greyhead

Excellent news! Congratulations to all!

I'm so glad you had the pleasure of his company a good while and so sorry for your loss.

Stampede was an amazing dog and was so lucky to have you. I'm very sorry for your loss.

Dee and Jen too, my thoughts and prayers are with you. This is such a hard thing to face at any time, but especially at this time of year. I will pray mightily that the med change makes a difference and, if not, for the easiest possible parting. :grouphug

What a beautiful tribute you wrote. He was clearly a very special Big Guy and well-loved. I'm so sorry.

I certainly remember Star. I'm so sorry she's gone. But I'm glad she lives in your heart.

Just and hope that something can be done. May the days fly by fast until Thursday and then slow way down.

Ear infections can be exquisitely painful. Hope it's "just" that and nothing more serious.

One wonders what tests the vets did to determine that she's fine. Can you share that info?

Wow, good for you! For both of you! I just love those Irish dogs!

I'm sorry too.

No, that was exactly the point I was making. But someone -- I hope not you -- flat out told a poster recently that her dog "is not hypothyroid." And based on very little information that I could see. And that's just one example of the kinds of posts I had in mind in starting this conversation. ETA: Here is a link to a current New Yorker article that explores in a more or less readable way the newer findings about research being unreliable. It's called "The Truth Wears Off: Is There Something Wrong with the Scientific Method?" The last sentence is something to the effect that not all truths can be proved, and not everything that's proved is true. I hope you'll read this article. http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2010/12/13/101213fa_fact_lehrer?currentPage=all

Couldn't find the actual studies, with methods included, so I can't evaluate them. But before I run off, at least for a while, I want to post a couple links. The first is one cited in a previous thread by Batmom and is the most complete explanation of the possibilities in canine thyroid dysfunction that I've seen. It doesn't cover 100% of possible symptoms, but after reading it one can understand why no one can cover 100%. . http://www.veterinar...A&S=0&C=0&A=461 It surveys the body systems affected in hypothyroidism. Anybody who thinks they may have a thyroid dog should read it. (Did you know that sludgy blood is a symptom? It was news to me.) Norming is not as simple as it might sound. How the sample of subjects is chosen is crucial. It may not be a representative sample, so the results may not be legitimately generalizable to all of Greyhounddom. This is also a problem in human research, and researchers are still disagreeing about what the proper range of TSH values is for humans, even after decades of human thyroid supplementation! Here's a link to the abstract of a really interesting article that details some of the problems in settling on human norms, about which there continues to be disagreement: http://jcem.endojour...tract/90/9/5483 Once there, you can clink on a link in the right-hand column to get free access to the entire article, by the way, and it's worth reading if you have any curiosity in this area. The point is that all research, including that on greyhoundsand on humans, is subject to the same problems of measurement, methdology, and analysis. Even publication in peer-reviewed scientific and academic journals is no guarantee of complete correctness. (Yeah, that came as a shock to me too. But I've had 20 years to get used to the idea.) <BR style="mso-special-character: line-break"> <BR style="mso-special-character: line-break"> To be clear, I am not saying that the thyroid norms for greyhounds are wrong. I'm saying I don't know for absolute sure and, in the absence of better information about the studies performed and their methodologies, I choose to keep an open mind. Which is what I spent a lot of tuition being trained to do. "Cuz so-and-do says so" is not a good basis for reaching a conclusion, and I doubt Dr. Couto would disagree with that. But this is incidental to the main point that needed to be made, which is that group norms do not infallibly describe the thyroid health of every single dog. So it behooves us, I think, to have some humility and restraint about the subject when we try to advise others. And please, please let's not handle ourselves in such a way that greyhounds become under-treated. Heartbeat irregularities can occur with untreated hypothyroid too. In my humble opinion. Love to all. (I've been recalled to my regularly-scheduled life for at least the next week, so don't take it personally if I'm not responding for the next week or two.) Edited: trying to fix that <BR style="mso-special-character stuff above. No luck.

Standard bloodwork doesn't check cobalamin and folate, which can show whether he's actually absorbing the nutrients in his food. If checking on that isn't in the budget, you should still take seriously that you've seen a huge turn-about in Roscoe's behavior, which may be because he feels he absolutely has to eat that stuff cuz he feels like he's starving. I may be off base, but you're not describing something that's run-of-the-mill misbehavior for Roscoe.

Both my boys are less than relaxed with the acupuncture procedure, but it helps them both a whole lot anyway! Has for two years.

It is tiring -- and now late! I made my last post while trying to watch "Bones" and I think I'm done for the night. I'll get back to this tomorrow. But I should say that I think I just have a different bias than those like yourself who hold sway on this subject. I'm acutely aware of the problem of under-diagnosis, while others are trying mightily to prevent over-diagnosis. So we've had a thread recently where a greyhound has twice tested low on a complete panel, I believe, using greyhound norms and still is discouraged from pursuing thyroid as the likely culprit! Nobody is saying "don't do it," but they're pointing the owner in different directions. Hopefully tomorrow I'll be able to explain my questions about greyhound norms. Meanwhile, can anyone help me find the studies that established those norms? I need to know how many GH's were studied in total, at what stage(s) of their lives, by how many studies, who performed them, and in what years. I haven't looked at the OSU material in quite a while; is it in there?

