silverfish

Just a thought; did the vet know she'd been running really hard on concrete? It could well be a pulled muscle (or more than one pulled muscle) but the other possibility is a stress fracture (or, indeed, more than one stress fracture). Pounding on a hard surface will sometimes do that. It wouldn't be a complete bone break; you can get what used to be called 'hairline' fractures, or even little bone chips at the joints which can be very painful. It might be worth getting her front legs x-rayed if she doesn't improve within a few days, or if she gets worse. Just as a side note, we were told by our vet that Rimadyl supposed to be more effective if you split the dose and give twice daily. I don't think it's that important, though. We've also found that if one NSAID doesn't seem to be effective, it's worth trying a different one.

I'm glad to hear that she is beginning to eat! It must be a great relief to you! Can't answer the question, but maybe someone can.

Good luck at the vet. I hope you see the one you like and she gives her a chance! Seven and a half is very young to be in end-stage kidney disease. BTW. I had a 'young' ten year old once who appeared to have kidney disease. It progressed very rapidly, the vet didn't know why, didn't do anything other than the blood/urine protein tests and guess what? It was kidney cancer, not ordinary kidney age-related failure. Unless you have a firm diagnosis of a particular type of kidney disease so that you know exactly what you're dealing with, I would advise at least getting x-rays done. It may save her life. By the time we found Susan's problem to be cancer it had already spread to her lungs and involved the second kidney.

Remember that a dog's sense of smell is many tens of thousand times better than your own. Just because she doesn't smell that bad to you, it doesn't mean it's not affecting her, and if she did swallow some too, it could well be that it's upsetting her stomach. I can't speak for her other problems of course, but if this only started with the skunking, it seems likely that it is related, . I'd give her a few days, as others have said. How long has it been since she was skunked? Have you used one of the 'de-skunking' shampoos/recipes? It apparently needs more than just soap and water to get the stuff out. Hark at me telling someone how to deal with skunks and we don't even have them here! Still, you do pick up an awful lot of useful knowledge when you've been on Greytalk as long as I have.

Give it a few days for the skunk spray to wear off before you make any decisions. Meanwhile, you could get her kidney values checked again. Kidney disease can make dogs feel nauseated, and though I have no experience of skunking (I live in England) it seems reasonable to assume that something that potent would put her off her food too. I hope she rallies!

I am so sorry. At least you know now that nothing would have helped or saved him - that might seem like cold comfort right now, but in time it might help to know. Whatever you do, do not beat yourself up for not letting him go sooner. If you had done so, you'd be beating yourself up for not trying harder so it's a lose-lose situation and better not to go there. You did all that you could. You made the best choices you could make, with the information which was available to you and you did it all with love. No dog could ask for more. Sending many hugs.

Some just do need the more expensive, therefore higher quality, kibbles, unfortunately. Jeffie is one of them, bless him. We had him on the same kibble they use for active racers for a long while and he was OK, though very thin. Recently he decided he didn't like it anymore and dropped weight dramatically, so that he was almost skeletal. I've now found a good quality puppy kibble that he'll eat (reasoning that the puppy foods tend to be higher calorie than adult foods) and he's beginning to put that weight back on, slowly. You can try adding in things like sardines or mackerel in oil, but you might find that to get good results you are spending as much as if you bought a higher protein kibble. But yes, certainly do check for worms again. It may be that the treatment didn't quite eradicate them, and tapeworms definitely do make dogs thin if they have enough of them.

That's great! They're so much more sensitive to change in flavours than we are, aren't they? Interestingly, I went out and bought different kibble for Jeffie and he's eating again now, too!

All good news! Well, apart from spending the Magic Number of course. Glad he's OK!

We've found that even dogs who seem indifferent to each other benefit from the company and miss each other when one is missing (eg at the vet).

One way to proceed might be to foster with intent, as someone else said. The idea being that you choose as wisely as you can, and find the best possible fit for your situation, but if it doesn't work out between your new dog and Abby, the kennel will take the dog back and you can try again.

