greyhead

Just lots of prayers for continued improvement. He does sound like he'd do better at home.

.Hope everything improves for you and Pinky. And Spencer says that any cute girl in the hospital should get flowers!

(And you were such a great mom, thinking to ask about the temp.)

I'm so sorry. Summer left too young. But I'm glad for the blessing of your having lived and loved together. Godspeed Summer.

Just wow!!! And what a face! Welcome from Washington state.

I'm so sorry. Hoping you have many months to bask in one another's love.

ETA: Checked back through my records and amended what I wrote below: IIRC, Shane was on Orbax Baytril for six five weeks, and that's after having been on a different class of a/b off and on for months. I'll check my records, but I recall that his last C&S said the prior antibiotic would still work for his E. coli, though by then at a very high dose. So she switched him to Orbax Baytril. Essentially supports what Batmom said about what happens in the petri dish versus what happens in the dog. After the 5th week, I went to an internist. He gave us Orbax because that's what they carried. He was only on the Orbax for 7 to 10 days. Then the internist wanted to call it kidney disease and treat him that way. With the food change but without the kidney meds, he improved and didn't need more antibiotics. We did/do have a holistic vet. She does our acupuncture/chiropractic work on both our dogs but also consults with us about their other conditions, and she's thoroughly trained in Chinese medicine. She and my regular vet both supported the use of Rehmannia-6 for Shane's kidney health, but that wouldn't have helped the UTI. She'd have liked Shane to take herbal supplements, but she only offers them in loose leaf/powder form. Due to problems our other dog had with intestinal infection, I don't want anything that's not already in pill form! (Just too many chances that loose herbs can become contaminated somewhere along the line, for my taste.) But that's just our story, YMMV.

I have no idea what you're upset about, what "always the argument" means, or what words you think were put in your mouth. What we say is one thing, what others interpret is another. I was addressing the possibility that others down the road might interpret "essentially the same" in a way you didn't intend. Hope your tongue isn't too sore.

:grouphug My thoughts are with you.

As to Baytril vs. Orbax, they are from the same class of drugs, but they are not identical. One may work better for some, the other will work better for others. We don't know why, but that's just because we don't know everything. It's analogous to the various statin drugs for cholesterol, or the triptan class of drugs for migraine. At least with the migraine triptans I do know that two major differences among them are speed of relief onset and duration of activity. But with antibiotics it's less obvious than that. Not saying that you should try to get what you don't have in Canada, but I wasn't comfortable letting stand the idea that the two drugs are basically identical. So sorry you're going through this, as I do know how hard it is. For what it's worth, I'll just offer that I came to think my vet was treating by the book (e.g., x days on the med, then off for y days, then test) rather than the individual needs of this infection in this dog. It clearly required a longer, uninterrupted course of medicine than he had been getting, and it finally cleared up after I insisted he have that. Every time we stopped the meds, the infection reasserted itself, which to me clearly meant that it was being beaten back but not killed. So before I did a lot more expensive and/or invasive testing of the dog, I'd consider insisting on that custom-designed-for-this-situation, uninterrupted course of Baytril. (And it could be that a different med from the same class of drugs would sneak up on the germs better at this point and have a better chance to kill them.) My only other suggestion would be to have someone let him out a couple times during the day while you're working, if that's possible.

Can you get the vet to email you a copy of the report sooner than Monday? (It is really hard to keep track of fast-flying technical names when you're hearing them for the first time about someone you love.) I'm so sorry this is happening to you and Opie. Skip and I will be joining everyone else in hoping and praying that it's a non-cancerous tumor after all.

Well, . Hoping it's "just" VF.

I'm very sorry Ebony had to leave.

What really jumps out at me also is, one, the purple color of the skin and, two, what looks like a somewhat swollen or distended belly area. I don't think this is all just normal.