Exactly. Thank you. My worry is that sometimes here on GT I see well-meaning statements made that seem to suggest that a low T4 finding is so common in GH's that their person's money would be better spent looking at something other than thyroid to figure out why their dog isn't right. Even when a nod is made to the idea that behavior must be considered along with numbers, symptoms that haven't been statistically associated with hypothyroidism (such as "aggression", for instance) are dismissed as probably due to something else. So a full panel may not be pursued when it really should be. I think those of us who have some degree of pride in our rationality, which is most of us, don't want to see ourselves or have others see us as tilting at windmills. If people who seem to know more than we do tell us that something is unlikely, we may feel foolish to continue investigating it. Naturally, we want to pursue the avenues that are most likely to lead to the right answer. And then there's the $$ issue. So I've offered the article cited to underscore that all individuals -- GH's or otherwise -- are not alike and that all manifestations of thyroid disease are not classic. I'd prefer to see people encouraged to pursue complete thyroid testing if there's any chance that that could be the dog's problem. For one thing, it's a very easy fix. For another, the cost to a dog of not having it fixed can be really harsh even if they don't let us know. Because they're so darned stoical, and they can't talk to tell us they have sore joints and frequent heartburn! Can we agree on that much? (Well, except for the drama queens, and they only seem to get histrionic over the small stuff.)

Whew, thanks Batmom! I type better without the boxing gloves. To move the discussion along a bit, let's consider this sentence from the quotation in the OP: This offers to my mind a suggestion -- only a suggestion -- about how it is that greyhounds or anybody else can get along so well with very low levels of T4. When it's really low, conversion to T3 increases. T3, as folks may or may not know, is the form of thyroid hormone that is bio-available, or biologically available to do the body's actual work. And it's created when T4 drops an atom and through that conversion becomes T3 instead. If we want to know why it's set up that way, we might have to ask God, but that's how it is. (My endo says he has patients who tell him just to give them T3 and skip the T4 med altogether. That's how powerful T3 is.) Okay, good, we critters can get by as long as we have a bunch of T3. But I'm not sure we know how long anybody can keep up that increased conversion efficiency. And it also raises the question of trade-offs, of whether there is a cost to increased efficiency of T3 conversion in the presence of low T4. I'm reminded of the study some years ago on women in underdeveloped countries, showing that they became more fertile when they were starving. It appears this is nature's way of guaranteeing that the human race survives despite things like famine. But this shift in fertility arguably does no big favor to the individual starving women and their health. While that may not be the best available example, it hopefully serves to indicate the lines our thoughts could travel in pondering this. I also recall hearing, way back when dealing with Spencer's thyroid initially, that testing T3 in dogs is not all that useful or illuminating. But given the finding cited above, it seems very useful indeed. Just in case anyone's tempted not to do the full thyroid panel. After we get this out of the way, I'll start another slugfest -- in this thread, yes -- about classic thyroid symptoms and other symptoms, as a couple people touched on earlier. Or anyone else can feel free to start it instead. Thanks and hugs to all those brave enough to join the conversation, including those who disagree with me.

If you don't see how you can compare vet and human medicine, you haven't thought about it enough. Kudzu explained it very well. You're a very smart person, tbhounds, have been a great help to me with Spencer's intestinal problems, and I like you enormously. So I hope you'll think more about what can be learned from human medicine to the benefit of our animals. It would be a shame to refuse to even consider such findings as I quoted when they may in fact help us understand why our greyhounds don't all present the same way when they do have thyroid difficulty. As to atypical greyhound values, most of them make logical sense when considering what these dogs have been bred to be and what their experience has been as racers. It's perfectly logical that they would have higher hemoglobin, for instance. OS may be pure genetics or a combination of that and certain stressors; in any case, we don't call it "normal" for greyhounds just because so many get it. I try very hard to understand the reasons for things; if I don't understand something in conventional terms, I pursue it from a different angle. The thyroid findings don't entirely make logical sense to me. The reason I don't just accept group norms is because I've studied statistics just enough to know that they have their limits and to know that correct interpretation of results is an analytical problem, not a mathematical one. I came by this interest five years ago when, after a complete thyroid panel using equililbrium dialysis -- with an initial T4 at the very bottom of the range but technically within normal limits -- followed by treatment, my first greyhound's "aggression" disappeared. (I've since come to think of it as "defensiveness," but that's another story.) The only "classic" symptom he has was lack of energy. I requested the full panel because I know that any value at the poles of any range is suspect, due to the standard error of measure. So Spencer recovered immediately and is still with us. But right after that testing, the vet told me that his vet partner had previously put down two greyhounds for aggression, one of them her own. They were killed without a full thyroid panel because the T4 was WNL. One case was thought to be due to "brain inflammation," but no reason was found in the other case. So knowing the stakes can be life-or-death, I get very queasy about just uncritically accepting the idea that greyhound thyroid values are lower just "because they are," and that greyhound group norms should be uniformly applied to each and every case, with no willingness to consider that that dog may just be different from the group. What I'm suggesting is that one shouldn't just look at lab values and say the dog must not have a thyroid problem if its lab values are within group norms. The individual set-point for that dog may vary. To suggest that that finding in humans is worth considering when deciding whether to pursue further testing and/or treatment for a dog is not far-fetched when you consider that we are all mammals and as such have a huge number of physical processes in common. And it's not like I'm suggesting that we evaluate quadruped gait on the basis of biped standards, for crying out loud! What Kudzu said!

