Thanks for the reply's!
Ok, to clear a few things up. All poison's have been eliminated and with 99% certainty have been eliminated. Comet was not allowed outside unsupervised for any long durations of time. We have a fenced in yard, and built him a smaller pen extending from our porch deck of about 30 square feet. So, you had a fenced in area within another fenced in area. As a result, he never had access to the garage. Also, as he had not yet learned to navigate stairs, he was never in the basement either. This limited his areas of access to the aforementioned pen, dinning room, kitchen, and family room. As for the house having been previously contaminated with a virus, I find that hard to believe as it has been dog/cat free for three years prior, and we have hard wood floors throughout with area rugs that have only been here less than a year. Add fresh paint since occupancy and we scrub the walls once a year at a minimum with pine sol (10% with water). I honestly believe taking him to the vet would be 1000X more likely to be a source of a viral contamination than this house. We explained all this to our vet and her best guess was a congenital bleeding disorder (birth defect).
As we live in Michigan, and had snow in our backyard at the time and days prior to this, there were no footprints in our backyard suggesting any signs of a neighbor tampering, and too add, that would be totally out of character for my neighbors as well.
Comet did loves the outdoors and the snow, but that is typical of this breed. Even when he was outside, we were inside watching from the sliding glass patio doors. Even while indoors he always sought out the coolest places to lie down at.
I have heard a lot about getting him at six weeks and will make sure not to do that again. Our breeder said she usually did not let them go this early, but it was over the holidays and at least one of us was going to be here 24/7 for the next three weeks. I would like to add that this little guy was far from a sickly puppy, quite the opposite in fact. He was a bundle of energy with a great appetite ( we fed him eukanuba puppy food after weening him from puppy chow). In the three plus weeks we had him comet had more than doubled in size, and while I did not weigh him I would guess he weighed 10lbs at the time this happened. I know he was twice the size of my mom's miniature poodle. We did not bring any toys of any sort home with the breeder when we got him. The little guy was pretty intelligent as well, he was nearly house trained in a little more than a week ( I did not start trying until he was 8 weeks old).
So, with poisons being ruled out, that leaves us with a viral infection to which he showed no signs, and possibly a birth defect. We pretty much had settled it in our minds that it had to be the latter until a few days before I posted this message. We had contacted the breeder when this happened to see if the parents had any history of this type of thing. They acted in complete shock and said no, they had been breeding Samoyed's for 15 years, and this was the first they had anything like this happen. Furthermore this was the second litter from the father and the mother. I guess you would call them backyard breeders of AKC registered Sammy's. About a week and a half passed and the breeder called us back up offering a refund. Now, up to this point we had not even asked, we were more concerned with what had happened. My girlfriend replied that she would much rather have another puppy, as it seems this breed is hard to come by in this area. he told us when they had another litter he would work something out with us. Then a few more days passed and he called again, telling us his vet had heard of a recent new disease that was infecting puppies and causing this exact thing to happen. He wanted to know if his vet could contact our vet to which we had no problems and signed release papers. I found this last phone call a bit peculiar and it is what prompted my post here.
I just have never seen any type of virus like this that existed without any symptoms at all. The only other pet in the house is a 5 year old cockateil, and yes the two did have some contact as I introduced them to each other once.
and last, something I left out before, prior to the incidence, Comet was eating his morning puppy food. My girlfriend had just fed him and moved into the bathroom to get ready for work and do her hair. She heard him cough a few times as if he might have choked on a piece of puppy chow. when she came out he was writhing on the floor and her first instinct was that he was choking. She opened his mouth and felt down his throat
(carefully) to see if anything had lodged in there. She did not find anything and then the bleeding was noticed. She had thought he swallowed something and was choking and it was lodged deep in his throat and it cut his throat and that was the source of the blood. She rushed him to the vet to find out that nothing was caught in his throat, and it was a much more serious issue (not that that is not serious enough).
