KF_in_Georgia

I agree with Batmom. My tag collar is left by Tigger's crate, and it goes over his head as he steps out of the crate. (He's learned to wait for it.) Meanwhile, tongue is a good guess. Also, check the edges of his ears. If he clawed at the collar when he got caught, he might have scratched an ear. The blood spatter indicates something shaken and slinging off blood, so shaking his head could do it. And if you ever spot blood spatter at the rear of his crate, check his tail.

I'm sorry: I advise a vet visit tomorrow. I lost a girl to an immune-system problem that started with diarrhea, vomiting, and lethargy. Check him for any bruising or discoloration on his belly. If you see that, I wouldn't even wait until tomorrow.

If it's the carpet treatment, the owners can try beds or fleece throws on the carpet in areas the dog likes to lie on.

You might also try an extra meal every day. She may not be hungry enough at normal mealtimes to consume much extra, but an extra meal at bedtime might help.

Try lots of small meals. And let him eat lying down if he wants. It's probably getting hard for him to stand up long enough to eat a big meal. Watch for places in the house where he'll need extra footing: you can use rubber-backed bathmats to give him extra traction in places where he has to navigate corners on slippery floors. If you're feeding kibble, grind it or soak it until it's soft enough to just lap up. I had an old boy who wasn't interested in chewing food for several months, but he'd lap up crumbs mixed with yogurt or oatmeal or rice. Talk to your vet about meds that might stimulate his appetite. Also, try adding Ensure (vanilla). Try to increase his calorie count, but be careful not to throw him into pancreatitis or diarrhea by giving him foods with too much fat. Try a hammock in the car: he can lie down and not need to worry about his balance.

Hold her collar until she reaches the bottom--or put a harness on her and hold onto that--and make her take each step. If you're letting her out in a fenced yard to run, you can unleash her once she safely reaches the bottom. If there's not enough room on the steps for you to stand next to her to control her, get in front of her so she can't pass you. A way to teach it: she puts her front legs on the first step down, you stop her there and treat her. Front legs down another step, stop and treat her again. Stop and treat on each step, with a jackpot at the end. The minute she jumps, the treats stop until the next outing and you can try again. She only gets rewarded for taking the steps carefully.

I was warned of this possibility for valium (rather than xanax--fluoxetine) by a vet who cautioned that when you use a mood-altering med, you can't predict which way the mood will go. He said it doesn't usually go to negative symptoms, but it could so let him know right away. A website for fluoxetine in dogs disccusses possible side effects: Read more: The Side Effects of Fluoxetine for Dog Behavior Treatment I used fluoxetine for my boy's SA and didn't see any improvement so we went with clomipramine. He's down to one 25mg capsule a day, but every time I try to wean him off this, we're right back to trouble (pooping in the crate while I'm away from home).

You can stick her toe into ice water. She'll hate it, and don't do it for long. Or you can hold an ice cube against the nail. Also, the spitball approach: a bit of wet tissue held against the nail until it virtually dries there. Then you can fix it in place with a bit of duct tape. (Think of guys plastering their bleeding faces with bits of toilet paper.) When she walks on it, she'll scrape it open again unless you get a covering like the spitball on it. Cover the seats in your car before you head for the vet in the morning. The vet can cauterize it. If you ever have to schedule her for surgery--even just a dental--make sure the vet knows about this.

I worry about the dog in the original post because this is a sudden thing rather than something that has happened off and on all along. That plus the weight loss makes me think "vet visit."

In the house, it's a cat. Outside, it's something moving!!!! Totally different reaction, even to the same household cat (unfortunately). Poor Brooks.

Drs Foster & Smith carries a plastic muzzle that comes in six sizes, and one of them might work for your IG. (Measurement instructions on their web page.) You'd have to improvise a poop guard.