Two is probably easier, especially when there's SA involved. They're a little more work, and yes, more expense (of course). More than that, two is more entertaining and fun! We went up to two for the first time to help Jim with SA and it completely finished the job I'd started with Adaptil. As a side-effect, I lost my velcro dog, because once he had a companion, he no longer felt the need to follow me everywhere, but relaxed completely, leaving the worry to our new, self-confident girl. When we lost her, we got Renie to help with Jim's grief at losing Susan and then we got Jack to help Renie over losing Jim. That is one thing to remember, of course. When you lose one of a pair, the other will grieve and you'll probably find yourself getting another pretty quickly. The other thing is that we have found that a pair of greyhounds is a little more likely to chase small creatures than one greyhound. This depends an awful lot on the dogs though; some will chase regardless of the presence or absence of another dog, some will never chase no matter what their companion is doing.

Is Polly ravenously hungry too, Nancy?

Yes, it could simply be that!

Yep, because she's losing weight AND hungry, I'd go to the vet NOW. Two of the dogs I've lost to cancer lost weight dramatically and were still hungry. I don't want to scare you, and there are lots of other medical reasons why she might be hungry and losing weight, but do get her checked out. Start with a geriatric blood panel and go from there.

Jeffie is worrying me at the moment for much the same reason, but the vet is also concerned because he was always a tad underweight and of course when he doesn't eat, it drops off him quite quickly. He's eating at the moment, but we had a few days recently when he ate practically nothing. Even stinky pig kidneys didn't tempt him. He is on antibiotics at the moment thought and I'm assuming they're having an effect. Is Wendy on any meds?

A little off-topic, but ... you have liquid coconut oil?? We can only buy the solid white stuff here, and I have always read that coconut is solid at room temperature. I use it for cooking and occasionally put some into the dogs' food for their coats, but wow, is it expensive. At a tablespoon per 30lb of dog, I'm not sure it's practical to use daily; that would mean I'd get through a couple of jars a week, never mind what I use for cooking.

Trouble with yelling 'knock it off' from another room is that both dogs get yelled at and - depending on the temperament of the innocent dog - this can cause behavioural issues all by itself. I could never yell at Sid without being right there and looking right at Sid or Jeffie gets scared. He is a bit spooky. For instance, if it happened while he was eating it would almost certainly put him off eating in that location, and maybe put him off eating altogether. For Jeffie it would take days to 'get right' again. I realise not all dogs are this sensitive, but it's worth remembering that Truman won't know he's not being yelled at.

Interestingly, my poor feeder Jeffie has just begun refusing his normal kibble halfway through a sack. Sid is still eating it (when he gets the chance - he's supposed to be on a low calorie kibble), but the most tempting of wet food won't get Jeffie eating if there is any of this kibble in his dish. I cooked up pig kidneys this morning, which is something he actually salivates over normally, but nope, he wouldn't eat. I took the bits of kidney out of the dish and rinsed them (for heaven's sake) and he deigned to eat most of them, but still appeared suspicious that there was 'kibble smell' on them. I'm wondering if the kibble has just gone rancid in the heat we've been having. I'm going out this afternoon to get a new bag. The barking and growling? No idea, unless something happened, as others have said.

I don't know the company, but Sid looooves trachea!

Good to hear George is doing well! Jeffie gets short twice-daily walks. The only place he has to do any jumping is into my car, which was bought for an old greyhound and the floor pan is only 15 inches off the ground. He manages it with absolutely no apparent effort at all. If anything he overdoes the jump as if he's on a trampoline. He doesn't do zoomies - even when we take them to a fenced field he just trots and mooches about. Thanks for that. Yes, I think there's definitely more going on than just LS, if it is that. Jeffie is 'made wrong', bless him and he also has a back toe missing. He has just half an extra 'floating' rib on one side which sticks out and seems to have the effect of making him feel that one side of him is longer than the other - he has always walked slightly on the diagonal. Neither of those can be helping him now. No, but I'm more than willing to consider them IF I can get my vets to play along. I'll probably print out the Suzanne Stack page and take it along when I take him in next. As she says, can't hurt, might help. Thanks everyone! Any more comments or ideas welcome, of course!

