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PrairieProf

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Everything posted by PrairieProf

  1. Hill's makes a specific prescription food for skin allergies now. Following up on the mention of Apoquel above, my Cocoa is on Atopica, another mild immune-suppressant medication -- she's on it for discoid lupus, but it is designed for severe allergies. It's not cheap, but I think its success record is pretty good. Cocoa has tolerated it well. I'm actually really surprised your vet hasn't proposed medication already.
  2. I highly recommend Pawz disposable rubber booties (Medium is the size for a greyhound). I use them whenever my greyhound has any issues with her pads, on top of always using them when there are winter issues like ice and salt. Thin and light but MUCH more effective protection than Musher's Secret, which I have personally never found to do much. You can get them on Amazon. Kind of a pain in the butt to put on for each walk but I LOVE them.
  3. That looks to me exactly like oozing from a puncture wound and likely tiny foreign body. My Cocoa had that and only limped on hard surfaces and especially rough ones (like the rougher pavement of the street, as opposed to the sidewalk). She would get the dark circle after walking right around the nearly invisible puncture hole. Or it could possibly be a bruise. Does the dark wash off?? If you wash it and look really closely, can you see any tiny hole or tear? That is NOT ordinary wear (and doesn't look like a corn to me, although my greys have not had corns). It needed two excavations to get the tiny, tiny little stones/glass beads out of Cocoa's paw -- one after an xray, one after an ultrasound when she was still limping after the first excavation (ultrasound will show foreign bodies that don't appear on xray). It took a good while after that for the hole to really heal up and all limping to stop. I recommend you get to the vet for further inspection. Don't worry, the excavations didn't require general anesthesia or anything dramatic like that; I think they might have done a local for the second, deeper one.
  4. Not all greyhounds like to play with toys. My first grey, Beth (in my picture) was absolutely the most fearless, confident, happy, people-friendly dog you could ever meet, but she just did. not. care. at. all. about objects, toys or whatever, ever in her life. Her attitude was "you threw it, you pick it up." She would play with other dogs, and with me like I was a dog. Once in a long while she might squeak a stuffie briefly but it never went anywhere. My second grey, Cocoa, loves toys and did from the beginning, throwing them around, pouncing and running with them. Your wish for her to play with toys is your wish -- don't project it on your dog. She may like toys eventually or she may not. And her not playing with toys is not the basis for some sob story about her deprived early life. Greyhounds growing up on the farm play like crazy -- but they have each other to play with.
  5. Well the first thing to do is check for a UTI or other obvious things like that, but it is very likely hormonal incontinence. After being spayed there estrogen levels decrease and their sphincter can get looser. My first greyhound developed that and the medication called Incurin fixed her perfectly. It is a form of estrogen, like the older medication DES which you can also use. They do have to be on it lifelong if this is the issue. There is another medication called Proin your vet will probably want to prescribe as the first option. Lots of hounds do fine on that but others have died from it. Do a search on this forum and you can read lots of threads. At any rate, leaking is a fairly common problem.
  6. I have used PetzLife for years and I think it works well. But I also brush with pet toothpaste so it's hard to know the precise effect.
  7. I'm sorry, I'm less expert than many others here but that is not how a cat-safe/cat correctable dog acts. If he can't be redirected by a firm "no kitty" or distraction he is too high prey to be with cats. It is indeed correct that cat-testing is not a 100% guarantee. The cats were part of your family first and your loyalty needs to be to them. It is not fair to them to shut them away in part of the house -- a recipe for them starting to have behavioral issues too. My strong advice would be to return your dog to the group. He will be fine in a cat-free home. There are plenty of hounds out there who will be safe with your cats and you all can have a relaxed, enjoyable life together. Very difficult I'm sure but it will be harder if you wait, and imagine if something happened to one of the cats.
  8. Olewo beets and carrots totally turned around my friend's Akita's reluctant eating when I turned her onto them. You can find a zillion threads about them here.
  9. Foreign body is actually quite possible if you can't find a corn. My Cocoa stepped on some absolutely minuscule little glass pellets and it required two separate excavations at the vet to get them out -- with ultrasound the second time to see that there was still something there. It was not easy at all to see anything on the pad, although I guess it did ooze some. She was also fine on grass and even on smooth pavement (after the first excavation) but lame on hard rough pavement like the street.
  10. Proviable-DC. My vet used to recommend Fortiflora but switched over to Proviable years ago, says it's superior.
  11. No, on my female greyhounds I use blue. Purple flops like clown shoes. Blue is the color listed for guys on their site, too.
  12. No experience with your situation, but I can tell you that Hill's nutrient values can vary when you see different listings because often the nutrients are printed based on dry matter in the food, and sometimes "as fed." Everything will have higher percentages when you are reading a table based on dry matter. It can be a little disorienting.
  13. Muzzle. My girl is a counter-surfer and I could never leave her without it, I do it all the time without any problem whatsoever. They are really not on that tightly and if something got caught it would pull off. Your dog may fuss at first but she will be fine. If she ever made it even to training in a race kennel she is very, very used to a turnout muzzle.
  14. Frontline doesn't repel ticks or prevent them from attaching, it just is supposed to kill them within 24 hours. I use it and can't say I've had a problem, but I don't think it's an extremely tick-intensive area.