Tylan use in dogs (one of many sites): http://www.petmd.com/pet-medication/tylosin Yes, using it for diarrhea is off-label, but it's very common. Metronidazole can trigger neurological difficulties if used for long periods at high doses. Tylan doesn't carry the same risk. But sometimes one is effective and the other isn't. Tylan did nothing for my angel Sam. For the last year or more of his life he took a maintenance dose of flagyl--half a pill every other day--and that helped enormously. (The neurological problems from metronidazole normally reverse themselves if you stop the meds, but sometimes there are lingering effects. But the dose Sam was on was too low to be dangerous.) Has your boy been taking any other meds? An NSAID? Those can cause stomach trouble over the long term. Also, are chicken and/or rice in his normal diet? If either one isn't normal for him, try changing it out: potatoes or oatmeal or pasta in place of the rice, beef in place of the chicken.

Clomipramine and fluoxetine are used for anxiety and OCD in dogs (and in people). They both can take a few days to "get in gear" on your dog. The dog version of clomipramine is Clomicalm. That's often available only from your vet or by mail order (prescription is required). But clomipramine for people (Anafranil) is available at most people drug stores at much lower prices. Access www.goodrx.com for coupons that will get the price down. (In my neighborhood, the price for thirty 25mg pills is $213 without GoodRx, $19.28 with their coupon.) Fluoxetine (generic Prozac) may be available on a drug store's $4/month plan. When I'm at the vet and one of the dogs needs a prescription, I pull up GoodRx on my phone and my vet looks at the prices and figures the best combination of dosage and quantity to get me a good price. (Lots of times, it's cheaper overall to order a 90-day supply at one time, so he'll write the script that way.)

What was his race weight? Both my dogs have race weights that varied by 5 pounds during their careers. I figured out what they weighed when they were winning and I aim for that weight. But dogs can eat the same amount of food over the years and still put on weight as their metabolisms slow down--or as food formulas change.

Ask your neighbors what they use successfully for their dogs. I've heard reports that fleas/ticks in one area may develop a resistance to one preventative but respond to another one. I'd check with local pet owners and vets.

My angel Sam developed the beginnings of an ulcer while taking meloxicam. Coming out of that trouble, he no longer wanted crunchy food (although crunchy biscuits were always fine). It took several weeks of kibble grinding (six weeks? two months?) before he was willing to go back to eating kibble that hadn't been ground. I just varied the stuff I added to his kibble. Flavored yogurt was popular. Oatmeal cooked the night before could be served cold in the morning--maybe with a little honey added as well as the kibble. Rice, potatoes, chicken, eggs--anything that made the kibble look less like Post Grape Nuts cereal. Sometimes, some canine wet food, but not the feline stuff; in the past I had given him turkey cat food one Thanksgiving, and the results had not been good, so I steered clear of cat food. Because Sam was getting three cups of (ground) kibble a day, I wasn't worried about whether the tasty add-ins were balanced nutrition; they were just present to get the kibble into him. Sam had almost permanent soft to runny poop. It responded well to metronidazole, but when he finished the metronidazole, diarrhea was back within four days. (I was plotting things on a calendar--all his meds for each day, the days the diarrhea came back, etc., and that convinced the vet.) The vet put Sam on a maintenance dose of metronidazole. We slowly decreased from a regular dose to half a pill every other day. If things started looking bad again, we'd just go to half a pill every day for a few days, then cut back again. It helped tremendously. Long-term use of metronidazole--especially, of high doses--can trigger neurological problems, but Sam's dose was very small and--because Sam was 13 and had several issues at once--we weren't particularly worried about the long term. And, if I remember correctly, any neurological problems will reverse themselves if you stop the metronidazole. (Tylan never worked for Sam, so that wasn't an option.)

I'd call Poison Control. The danger depends on how many pieces and how much caffeine in each piece, but caffeine can be seriously dangerous to dogs. Check the ingredients and see how high coffee/caffeine ranks on the list. Poison Control will take a credit card number over the phone, I think, then discuss your case with you. You may be billed $65. If you wind up at the vet, they'll continue working with the vet until things are resolved. See details here: http://www.aspcapro.org/poison Have the bag handy. P.S. If the artificial sweetener Xylitol is in the ingredients, head for the vet at once. It's a killer.