Just before I pack up my tent and move on, I remembered that the last antibiotic we wound up using on Shane, again in a longer-than-normal course of treatment, was Orbax. At the end of that we saw an internist, who decided that Shane's then-problem was kidney disease. (He didn't know Shane and he didn't know me, and he was a newly-minted internist.) We held off on his orders to give Shane Proin for leakage and enalapril for the high BP that usually goes with kidney disease, especially since his BP wasn't high, and just complied with the food change. Even then we requested that the food rx be changed from low-protein to medium protein. It seems he has sustained some mild kidney damage and he does need that diet. Other than that, he's doing quite well, and even better since we decided to go ahead and treat for Lyme. Of course, doxy was the treatment for Lyme, and maybe it was really treating mycoplasma! I don't care, as long as he's well. Yes, do keep us posted. And keep Orbax in mind if the Baytril hasn't done the job in the end.

Nice to meet you, though I wish it were under better circumstances. Shane is doing fine now. We finally knocked out the UTI. But after that he had a weird spell, for lack of a better word, where his BP was low, gums pale, and he had distinct tenderness in the general vicinity of his kidneys. Took him to an internist, who did an ultrasound and aspirated enlarged lymph nodes in the area. Nothing remarkable from that, but we decided to do more TBD testing -- he had already been treated for Babesia -- and he was "low positive" for Lyme. After we treated for that and changed him to a medium-protein Royal Canin renal kibble, his urinary leakage finally stopped. It returns whenever we try to change the food, so we don't change it anymore. He doesn't need the Proin or the enalapril that a different internist had wanted to put him on. He does have dilute urine and somewhat elevated creatinine, but he doesn't seem to have any acute or rapidly advancing kidney disease that anyone can pinpoint. We'll probably never know to what extent his problems were caused by the TBD's affecting his urinary system or by the very lengthy UTI. (I suspect both contributed.) But that's the end of our story as it has stood for the past year and a half, and so far so good. Best luck with your border collie! Hope you'll let us know how things progress.

Thank you for sharing beautiful Gigi with us. I'm so sorry for your loss.

We remember Alan fondly and send lots of hugs to you.

I'm so sorry. Condolences to all who loved them.

I'm betting that was a false negative in September. It happens a lot.

Happy Birthday, dear Charlie, wherever you are. You will always be loved.

Our two boys shake like that too, but they mostly do it inside the house, on the carpet! So no mutilation here.

Hm, that makes me wonder if his thyroid dose needs to be lowered, as we had to do with Spencer. He was taking 5 mg twice a day since age 5, and at age 10-1/2 got very whiney and restless, especially at night. We cut the dose in half when testing showed that though his T4 was low, his FT4 was high. It worked. It seems their needs change with age, where some dogs need treatment for the first time and others need their dosage adjusted. But that doesn't mean that's what's going on with Opie, of course. I was just thinking it's a pretty fast and easy thing to try if you don't have any better ideas. The only thing about the behavioral approach is that an animal who has become extremely anxious may not be receptive to instruction. (Spencer could not keep his mind on his work in obedience classes before we figured out the thyroid thing, and he's the furthest thing from an innately skittish dog.) Give Opie some special scritches from us! And hugs for you and DH too. This can only be stressful for all of you!

Maybe his thyroid levels should be rechecked? His medicine was stopped a few months ago, IIRC. Maybe he does need it.

When you said the titers were "negative," did you mean that they were positive but not high enough to be considered significant? The vet who keeps watch over the Tick List, Dr, Beckett, has said that even low-positive titers are significant and should be treated if the dog is symptomatic. I know the PCR test is the latest in tick testing techno-whizbang. But I called and talked to NC State about it for one of my greys who had a low-positive titer for Babesia from Prototek. The researcher I spoke with explained that a negative PCR result means nothing, just like a negative fecal, so we can't draw any conclusions from a negative result. (A positive result is quite definitive, which is one reason people like the PCR test, whereas the significance of positive titers can be debated.) The PCR is looking for genetic debris from the disease organism, analogous to microscopically small skin cells shed by humans. The researcher explained that testing a sample with the PCR is like dipping a bucket in the ocean; you know there are fish in the ocean, but the odds of actually bringing any up in the bucket are very small! Some people feel that repeating the PCR a second time will settle that question, but I don't see why the odds improve greatly from dipping a bucket in the ocean twice. I went with the titer results and skipped the PCR that time, treated for the positive Babesia titer, and was never sorry. And the PCR is not considered suitable in testing for Lyme at all, so the lab would only run the titer test for Lyme. Maybe the approach to testing has already been decided, but I thought I'd throw this out there. And I really want to wish you the best.