greyhead

Jeez, this is giving me heart palpitations. I can imagine what it's doing to you! Glad to hear that they're keeping a close eye on sweet Symbra.

So sad that Kitty couldn't stay longer. :f_pink

Our Shane had the same problem. Vet said she didn't see anything wrong with his urine. When he got floppy and hard to rouse, she ran a urine culture and started antibiotics. It was E. coli. So I'd recommend a culture.

:grouphug

Greyt news!!!

I'm very sorry Max had to leave now. Godspeed Max.

Fabulous news, Deb! Sam, you rock!

:grouphug Peanut was quite a gal. Godspeed Peanut.

I can't help but wonder if anyone has cultured the poop. Jimmy would have gotten antibiotics after his surgery, as my Spencer did after a dental a few years back. This antibiotic (clindamycin) upset the balance of bacteria in his intestines, which became then a case of SIBO (small intestine bacterial overgrowth). Not saying that's what's happening here. But you might keep it in mind if things don't straighten out pretty soon. Sometimes we find one thing wrong and think we've found It, only to later find there was another thing going on too that we missed.

You and your girl are very much on my mind. How's it going?

Welcome from Washington!

I'd say have him checked for worms, though testing can miss them if they're not in a detectable part of their cycle. The "sneezing" concerns me too. Is it similar to the infamous "backward sneeze"? Because greys with hookworms that have migrated to the lungs do a rapid coughing-up-and-swallowing that looks like that (backward sneeze) but isn't sneezing at all. A regulation course of Panacur might be good to do. Good luck and welcome to GT!

You go, Joe! Have a hug and a cookie!

Hearty was an amazing creature, just about perfect! I doubt I've ever felt quite this...elevated, when reading in Remembrance. Thank you for sharing Hearty with us. I am sorry for your loss. :f_red

Batmom, in Spencer's case recently, his T4 looked entirely normal. Without the fT4, we wouldn't have known it was a problem. The fT3 was high too. (Just as an aside, it's surprising to me that he'd have such excess fT4 in the absence of excess T4. I have to wonder if Spencer's IBD status and diet have a bearing on the situation.)

I'm so sorry for the loss of Skipper.

That is indeed a beautiful pack. My condolences to all who knew and loved Kizzma and Frankie too. It's so hard to lose such good friends.

You should mention the self-isolating upstairs to your vet also, IMO. Spencer is about the same age as Fixer, and the only time he isolates like that is when something physical is wrong. Some do experience decreased vision with age, especially in low-light situations. But other conditions, like BP problems, also manifest as vision issues. Will be keeping you and Fixer in our thoughts today and hoping the vet figures it out quickly!

We just retested Spencer with a full panel, without taking him off the medication, and I believe we still got useful results. His fT4 was way high. So the vet said to cut his dosage in half. The whining at night, which is what led to our decision to retest at this time, has stopped entirely on the new dosage. Although the vet didn't say anything about it, I imagine we'll retest again in a couple of months. Just sharing our experience, not recommending that you follow any particular path. ETA: We had our panel run locally through Antech, who does test fT4 through equilibrium dialysis. But I think it wound up being significantly more $$ than what I've heard MSU charges for their panel, so you might want to investigate that. Oh, and scritches to Opie!

You're more than welcome, Kerry! (It's not like we don't know what you're going through!) I feel the need to mention, though, that while Ensure doesn't hurt an IBD dog per se, it can incline just about any dog toward loose stools until they get used to it. That's why we started with 1/3 bottle per day and worked our way up to 1/2 after a few days, and only after a few weeks did we feel safe enough to use it twice a day. So start slow. And if you find it working out well, cases of it at Costco are far, far less expensive than buying the four-packs from the grocery or drug stores! ETA: Doing well on a food for a while and then reacting badly to it is the IBD pattern. That will probably only stop when he gets on an immunosuppressant. Then you should pick a novel protein (for us it was venison, but we can also use white fish), and he should be non-reactive to it from then on. Not that he won't have an occasional flare, because they all do. But you won't have the problem of becoming reactive to his food itself.

So very sorry to hear this Hope the puppy pot gives you some good time together.

Prednisone didn't help Spencer either, and it hurt him by causing very fast weight loss on top of the weight he'd already lost with SIBO. I can never thank you enough, Tracy, for encouraging us to consider budesonide. We had the further stroke of luck that our vet had her own IBD dog and had already become especially familiar with the problem. But she did even more research for Spencer, as I did mine here on GT and the rest of the Internet. So when she said she wanted to try budesonide, that was just what I'd already decided I hoped she'd say! It is a shame, but humans tend to stick with what they already know, and vets/internists are humans. It feels safer for them to do what everybody usually does. But I don't think pred is always the best choice for greyhounds in this situation, and I wish somebody would generate some more budesonide research to give greater support to choosing that over prednisone for IBD. Kerry, we found that when we needed to prime Spencer's appetite, as people are suggesting for Merlin, a third to a half bottle of vanilla Ensure does the trick. As it is, he now gets a half bottle twice a day just for the extra calories. The internist recommended it and it seems to be fine for IBD dogs in general. As others have said, if you can get him to eat a little of something, anything, Merlin may then go ahead and eat more of whatever he's supposed to have. You and Merlin are very much in our thoughts! ETA: When you talk to the vet, you might request a bottle of B-12 and some syringes. I didn't mention this before, when we were discussing the neuro aspects, but B-12 can also rectify deficient appetite!

Spencer's diet is 25-33% raw daily. Aware that it's controversial, our vets (including the two internists he saw), said to go ahead and do it (including raw food) because it was working for him. Just observing the nature of his poops is how we arrived at that percentage for the raw food. It's what works for him. And, importantly, he was not doing well on just kibble/canned alone. And he has been on the immunosuppressant budesonide for three years. So I think it must be one of those things where you have to weigh all the factors for the individual dog.

Saint was a well-loved, big, beautiful boy. And he had the bestest home he could have possibly had. What an awful shock this loss is. My deepest sympathies to you and your family, Judy.

I'm so sorry.