Mary, I think they distinguish one from the other by considering where the urine is taken from. If urine drawn by needle from the bladder is infection-free, but urine exiting the dog in the normal manner shows infection, then it's in the urinary tract rather than the bladder.

Keep treating as if it's a vestibular event. If that's what it is, your boy will continue to improve. If the problem is a brain tumor, you can't fix it. I'm not sure an MRI will be an efficient use of your financial resources. If your vet recommends the MRI, ask what the scan might show and what the prognosis or treatment will be for whatever shows. Then ask if it would be dangerous to treat without the scan. For instance, if it's a question of a clot (treatable) vs a tumor (not treatable), would it be dangerous to just treat for a clot without the scan? Right now, you're in a more vulnerable state than Optimus. I'll bet the ER vet you've spoken to didn't give you as much reassuring advice as the people here have--and will. Please run stuff past the folks on this forum before you get panicked into deciding your boy's case is hopeless or into spending a lot of money for tests that won't actually show you what to do. There are vets on this message board--and lots of experienced owners--and you'll get more helpful advice than "it's a central vestibular disease" and your dog "is unlikely to recover." I'll bet more of us know of vestibular events the dogs recovered from fully than of events that wound up being fatal. Deep breaths. Optimus is better today than he was yesterday. Hang on to that, and consider how much better he might be before he sees his own vet. In fact, take some videos of Optimus as he stands--or tries to--and you'll have something to compare things to on Monday when you and his vet are assessing his condition. Let us know how he's doing.

Can your vet call in a prescription for him? And did Henry have any clotting problems when he had his surgery? You might want to mark his bruises now with a sharpie marker and take a photo. Then compare the markings and the bruising in the morning to help you decide about which vets he might need to see.

Oh, Susan, I'm so sorry. But thank you for spoiling him when he deserved it and being there when he needed you. We're going to miss him.

The numbers will vary with age and weight of dog. But try this: find out how many calories a day she was eating of her old food when she was well and her weight was stable. The calorie count will be available on a website or on the bag. My guys eat 2.5 to 3 cups a day of food that's 355.8 calories per cup, so that's 890 calories for the 55# girl, 1067 calories for the 67# boy (plus treats).

It's common on several breeds. Great Pyrenees have double-dew claws on front and back legs. There's an article here about things to consider about removing dew claws (front or rear). If you decide to leave the dew claws, make sure they get trimmed well when his nails are done. Dew claws don't get the wear regular claws get when a dog walks, and groomers often overlook the claws. I've seen the nails curled and grown back into the skin because they were neglected when the other nails were trimmed.

Ron, try grinding up some of her kibble and mix that with anything she's willing to eat. That will give her a better nutritional base than straight chicken. I used to send the kibble through the food processor until it was just crumbs, then mix the crumbs with oatmeal, flavored yogurt, potatoes, chicken bits, chicken broth, or Ensure--anything around. For several months, my old boy just didn't want to eat food that crunched. (No signs of dental problems, either, and he'd eat cookies any time--just not a regular meal.) Then, just as suddenly, he went back to eating his kibble (on a day I didn't have any ground, so I tossed a couple of pieces in his bowl hoping to keep him busy while I ground some for him). I was grinding three cups of kibble a day, and Sam was eating all of it--with extras. Sam was 13 at the time, and kibble-plus-extras kept his weight stable. You can try vitamins, but those things smell nasty (to people--and possibly to dogs). I had a vet one time advise Flintstone Chewables (but nothing with Xylitol in it for sweetening--Xylitol is toxic). I've tasted the Ensure. I think it takes very bland, but I think it's bland enough not to make a dog's stomach queasy. And I think it's also okay for dogs with a lactose sensitivity. But we're talking about the "straight" Ensure--not anything super-fortified or whatever. But it's sweet, and that goes over big with dogs.

I'm NOT knowledgeable, but her ear might swell from the impact/injury without having any poison in it.