greyhead

How's the puppy doing today?

West Coast contingent waiting with you too!

With a rectal thermometer coated with some vaseline, like a baby. Or you can use a digital with a probe cover. I think you only need a half-inch or so of penetration. When this crisis is over, I want to know more about how you chose your username! (Seeing as how I'm a grammar lover.)

Especially since I'm probably one of the people that scared you , let me be the first to congratulate you and Deeni!

This sounds just awful to go through, for both of you! We'll be thinking of you today and hoping things go super-smoothly.

Do you live outside the U.S.? It's easier for folks on GT to help with vet recommendations if you're in the States, because most of us are. But there are certainly others outside the U.S., and maybe one or more of them could help if we knew at least generally where you are. Hope your pup is doing well! Good luck with this.

Weight gain doesn't always occur with hypothyroidism. Sometimes the presentation is more typical of what you'd see with hyper-thyroidism. Just thought I'd mention that.

Gabe was a lucky dog to be in your family and well-loved. I'm so sorry for your loss.

I'm very sorry for your loss. Run free, pretty girl!

We have two greys with issues, one including LS, and they both profit enormously from acupuncture. Rimadyl doesn't seem to help much at all. We ordered a sling, because we want to be prepared, from the lady in Florida, whose name is Carol Becker. I can probably rustle up her email address if you PM me for it. Hugs to you and scritches to James!

If it were me, I'd leave her with Lindsay instead of taking her to Dewey. It just feels too soon. Sure, you can maybe *manage* it. But how much fun will that be? For either of you.

Good for you! I've had to take the same approach more than once, and I have never been sorry. (There have been some embarrassed vets, though.)

Please do! We only gave it briefly before stopping to treat him for two TBD's. Not long enough to get a result. Now we're re-starting it. All we can do is hope.

I hope someone comes along here that has specific canine experience to help you, hon. Meanwhile, I'll suggest that you may need to persuade a vet to come to you if it's not feasible to take the dog to the vet. It sounds like he needs to be screened for medical problems. And if there isn't an underlying physical problem, he will probably need some medicine to calm him to the point where any behavioral intervention can even be attempted. Good luck! You've come to a good place in Greytalk.

Addiction seems to be good food but is too complex in formula for our IBD dog. We didn't even try the dehydrated formulas because they had a lot of extra stuff that didn't seem good for a dog like ours. You might look up BooMooandDoo, a GTer who has a pet store in Seattle called A Dog's Dream. She had a thread in Pet Merchandise currently (titled something about a new collar). I'm sure she'd be happy to discuss Addiction foods with you because she carries them. And in my experience, she'll tell you the straight stuff about any food.

Our vet sold us some Bladder Support for Shane, who didn't do well on Proin. The jury is still out on how well it works. The vet says it can take a month or two to produce results. Meanwhile, we're doing the 1/2 cup of milk twice a day, frequent outs, and belly band with pad at night.

Just to add that the Ensure-Plus has significantly more fat than the regular Ensure. This may loosen things up at least initially for at least some pups. I also believe that if Astro is losing weight on, literally, six cups of kibble daily, a vet consultation is warranted. Sure hope it's nothing, though, that more calories won't fix.

Oh, I meant to mention that B-vitamins do wonders for the nerves. If Astro doesn't have any gut problems, you can give them in pill form. B-12 is the most important to nerves; it can also improve appetite significantly. We have to give Spencer injections, just under the skin, because his gut troubles left him unable to process B-vitamins in the gut. If you're okay with doing that kind of injection and your vet will set you up with a bottle of B-12 and some syringes, two shots (1 cc each) per week would be quickly effective, changing to one a week after two weeks, and then once a month as needed. OR the vet can just give the injection in the office, but that's way more expensive.

I'll let you know how long it takes! We just started this strategy last week. History: he lost 20 lbs with his intestinal troubles and prednisone. Discontinued the prednisone and he stopped dropping weight so fast, but we were very limited with what we could feed him. Only venison and sweet potato! Somehow he gained 10 lbs back, and we called it good. That put him at 80 lbs. A year later he's down to 76. He seems to have lost the four pounds over the summer, and I think it's from walking too many miles. He's healthy enough for the mileage, which DH was pushing whenever I wasn't along, but it promotes weight loss, so I had to tell DH to quit it! So first I put sleeveless jammies on him at night, as the house gets down to 69. And that helps but it's not enough. So internist suggested the Ensure. I noticed at the store there are about four kinds of Ensure. The Ensure-Plus is suggested for weight gain. And, of course, it has to be the vanilla flavor. I think some people mix in some water to make it less rich, but Spencer seems to like it straight! The directions say to serve really cold, but he has to drink it pretty slowly when I do that, so I let it sit out a few minutes after taking it from the fridge. I plan to give it another week and then take him in for a weight check. He has been getting half a bottle once a day. I might be more aggressive about that if I weren't a little worried about loosening the poop of an IBD dog!

Spencer's internist recommended Ensure-Plus for him, as he's a skinny IBD dog who's going on 10. No cooking involved! But we did start out giving him 1/4 to 1/3 of a bottle per day, as it promotes looseness at the beginning, until they get used to it. Does the same for humans, I'm told. Good luck!

I'm so sorry Spike had to leave you so soon. At least it sounds like the end was as good as it could have been, cheeseburger and all. Bless all your hearts.

I feel so useless and wish I could do more than send scritches and hugs! When Spencer was on pred last year, he dropped 5 lbs in days ! The good news is that the weight loss stopped the instant the pred was stopped. So just tell Robin to keep eatin'!

Heartbreaking. I'm so sorry. I know you'll miss her very much. But I hope you take comfort in the knowledge that you loved her well for a long time.