greyhead

Oh dear, what an awful time for you and your pups. I'm so sorry about Bubba. Hope the others get better soon.

Just getting back to GT, and I'm beyond sorry to see that this happened to Chevy. Thank heavens he's back home with you, even if he is still understandably in shock. Hope he has something good for pain. Adding myself to the army of people praying for a speedy recovery.

This special boy found an exceptional home. I'm very sorry for your loss.

One disadvantage to transferring responsibility for ongoing care to another vet that I have run into, I'm sorry to say, is that the vet is unwilling to change the protocol put in place by the specialist. We're struggling with that now, with both dogs. Our regular vet is a wuss about it, IMHO, but Spencer's internist thinks we should see her about his current problem. Presumably, the internist has no appointments open, not that I've asked. (We're speaking through emails, at least.) I just needed to know what could have caused him to get hot, panting, and with a badly swollen tongue! Our shane's acupuncture vet said he needs to add metacam to his meds for a recent injury, but she didn't write a prescription. I called and asked his regular vet to do so; her reply -- a full 24 hours later, through the head tech -- is that if the acupuncture vet thinks Shane needs it, the acupuncturist should prescribe it. I think I detect politics and personal dislike here. As you can probably tell, I'm frustrated by all three of them. But I'm moving forward, remembering to breathe, despite feeling ticked off and discouraged. Which is why I think if you can push the neuro into talking to you about your concerns for treatment going forward, I think it would be more satisfactory. And I share the concern of KFinGeorgia about an emergency and about the harm prednisone may cause.

Thanks for allowing us to remember him with you. He was a gorgeous and well-loved boy. Holding you two gently in my thoughts today.

Oh my, I'm so there with you. But I'll spare you that story. What I might do -- and have done -- is make an appointment and just go. It should cost around $100, give or take, as a follow-up rather than initial eval. (I've made appointments just to talk, even without the animal present, because I needed more information than I was getting through the techs.) If they ask why, you can tell them that you need to talk to the doctor about Diamond's future and you're willing to pay to do so. It will be interesting if they say "no" and you ask "why." The alternative is to have a new doc have to do a complete new eval, and it's expensive, and it shouldn't be necessary. That's my thinking anyhow. Wishing you much luck with this.

Cute...and built! Hope things can get sorted out soon.

I'm so sorry for your loss. She sounds like a wonderful girl dog, in all her roles! And she found a wonderful home.

Wow, that *is* an impressive bandage! Sending healing thoughts.

Don't know if this will be of any help to you, but Spencer has been having issues with food and pain lately too. Especially in the a.m., he doesn't want to get up and come to the dish. But if I take the dish to him and hold it so he can eat lying down, he does. Same with walking away before the bowl is empty; if I take it to him, he'll finish it lying down. In any case, sending lots of good thoughts for you and Robin, now and for his dental!

Here is a terrific, detailed, informative discussion of this subject, mostly between Batmom and JJNg a little over a year ago. http://forum.greytalk.com/index.php/topic/280685-sams-mystery/?&p=5112465&fromsearch=1

Godspeed, Joseph. You'll be sorely missed.

My point? That PCR testing is not infallible.

The fish in the bucket analogy is intended to address the probability of obtaining a positive result given the sizes of the materials in question: all the blood in the body and the microscopic material. That's how I interpreted it anyway. Then tech also said that the DNA material being sought with the PCR is analogous to the skin cells we shed, only these are the "skin cells" of microscopic organisms. Pretty small! This material is most likely to be found hiding (caught) in the smallest blood vessels, the capillaries, such as in the ears, I read. So that sounds like a method with a higher probability for finding what we're looking for, looking at it on a slide, and even then one might want more than one sample. I'm sure that's Old School, but I like it. It's also Old School to go ahead and treat if the dog is symptomatic and the test results equivocal, and I like that too. ETA: Just one other thought. From what the tech said, you're not picking up circulating organisms in a PCR sample, you're picking up dead parts of them. So that sounds like a fecal that looks for and finds eggs, not actual worms. It has been several years since I looked into this for Shane, so my memory of it has faded somewhat.

But that's like dipping a bucket into the ocean once and trying to pull it back up with a fish inside. At least that's the way the tech at NCSU explained it to me. I'm just repeating what she said. (And it seems reasonable to me, though I don't count for much.)

That's what I meant by "meaningless." It's the same sense in which a negative fecal is meaningless. In other words, the only way you know for sure that the test result is true is if it's positive.

We found one of our dogs' Babesia and later Lyme, using Protatek. In both cases the titers were low positive, in both cases we elected to treat (after due consideration and consultation), and in both cases it made a world of difference in his quality of life. Of course, he did have symptoms, but not really scary ones yet. Some of us here feel that the time to test for TBDs is when you have symptoms (however few or many) that affect quality of life but can't be or haven't been explained by other test results. (But it's important to know that even NCSU will tell you that a negative test result on a PSR is meaningless, that only the positive results are reliable. At least they will if you talk to the right tech.) IIRC, there are some adoption groups that either do or recommend TBD titer testing on all their adoptable greyhounds. Anyhow, just sharing one family's experience. All the best to you and your "new" boy!

I'm so sorry, Tom, and sad that Hero had to leave so soon. I also remember when he came to you.

I'm so sorry this happened to you and Gweneth. Godspeed Gweneth. (I always loved your name.)

Holding good thoughts and sending love for you both!

Well, good then, it happens...so he's not weird! At least he's lying down today with no problems. It was really hard watching him have to stand for three hours that first day.

Hi Jennifer. Shane didn't get this injury the way a racing dog gets it on the track, but the swelling area matched the photos in the book, and it makes logical sense -- at least to me. Shane can run a circle in the yard, but it's too tight to build as much speed as he sometimes wants. So then he adds a straight stretch down the side of the yard, going faster, but he has to stop at some bushes, suddenly. So he does what I call a hockey stop: back feet parallel to each other, as he leans his whole body to the left and screeches to a stop! It looks like his "knees" -- or the tops of his tibia -- knocked together, injuring the one on the right leg. I watched him immediately come back around some trees, and then he walked up the three steps of the deck instead of jumping -- unheard of for him unless he's hurt. So I can't think he hit the bone on anything other than himself. The vet is having me bring the cat in for observation tomorrow and leave him for the day. We'll probably discuss how Shane's doing and make some decisions then. (She's our regular vet, but she's was off the day he got hurt, so another vet handled it over the phone shortly before they closed for the day.) What's weird to me is that there was swelling, now gone down, but no bruising that I could see. He's still not doing stairs, btw.

Thanks, Sandy. The greyhound book we consulted calls it "track leg" or "jack" in Chapter 15. It seems to have a wide range of severities, and Shane's seems relatively benign compared to some. I'm cutting back the tramadol and hope to eliminate it tomorrow. We'll see if the methocarb alone will get him the rest of the way. The walking was just supposed to promote a BM. (He usually runs around the yard to achieve it, or else he walks at least two blocks on leash. How did you guys handle that with Dylan?

Oh, much better, thanks! He slept through the night, as far as I could tell. We're taking him out the side door instead of down the deck stairs, as he still doesn't want to get involved with more than one or two steps at a time. We took him on a six-block poop walk this a.m., the last block of which was probably "a bridge too far" but he survived. He ate last night and this morning with enthusiasm! I'll get refills of his meds this afternoon, so he should be all set. (He still has trouble lying down if he's at the end of his 8-hour med cycle.) If it gets worse or he doesn't improve, we'll have the vet take a look at it.