert, and eating anything and everything we will let him (we are going easy as he hadn't ate in so long and don't want to upset his stomach). He is chasing the cat, playing, and running around like a lunatic (like he normally does).

About an hour ago, Animal Control showed up at my house. The vet had called them on us because we had gone against medical advice, and if he was not treated, he would "suffer". One knock on the door, and my dog booked it to the door barking and wagging his tail at Animal Control. The lady at the door was baffled. "This is the dog that was diagnosed with Parvo on Sunday evening?" I told her yes, and she said he seemed fine. She said it was incredibly rare for him to bounce back like this, and most puppies are dead within 24 hours of diagnosis. And of course, she let me keep my dog, because it is very clear he is not suffering.

So THANK YOU so, so much for writing about this remedy. A treatment that was going to cost us thousands of dollars ended up costing us about 10 in total, aside from the initial vet visit, and if we didn't see this site, we probably would have had to put him down because we couldn't afford the treatment. While our dog can drive us crazy with his hyperactivity and spunk some days, we have never been happier to see him acting so nuts. Something tells me our boy is going to be getting extra spoiled for a long time, we are so grateful and happy that he made it through.

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