kudzu

Ditto. First thing that came to mind.

Some strange presentation of something like thyroid or adrenal malfunction? Skin allergies are normally itchy. A vitamin or mineral deficiency? Just throwing out ideas. Currently have a 20 mo old Deerhound mix who showed up with a bald patch for no reason. Then another cropped up & another. The first were up on her legs. Next was one on top of her head. Started as bald patch, then skin turned red & only then did the itching start. The itching was from secondary infection. Skin scrapings showed the bald patches are coming from demodex mites. There seems to be something going wrong with her immune system but bloodwork, including thyroid panel, are normal. Ivermectin is starting to work. Hopefully it will finish clearing up without a repeat. Likely not your dog's problem though.

Have you checked with OSU Greyhound Wellness service? They try to provide low/no cost chemo drugs to Greyhounds when they can. At least they used to & quite recently. ETA: I meant to phrase that as, did you email the wellness service as opposed to just emailing Dr. Couto.

As has been said, it is hard to tell from the photo especially with a brindle. Your girl looks similar to my brindle. My girl could stand to loose a couple pounds fat & replace it with muscle. It isn't that mine is overweight but she is out of shape after several toe injuries & then winter. So I guess I am saying, yeah maybe your girl could loose a little. However, she still looks good but maybe not perfect for a Greyhound, even a pet. Make sense? I will add that when my girl was really fit, pet fit not racer fit, she was 4 lbs under her racing weight. Now she is 2 lbs over her racing weight. You really can't go by the racing weight to tell you what the pet weight should be. Going by my two dogs, if I had them at 5 lbs over their racing weight they would be fat. Just plain ol' fat.

In my experience that is correct. I only give bordetella vaccine to the dogs that are required to have it for day care, grooming, etc. In my case that is one out of three. And yes, she gets a booster every 6 mos. Bordetella vaccine is not one of the core vaccs for my dogs. My youngest does doggie daycare and has been boarded so it is standard for her. My vet, however, doesn't send out a reminder for it. The choice to vaccinate is totally your own. It is not something I think necessary but it does seem to be pretty safe. Am not aware of anyone whose dog had a reaction to it except a bit of reverse sneezing. Personally, I would not get it for a dog if I didn't have to but that does not mean I am opposed to it. Still, it is usually only spread in kennel type environments & most dogs who get it recover quickly without treatment. For most of our dogs, the risk of contracting kennel cough is low. If one of my dogs came down with respiratory symptoms I would have them to the vet quickly anyway just to be safe. Bordatella dun skeer me. ETA: The safety & minimal side effects apply to the nasal vaccine only. Don't know anyone who has used the injectable type. It used to have a questionable reputation but I cannot remember why.

Ditto! Great groups who offer a lot of combined knowledge & support. For what it is worth, I had a guy who had proteinuria for 5+ years & diagnosed with CRF for 3+ years. First problems evidenced at 4 years old. We said goodbye just before he was 10 yo. He died with renal failure, not because of it.

Addison's is not common but it is commonly misdiagnosed as renal failure. The renal numbers go up, dog is given fluids & responds well but later has problems again. Whenever renal failure is suspected without a known cause it is logical to rule out Addison's. Looking at the sodium:potassium ratio is normally the first clue but a dog can have Addison's, more particularly atypical Addison's, without the Na:K ratio being out of range. So that is why I asked.

Have they checked for Addison's?

Great news! Sounds like you are on your way. Sending all the best thoughts & wishes for successful, uneventful treatment.

With those symptoms, kidneys or Cushing's disease are my first thoughts but that does not necessarily explain elevated CK. Did your dog do a lot of running or exercise before the vet visit? From the description, I am guessing not. My dog with lower motor neuron disease, a polyneuropathy, had elevated CK quite often. He also had kidney trouble so shared the symptoms you list with Princess except the locking up. My guess is that you are likely to be looking at two different problems. In my personal experience, only Cushing's disease has gone with the set up symptoms you describe.

Sometimes nerve damage can cause that. It can show up before any knuckling or dragging. Watched a neurologist test one of my dogs by spreading his toes slightly & watching to see if he drew them back together. Knuckling is usually from a sensory deficit, splaying toes & dragging can be from a motor deficit. That is only one possibility though & does not prove anything on its own. The suggestion to trim nails is logical if he has longish nails. Though if all his nails are about the same & he is only doing this that would strange. Perhaps pain could do this. If arthritis is in that wrist then maybe it effects him keeping those toes pulled together. I like the suggestion to get xrays. In your position, I'd get on the horn to the vet & discuss this.

