greyhead

All physical ailments are worse at night. Our Shane behaved somewhat similarly before he was diagnosed with Babesia at age 7. TBD's can be latent for years and then suddenly manifest to a point that even we can see that something is wrong. Just thought I'd throw that out there for consideration.

Godspeed, Honey, as you will always be loved.

Poor baby! Nothing like this ever happened until you came along! Hope the Cerenia does the trick.

Summer's insurance sounds perfect. Who is the company?

Just an update. Decided to skip the gabapentin last night since he'd had one at 2 p.m. And I went ahead and gave him half a tramadol instead of a whole one, just because he's never had it before and I was afraid he'd feel weird and start whining. He seems okay this morning, though he's still lounging around. I'll give him another gaba when he has breakfast, which has been anywhere from 9:00 to 1:00 lately (his choice). Hopefully, we'll talk to the vet again today or tomorrow, though I suspect phone tag will be happening today. Hugs of thanks to you all for steadying and educating me last night, and special virtual scritchies to Sam and Patrick, and Silver too. They have been and remain in my thoughts and prayers. ETA: I think the tech was supposed to discuss the meds with me before I left, but somehow that didn't happen and I didn't press the issue. Won't be making that mistake again!

Thanks, Kathy and Jen! I'd have thought this was past the bedtimes of most Easterners! Kathy, Sam sounds like Spencer, minus the cancer. (Wow, that sounds almost flip, which isn't how I meant it, but I apologize. I'm very sorry about what you and Sam are going through.) The internist x-rayed him 5 months ago and thought she saw that mid-spine disk slipping, but the radiologist didn't confirm it. His acupuncture vet keeps identifying pain and stiffness around that area, and his behavior shows he's having a lot of trouble getting up and down. Fortunately, he demonstrated that trouble in the vet office today in just trying to lie down! Also in response to your question, Kathy, besides metronidazole, Spencer is on .25 mg Soloxine twice a day, SAM-e (200 mg. for liver and cognitive help), and we're restarting Pepcid twice a day. I read earlier tonight that acid reducers inhibit uptake of gabapentin, so that might be why the vet started Spencer on a kind of high dose instead of the smaller one. But we'll compare notes in a day or two, and I'll mention the suggestion about smaller doses more often because it sounds like a good one. Thanks to both of you for the dosing suggestions. Do they tend to stay on the gabapentin for life when the spinal problem gets this severe? Edited on account of fatigue-induced stupidity.

Wow, how fortunate to hear from you at this hour! He's on 300 mg. gabapentin and 50 mg. tramadol. I'm also wondering: if the gabapentin has a good response, will he even need the tramadol on top of it. The internist also mentioned using Adequan, but our other grey takes that already, and it would be truly $$$ to have two large dogs on it. I'm wondering if I can find a bigger bottle than 5 ml., like maybe for horses, so it might be cheaper in higher volume.

Spencer saw his internist today. His IBD is well-controlled at the moment, and we've pretty much discontinued the budesonide, giving only metronidazole at 250 to 500 mg. per day depending on how he's doing. But he has lumbosacral stenosis (well-controlled with acupuncture/chiropractic for three years) and now the addition of significant pain at that hinge point mid-spine. He even started barking at Shane the last couple weeks if Shane gets too close while Spencer's lying down, seemingly afraid of being stepped on. The internist said to give him gabapentin and tramadol both. Gave him his first gabapentin this afternoon, and he has been sleepy, spacey, and somewhat uncoordinated. We took him for a little walk in the evening, and he had trouble going down stairs. We had to guide him down a paw at a time. He was otherwise entirely enthusiastic for the walk, though! Now I have to decide whether to go ahead and give him another before bed. The instructions are for every 8 to 12 hours. And I have to decide when to add the tramadol. I'll be gone tomorrow morning and have to leave again in the afternoon. Skip will be home but working and, necessarily, not entirely attentive. I'm kind of inclined to wait until tomorrow afternoon when I get home before I add in the tramadol too. What has been your experience of introducing both these meds to a greyhound? Do you ease them into it as I'm inclined to do or just do it all at once? Spencer's being a senior (11-1/2) with a complicated history is affecting my thinking/feelings about this, but maybe I don't need to worry this much? Thanks for anything you can share.

How is sweet Harley doing now? I keep hoping for an update. Still holding you both in our thoughts and prayers!

I'm very sorry he had to leave now. He sure knew where he wanted to live.