{{{{Isa}}}} I'm so sorry you and your three are in this state. And I so wish I had something to offer beyond sympathy. Sending lots of prayers and good thoughts to bring Sabrosa's BP down, get a handle on Xolotl's liver situation, and have some peaceful, pain-controlled time with Ziganes. :grouphug

It's too hard to keep trying to make this argument every time someone else asks whether and on what basis they should believe their dog might be hypothyroid. So I'm starting this thread to put my arguments in one place and I'll just cite to it in the future. Please feel free to join in. When questions arise about hypothyroidism in our greyhounds, I keep alluding to the fact that individual differences (called "interindividual differences" below) may mean that what is normal for the reference group on which the norms are based is not normal for the invididual dog. Here's the link to the article from which this excerpt is drawn: http://edrv.endojour...nt/full/29/1/76. It is "The Clinical Significance of Subclinical Thyroid Dysfunction" and appears in a 2008 volume of Endocrine Reviews. It's an analysis, but not a statistical meta-analysis, of research findings. Although the article reviews studies on humans, the principles of analysis are what are important. Btw, SCTD below refers to subclinical thyroid dysfunction, which is what they call it when the TSH is in normal range but the thyroid hormones themselves are below normal. CI means "confidence interval"; Google it if you dare. There's more to discuss in this vast topic, but I'm going to sleep now!

It's not that taking the drugs forever that's the problem. If she needs them then that's fine. I guess I was hesitant to give her something that she may not need that she would still have to take forever. I was under the impression that if we start with the drugs and her thyroid is not the problem it would "stop working" as a result of the drugs which would make her need them whether she did from the start or not. (How's THAT for a run on sentence ). Is that not the case? Also, does anyone have a dog that is in the normal range but still needs meds? If not, any ideas about what else it might be that we haven't thought of? No, giving med doesn't make the thyroid stop working if it still wants to work. That's why giving it to one who doesn't need it can result in a thyroid that's running too high. As low as your dog's numbers are, that's unlikely in your case.! I think the key is in your OP, where you said that twice your dog has tested at the very bottom of the ranges. There's something called the Standard Error of Measure that applies to every measurement. It means that none of them are necessarily perfect measures; the *actual* number may be slightly higher or slightly lower. From that point of view, your Miss Nellie may actually be functioning *below* the normal range, so you can't really relax in the knowledge that her numbers are definitely within normal limits. Granted, the actual number may be higher. But then we get into the area of "individual differences." Not all critters, including humans, function well near the very top or the very bottom of a range since not all critters are identical. There are differences in each individual that may mean they need more or less than most others of their species. If I were you, I'd try Nellie on the medicine and see if there's improvement; that will tell you a lot. But I'm not you, of course, so I'd advise that you take your thoughts and concerns back to the vet and talk it out until you feel persuaded one way or the other. Whatever the problem is, I hope you get to the bottom of it. It sounds like Miss Nellie needs something! .

It's tempting to ask for the definition of "rare" here. But it doesn't really matter. What matters is the definition of "normal." In the arena of testing, of all kinds, "normal" means that the majority of beings tested have that result, whatever it is. It doesn't mean "good." It has bothered me for years that low thyroid numbers in greyhounds are defined as normal. For all I know, most greyhounds are hypothyroid!!! But it has been defined as normal for greyhounds because the majority's numbers fall within that range. Because the symptoms of hypothyroidism are not always easily observed, I also don't trust that these so-called normal dogs with numbers so small they can't even be observed are truly healthy. I care because I know *for sure* that untreated hypothyroidism results in a life lived somewhere between sub-optimal and miserable. Not every expert in medicine has a truly sound education in statistics, about what they can and can't tell us. There's a reason Mark Twain alluded to the existence of three kinds of lies: "lies, damned lies, and statistics." He wasn't just being funny. I mean no disrespect to anyone. I just feel compelled to push back against this idea greyhounds can be expected to be in perfect health in the absence of enough T4 to even measure.

What is the problem with being on thyroid drugs forever? They're very cheap, easy to administer (tiny pills), and they make a world of difference to anyone who needs them!

Surely you are aware that cths does not accurately reflect true hypothyroidism fully 15% of the time, per Michigan State. So to say that it's rare to find high ctsh is a specious argument if one is using it to support the idea that canine hypothyroidism itself is rare. While one may not explicitly say someone else shouldn't test further, the statements that are made could lead the person to that conclusion. This happens way too often for my taste when questions of hypothyroid status arise in this forum. Sometimes I let it slide. Today I didn't, but I have no wish to single you out, tbhounds.