Sorry Ace has received this diagnosis. Please do not think I am being unsympathetic, because I am in fact very sympathetic to this, but Ace could have gotten a much worse diagnosis. When we were first investigating Luke's increasing lymphocytosis, Dr. C said it certainly could be CLL & if so, dogs often live out their normal life span. Luke does in fact have CLL, CD8+ T-cell to be precise. Judging from his lab work he had it when I adopted him almost 3 years ago. For a variety of reasons, I have chosen not to use chemo. However, that does not mean you shouldn't. The chemo used for CLL is a very low dose with minimal side effects reported. Luke just had his 13th birthday last week. He ate his way through his birthday & loved every bite of it. We did have a scare last spring. His blood work was awful & the docs had us pretty scared. In the end no one knows what happened, but it seems some mystery infection had hold of him. He came through that fairly quickly & has done really well since. He goes to meet & greets a couple times a month, practically drags me into the stores actually. He started agility, on baby sized equipment only, at age 11 & continued until 12 yo when his arthritis forced me to pull him from classes. He was the most enthusiastic dog in class & everyone adored him. In short, you would never know the boy has any form of cancer. I hope he stays with us for years to come but should his condition take a turn for the worse, I will at least know we tried to give him the best while we had him. I don't know what type of CLL Ace has but we got lucky with Luke. His is the type with the longest life expectancy. There is not a lot of info out there to be had on CLL in dogs. If you PM me your email address I will send you the few things I have. Dr. Anne Avery at CSU was helpful. CSU is where Luke's flow cytometry was done. That was before it could be done through IDEXX. Basically I wanted to tell you that, though of course things could take a turn for the worse, right now at least 3 years & possibly longer into the disease, my guy is doing really well. His blood work looks bad but, but Luke looks good. I hope Ace manages as well. Laura

Oh, I am so sorry. Poor girl. We went through almost the same thing hear though no crates were involved. A foster removed almost all the skin on the back of my old man's ear plus tore the cartilage. Poor old man was miserable until... we had to keep him confined to the kitchen to keep the youngest member of the pack from ministering to his wound with her tongue. Spending weeks in the kitchen with all the good food seemed to suit our old dude just fine. LOL I think he was actually disappointed when the xpen across the doorway was removed. It took a while but he healed just fine. That ear will never again fly at full mast but that's no biggie. All the best to Echo. Luke strongly suggests you milk this situation for all the treats & yummy goods you can get... but away from Peanut.

The short answer is yes injury can lead to thinning if the dog is laid up so much that they lose a lot of muscle mass. However, what you are describing reminds me more of my old man Grey. He is 13 yo, has a chronic form of leukemia (had it for years) & his arthritis has forced a reduction in exercise. He is not too thin but as you say he is thinning from loss of muscle mass. Unless you boy has been on drastic reduction in exercise that would lead to muscle loss, I would get him to the vet for a check up & bloodwork as others have suggested.

My vet suggested canned pineapple for all the dogs. It has some effect that inhibits poo eating. I guess pineapple transforms into something yucky tasting. It actually worked but was a bit pricey to administer it to that many hounds. Quick cleanup & careful application of a poo guard works for our old man. That not always. Thank heavens he doesn't like to kiss us. ETA: I still cannot imagine pineapple, even in its output form, tasting yuckier than poo. Dogs remain a mystery to me.

That med was probably Anipryl (generic is selegiline), actually a Parkinson's med that is now used for dogs with dementia. It does seem to work for some dogs.

Jackson, it is a touchy subject for many because Millan has managed to bring back dominance & correction based training to the masses just as it was started to die out. It is really sad. It isn't that everything Millan says is wrong. The average suburban America dog does not get enough exercise. Many people do no training or are inconsistent with it. Love alone will not make a happy life for a dog. Wait, let me take that back. I believe love alone can make them happy but I include training as part of showing my love. So let me rephrase, just showing affection won't make your dog happy. My biggest problem with Millan's training techniques is that it relies too much on correction & tries to make everyone think that dogs are waiting to take over the world. And then there is the fact that he really does not seem to understand dog behavior enough to prevent dangerous circumstances. All I can think is that he intentionally tries to set up dangerous situations so he can "correct" the dog because he only seems to be able to train through correction. It is just too limiting & can do such horrible damage. A good behaviorist would carefully evaluate a dog taking pains to prevent the dogs from going over threshold. Millan seems to set things up in ways that the dog is guaranteed to be pushed to the brink, then he intentionally tips the dog over the edge. Sorry, but that is just cruel & leads to terrible circumstances such as this. Millan kicks a dog into attacking. (Be patient. It can take a while to load.) What Millan did is what I might have expected from an inept owner not someone who calls himself a behaviorist. Sadly what he ultimately did is a technique called "hanging". It is an old technique & a really horrible one. The dog in the video ends up on the ground suffering from hypoxia. If you look closely you can see that the dogs tongue had turned blue. It had nothing to do with submitting to Millan's dominance & everything to do with a dog trying to recover from near asphyxiation. The dog could have done a lot of damage to Millan. Instead he only left scratches. One day, Millan isn't going to be so lucky. My dog going out the door first is just my dog wanting to get to the other side of the doorway. Since I find dogs rushing out of doorways at the minimum annoying & downright dangerous in some situations my dogs get rewarded for waiting. What is their reward? They get to go out the door, whether it is before or after me is of no importance to my leadership standing. I control the doorway. I say who goes in or out & if I choose I can also control what order that is. This does not require correction or leashes or e-collars or poking or Ehh'ing or Pssst'ing. All it requires is not opening the door until the dog waits. Very simple, very easy, very rewarding for the dog when that door opens & they are allowed to go through. Yep, it's funny. I am just a bundle of laughs when it comes to this subject.