Thanks, yes, Sid had it in combination with Onsior. Now he's just taking the Onsior - but it was for a different issue.

Thanks - no we haven't tried Gabapentin yet, we're still on a trial of Rimadyl. If we don't see a difference in the next week or two he'll be going back and I'll ask about it then. We still have some from when Sid was on it. This sounds much like Jeffie, too. I've noticed once or twice lately that he'll fail to pick his left hind up enough when walking and start to knuckle, then stumble just a tiny bit and correct himself (DH who had his lead didn't notice but I was behind and watching carefully). When he walks, he looks dreadful, but when he trots, he's perfectly normal, you'd never know there was anything wrong at all. Galloping is another story - he looks like a windmill. Legs everywhere! He sometimes has trouble getting up, other times he leaps up as if he's been hot-wired. He's very odd. And he jumps into the car as if he's been thrown up on a spring - he nearly hits the back of the compartment, and the rear of my car is huge, like a small van. That's another thing which doesn't sound so much like LS to me. So that's another vote for Gabapentin. I'll definitely speak to them about that. Thank you - both of you! I will also mention the Suzanne Stack shots, but I believe I won't get anywhere with that without a firm diagnosis of spurs, compression or stenosis of the lumbar spine.

As far as I understand it, pain over the lumbar region is almost invariably present with lumbo-sacral disease and this he does not have, wherever his spine is pressed - and this has been done by vets as well as by me. However, I do agree that we aren't going to get too far without a consultation with a specialist. We've been very impressed with the guys at Cambridge, at Newmarket and at Davis Whites - the three referral centres we've been referred to so far. I'm a long way from being unwilling to go that route.

Thanks for the replies so far! Clare, thanks for the very full description of the problem and treatment. It seems very similar to what Jeffie is suffering except that this did not come on suddenly. He has always 'not known where his back feet were' as we put it. I took him to agility when we first got him to try to help with this and it did help, quite a lot. But now he's worse than he ever was. Trouble is, we didn't get him till he was almost ten and I have no idea what he was like before - I can ask his trainer, but basically, for years he was just another adoptable waiting to be homed. He was cared for properly, but down in the kennels, not in someone's lounge under their eye. I've asked about the Adequan type injections before, for a previous dog, and got pretty much the same response as you did! I think we'd need a referral to get anywhere with that one. Jeffie used to do hydrotherapy, but we've lost our pool (Sid misses it, too!). He does have the soft beds and the warm jackets and the painkillers (just rimadyl at the moment) but I've had to stop his supplements for the moment because he is not eating well and losing weight fast, poor old boy, and anything odd in his dish makes him leave his dinner. He does get two short daily walks, he gets massage (I have an electric massager the same as some of the trainers use), and he doesn't do stairs. You've done remarkably well with Doc - he's so lucky to have you caring for him! Annie-Bon-Annie - I honestly don't think it's Wobbler's. I'll mention it to the vet when I go next, but reading on the vet sites it doesn't really seem to fit. He's had spine x-rays - last year for all of it, and just recently for the chest/neck area because we were checking his lungs. No evidence of compression. Mel - yes, I think so too. I'll try to see a different vet next time, but he does see one of the two 'greyhound' vets at the practice. Sadi's symptoms do sound very much like what Jeffie is experiencing. You're right, it's probably a problem of proprioception, as much as anything. He had some x-rays done (see above) but though he does have a few bone spurs in the thoracic region they don't think they're severe enough to cause problems and there's no evidence of compression. I'm going to ask about the prednoleucotropin. Maybe that would help Jeff! Thank you! I should just add that quite a lot of the time, especially around the house, Jeffie appears to have no problems at all. But he does have a very strange walk these days. Watching him come towards me (when DH gets a bit left behind and I'm waiting for them to catch up) his legs are all over the place. He looks almost as if he's dancing. From the back, you can see that each time he puts weight on a back leg, his foot rotates inward on the last part of the step and this causes his leg to 'fall' outwards. It's most odd. The vet who saw him last took him out back for me to walk and trot him and he called it an 'old man's walk'.