I'm a norwegian vet tech student currently working part of my internship at an animal clinic in Denmark. There are a lot of heart and lung worms now in the summer, so we do a lot of worm tests daily. Today I was microscoping a sample from a pug and didn't find any larvaes. But there was something else. Without the microscope I could see a lot of teeny tiny white "rice". I know they're not tape worm segments! Which seems to bee the only answer people get when they find white things in their dogs feces. I can't find anything on the internet that looks like it. I've attached a coulple of picture I took with my phone. None of our vets know what it is. There is nothing similar in our clinical parasitology book. In the microscope they look kind of like a butterfly pupa. They have spikes on their "body" and I can see a lot of, what I believe is blood vessels. They didn't move, but one of them "spit" out some grainy stuff. I'm so curious to find out what it is! Can you help me?
I only took pictures using one of the lenses, so I don't have one where you can see the spikes.
I can't identify these, but I do agree that under the microscope they aren't tapeworms. They look like they could be maggots of some sort, and I'm curious as to whether this sample came directly from the dog or if it was collected from the yard. If it was the latter, then it could be environmental contamination and not a parasite. Honestly, I can't think of any intestinal parasites that look like this, but I'm not sure if there are some in Europe that I don't know.
So, all of my international veterinary readers....any clues?