We have a 3 step plan that works pretty well: 1. Leave nothing surfable on the counters. (But because we are human & very fallible we need #'s 2 & 3.) 2. Teach a solid "Leave It". (Sue Ailsby's Levels training is a great place to start. Click here& scroll to "Zen" near the bottom. Then click here, choose Level Two & go to the next level of Zen. 3. Make staying away from the counters highly rewarding. Our youngest, a Deerhound cross, is really wanting to take up counter surfing. So she now gets heavily rewarded for laying on a small throw rug in the hallway when there are surfables in the kitchen. When she really wants something in the kitchen she is now prone to lay on the rug & stare longingly at the nearest human hoping a treat is coming her way. 4. "Hey" or "Eh" or "Out" all get the dogs attention & causes them to leave the kitchen. Don't ask me why. They just do. (Yeah I know I said it was a 3 step plan. That is because we only plan for steps 1-3. Step 4 is very spur of the moment. ) What ever approach you choose, remember that consistency is the key. Remember that you must be very consistent or the dog will be confused & that is just unfair. Plus, counter surfing itself is so rewarding that it is worth getting in trouble if you know there is the possibility of bagels.

We didn't worry about it spreading to ourselves or the other dogs. Yes, some of these can effect both dogs & humans. The most common ones like some staph, are normally present without causing infection. It takes some physical insult or a lowered immune system to make one vulnerable to them. No one, dogs, humans or cats, caught Luna's staph or pseudomonas. I did not do any extra washing of anyone except Luna.

That will probably do it. If not, a shift to another antibiotic is needed. We recently had a problem with my longdog. It turned out to be a combo of staph & pseudomonas. The pseudomonas is what caused the rash resulting in multitudinous little scabs. We knew what it was because a spot on her right hock turned red & swollen. As the day wore on, approaching time for her vet appointment, that hock increased dramatically in size & the rash spread. The speed was frightening. So we went ahead & did a culture even though she was started on cephalexin, a poultice for her back legs & Malaseb shampoo. (Shampoo comparable to what you got.) The culture came back & cipro was added for the pseudomonas. None of the other dogs has ever had a skin infection & they did not get this one either. Just the one dog.

We have three dogs & two indoor cats. Two of our current dogs & all of my previous non-Grey dogs would chase outdoor cats even their own housemates. That reason alone would prevent us from having a dog door. There are also quite a few other reasons I will not have one. There are also some good reasons people choose them plus some precautions & set ups to make them safer. Still, we are not a household for which I think a dog door will ever be a good option. Cats are the #1 reason.

Welcome home, Hugo! Congratulations to all. Bet your new family gives you lots of good brushings & your coat start gleaming very soon. Um... Hugo was the name of a rather destructive hurricane that we had hit the Eastern US coast some years ago. Perhaps a sign that your Hugo will take Hebe's lessons to heart.

Senior panels are usually a combo of blood count (CBC or some part of) & blood chem plus possible thyroid. Varies from lab to lab & vet to vet. Best description is it's a look at the usual suspects of trouble areas for seniors.

Wishing the best for Chase. I know that is horribly frightening. FYI, mentioning only because is sounds so similar. My sister has a little mutt who starting with episodes that confused GP vet & neurologists. Was having seizures but also symptoms of vestibular. Though he has some heart problems, only clue found for this problem was low serum calcium. Turns out he has hypoparathyroid. Neurologist still says the vestibular symptoms just don't mesh but it did explain the seizures. He gets calcitriol now & is doing soooo much better. It's such an unlikely diagnosis but had to mention it. Prayers for Chase.

Thanks so much for the additional suggestions. Did manage to get something, the elastic knit tubing type bandage covering, to stay on last night but it involved Elastikon which is just too sticky for longterm use especially with twice daily changes. So will try the paper tape. Tried XL tube sock but it was too narrow. Stockings didn't work. Will see if I have a long sleeve shirt or perhaps the leg from some longjohns that will work. The burn bandages sounds interesting. I've yet to find something that works for actually covering the ear itself without sticking to it. Since we are supposed to be applying cream twice a day but wanting granulation, it doesn't make sense to keep pulling things off if they stick & take bits of flesh with them. Why is it that vets want to charge you for bandaging that refuses to stay on? I'm just askin'.