The Good, The Bad, and The Disgusting

The GOOD- Thanks to my amazing husband (whom I consider the best physician at the hospital), we have access to wonderful health care along with a vast array of medicines.

The BAD- Because of where we live and the climate, we are susceptible to MANY different things including a drug resistant Staph, numerous bacteria, large bugs, snakes, and parasites. In fact most people who live here believe that having and getting parasites is just part of life. We are supposed to take anti-parasite medicine every 6 months just to be safe. We just took our first round last month (only 2 months late) and I have to say, it wasn't the most glamorous thing I have ever taken part in..... for your sakes, lets just say I didn't realize I had any, but.......

The Disgusting- Our family - Joe, Sebastiao, Isabella and me are not the only ones who have to worry about parasites. Baron, our wonderful dog who has put up with this move - although he complains regularly- has also been a host for parasites, just a different kind.
For about the last 4 days we had noticed that the bottom of Baron's paw had a sore- or what we thought was a sore. We worked bandaging it, cleaning it, keeping him off of it as much as possible and trying to get it to stop bleeding, but nothing seemed to work. Then Tuesday night while looking at his paw, I noticed that the open wound seemed to be moving. I showed Joe, convinced he would think I was crazy, but he agreed. I started squeezing on the sore and yep, you guessed it, out popped a worm. It is a larval state of something, all we know for sure is that is was disgusting. I still can't believe I squeezed this out of my dogs foot. You will be glad to know that within 12 hours his foot was fairly well healed.

Since Tuesday night we have learned that this is a Bot-fly larvae and have also found 3 more in Baron! Making those reservations right now aren't you?