Your love for Ava is her tribute, and you've done her proud. Godspeed Ava.

So very sorry, Diane.

Hoping you disconfirm, but wishing for strength in all cases.

Keeping you and Willie in our thoughts and prayers!

Glad your boy is better, Uncle Bones.

So good to hear from you! Glad you and Mac are still having good times together.

Holding you and Noelle gently in my thoughts and prayers.

Satin balls are probably out for an IBD dog. As long as he's eating with the lamb added, let him keep doing it for now. Spencer never had to take azothioprine, so I don't know what effect it has. We used budesonide instead of prednisone because of the weight issue, and that solved the problem. (Spencer dropped 20 lbs. too, but he gained 10 of them back pretty quickly once treatment was started.). The other things we've used that are supposedly "mild" but made a big difference are tylosin (put in capsules by us because it's bitter) and L-glutamine. ETA: Metronidazole (Flagyl) has also been of tremendous value to Spencer, and we also put that in capsules for a while because our DH says they taste terrible! I assume someone has done a stool culture already. But if not, there could be an underlying infection that will sustain the diarrhea until it's eliminated. (And I shouldn't assume that it was done since I had to finally just order my vet to do one. When you know there's no infection and if the food still isn't suiting him well, you might try a formula with white fish. (Salmon is usually too rich.) Hopefully others will chime in, as well. Did they tell you which kind(s) of inflammatory cells they found with the endoscopy? It can be useful to know that, as it affects which dietary elements are worst for him (e.g., fats). Hugs to you and Harley, both! I know this is a hard road. But take heart, as several of us that I know of have managed our IBD dogs successfully for the last three years. Feel free to PM or email me anytime for further conversation and encouragement. Mary ETA: tbhounds posted while I was composing. She helped us a lot.

We left ours -- for the first and only time -- for two weeks while we went to Ireland. They stayed in our home, and a greyhound friend came to house/dog-sit and brought her three greys with her. They all knew each other from before. I called her just about every day, even though she put herself through college as a vet tech and we knew this set-up was the gentlest we could devise. (It was as hard on us as it was on them, I'm sure.) They were glad to see us return, but one of them also gave me a stink eye that I will never forget, and it was clear that they didn't just forgive and forget immediately. I'm just sharing an experience here, not telling you what to do. Hope everything works out fine with your arrangements! Now that I think of it, is there any chance you could have a Plan B in place in case they don't do well in the kennel...like a greyhound friend with a secure home? Or somebody who can take them jammies if they're dropping too much weight? ETA: I think I remember your posting about canceling your trip when your dog was so sick. You really are greyt grey-parents.

A hearty welcome to you and your gorgeous lad!

Elmo was an amazing character. I'm sorry his time came. He was well-loved and must have known it.

Sorry, I spoke in a confusing way. I didn't mean you, OurIndy, when I said, "So fine, get an MSU panel...." I meant greyhound owners in general. All I really meant about you was that as you get closer to being-a-vet and then are a vet, you should feel more confident than a lot of us do about deciding if your animal (any one you may ever have) is well-described by the ranges and norms or not. (I've become infamous, I'm afraid, for arguing kind of forcefully that group norms and ranges, while necessary, don't define health in every single individual all the time. There are such things as individual set points for metabolism, for instance.) Anyhow, Indy sounds like a splendid boy and the picture of health!

Hi Batmom, First paragraph, very good point. That's also why I hope people will work with their vets and observations of their dogs. Second paragraph, I know, so I think she's doing the right thing by doing nothing at this time. I only mentioned her specifically at the end of my post because the situation could change in the future. Hopefully, we'd agree that thyroid function doesn't always stay the same through the lifespan for everyone.

I'm sorry, I just can't bite my tongue about this. MSU will not diagnose a greyhound as hypothyroid, if their work on Energy11's Goldie is any indication, unless the TSH is elevated and/or there are thyroid antibodies detected, even if the thyroid hormones are so low as to be undetectable. The problem is that TSH is wrong at least 15% of the time -- and nobody is sure why -- and not all hypothyroidism has an autoimmune cause, in which case there won't be antibodies. Personally, if a dog is symptomatic and running that low on thyroid hormones, I'm going to treat him. If the dog is heavily symptomatic, that's reason enough to consider the hypothesis that such low levels of thyroid hormones are not normal for that dog at that time. So fine, get an opinion along with MSU's panel, but be willing to treat your dog as the individual he is. The OP being a vet, I'd assume she could manage that if need be.