  15. Have you tried with another person helping? This is what it took to get Cocoa to jump in for me (though admittedly she was just being a poop, she'd jumped in fine in her foster home). Have another person stand in an open rear door across from where you want the dog to jump, calling them and luring them with really desirable treats. That way they have an incentive, something to jump towards. Obviously if it works once, do it a whole bunch of times over and over. (I still have to throw a treat in ahead to get Cocoa to jump in about 50% of the time, or at least that makes it less of a production.) Might not work if the dog has a real issue, but I wouldn't give up until you tried it.
  16. Sometimes when they get hot from exercise they can pant or breathe heavily for a long time. My current grey whom I have had a year has alarmed me a few times with how long it took for her breathing to return to normal. 86 is VERY HOT for a greyhound, be careful. Many of them are notably affected by the heat when it is over the low 70's.
  17. My best friend, who had an Asian gf when she adopted a puppy, used what is apparently the Japanese word for "go potty," which sounds like "oshiko." I adopted that with Beth. Never really got around to training a word with Cocoa yet. Anyway it's great to have a distinctive word that sounds unlike anything else.
  18. My Beth held it for over 24 hours when I first brought her home, so I wouldn't panic yet.
  19. So very sorry for your loss. (Do you recall that I was the person who first told you about him, so many years ago now?)
  20. Two female greys @ 59 pounds have maintained on 3 cups or so, plus treats etc. I/D has been an absolutely amazing miracle food in my experience. Not only did my Beth never have another problem after lots of dietary issues and near-pancreatitis, she had the most amazing coats (and perfect weight, muscle, energy), now Cocoa has also recovered from pancreatitis and is also in a little over a month showing an incredible transformation of her formerly thin, patchy coat. Both were on grain free before that. If you read reviews from people who actually use I/D they are glowing, and others notice the coat effects as well. I was skeptical but now I truly think this is fabulous stuff.
  21. The image does not appear. Images need to be in a hosting site such as Photobucket to be posted on GreyTalk via the IMG code.
  22. Has Spock's bloodwork included a test for pancreatitis? The one time my first food-hound greyhound went off food she was brewing a case. For the record she was negative on the quick cPL test but a more expensive test that has to be sent out, a TLI, showed she had a problem, and that just diagnosed my second greyhound who was also negative on CPL.
  23. It's discoid lupus or pemphigus, not SLO. But there are serious immunosuppressive medications we can try. She can still be on Vitamin E and niacinamide; Doxycycline messed her up so that's not an option, unless the problem was really pancreatitis and we only thought it was Doxy. She's on topical tacrolimus which is a major treatment. I have read everything that exists on treatment in the literature, because that's how I obsess. I/D isn't good for autoimmune, but maybe not the worst thing. I have read of other dogs besides Beth having amazing coats on it despite it being low fat so it is certainly doesn't hurt their skin. Obviously there are other food options eventually; four years of experience just left me an I/D fan although it is hella expensive. I'm done with TOTW though, despite lots of my friends using it and it working better than anything else....until my dogs get sick.
  24. Teens?? That is completely nothing. And I've never heard of a dog get frostbitten feet during a walk. I've never heard of a dog licking its feet on a walk, however, unless maybe they are being irritated by ice melt or something. At any rate, Pawz disposable/reusable booties do the trick perfectly at keeping feet protected and dry and not painfully cold. They are my mainstay here in northern Iowa. Or more serious boots, if you prefer. But I too do whatever it takes to walk my dog. It doesn't get exciting until negative degrees.....
  25. Well, dammit. Cocoa has been having some intermittent loose poop and digestive issues since a night at Christmas where she threw up and clearly felt sick. Actually, she started showing some signs of digestive distress around Thanksgiving, but we assumed it was from the doxycycline she was on as part of her attempted treatment for presumed discoid lupus (and it may have been). The night Cocoa got sick I was very afraid she might have pancreatitis, as I'd been giving her a good dose of fish oil for the discoid lupus, and some coconut oil too, on top of her Taste of the Wild Pacific Stream. I took her in as soon as the vet opened the next day and among other things we did a cPL test for pancreatitis which was negative. Cocoa got over the immediate crisis and was on canned prescription I/D for a few days, transitioning back to the TOTW. She was on metronidazole most of this time too. She seemed more or less OK -- she stayed with friends for a week over New Years so I didn't get to check on her -- though her poop was not as good as it had been. It has continued not great (in contrast to having been fine before all these troubles started). I told my vet I wanted a TLI test, which is what had diagnosed my Beth with near-acute-level pancreatitis years ago. Did five more days of metronidazole. In the mean time I put her on I/D kibble as well as canned, as Beth had done wonderfully on that for years (and Cocoa's poop immediately improved). Today I called to get the result of the TLI test. When my vet came on, he said the level indicated acute pancreatitis! He didn't know why the cPL had been negative before. So we are continuing the I/D and another course of metronidazole. Beth never had any further problems once she was switched to a low-fat diet and had amazing coat and great general condition on I/D for the rest of her life, so I'm hoping for the same for Cocoa (I know I don't have to stay with I/D forever, but that's a decision for another day; it worked so well for Beth I never wanted to change). Although it is going to be big problem if she can't have fish oil, since that's one of the mainstays of treatment for autoimmune disease, and it makes me feel a little panicky. Meanwhile -- OMG, TWO unrelated dogs have gotten pancreatitis on TOTW and fish oil, which seems like such a mainstream, healthy combo!! Cocoa had seemed to have much more robust digestion than Beth before all this; she never had a poop problem before Christmas. I'm not especially seeking advice (although I'm sure I'll get some!), but I did want to alert people to what has happened. FWIW my vet said he sees way more cases of pancreatitis among dogs now than ten years ago or so, and he thinks it's the foods people are feeding.
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