KF_in_Georgia

Both my dogs had a 5-pound range in their racing weights! With that much variation in their posted weights, if I let either dog get at the top of their race weights - let alone over - I'd have two labs on my hands. Silver raced at 55 to 61 pounds. I focused on her wins, and most of them were about 57 pounds. Her weight now falls between 56 and 57 pounds. Hip bones are visible; ribs, less so. She's 9 and has been out of racing since January 2009. I've had her since August 2011. She was dumped by a previous owner and picked up by AC when she weighed 51 pounds. Her weight has stayed stable at 56 except when she was helping angel Sam finish his meals last year, but I got her weight down again after he died. Tigger raced at 67 to 72 pounds. Most of his wins were at 70 pounds. He weighs just over 68. His ribs aren't visible, and neither are his hip bones, although they're all easy to feel. I may get him down to the point where there are visible hip bones, but I'm not going to worry too much about that. He's 7 and has been out of racing since September 2011. I've had him since November 2013. He's a bounce from a previous home; he came back to SEGA weighing 68, and his weight has stayed there. Both dogs get weighed every couple of weeks. A local pet store has scales where customers can check.

It's okay that you mixed the meds with water. She still got the same amount of the medicine at each dose.

I think this is the article you want to print and take to your vet: http://fearfuldogs.com/acepromazine/ Here's the most relevant paragraph: Dogs taking ace experience increased reactivity to noise. They often have an inability to regulate their body temperature successfully. Neither of these things are what you want for a geriatric dog. The article offers safer alternatives to ace.

Heather, my first girl broke her leg in the living room. No cancer showed on the x-ray, so I let the orthopedic surgeon operate to implant a pin. I was expecting him to call to say she was out of surgery and let me know when I could pick her up the next day. I had already set up a "recovery room" for her in my living room--an ex-pen to keep Sam from bothering her, the best bed, dishes, etc. But instead, the surgeon called to say she wasn't coming out of the anesthesia properly--it seemed her lungs weren't getting enough oxygen, even though they had her on O2. Her heart had stopped and they'd brought over a vet from the ER next door to do CPR, but she wasn't coming back. (A word of advice to vets: when you make this kind of phone call to someone, do it in a quiet room with a closed door and no noises in the background. If Oreo's heart had stopped, that wasn't her I heard crying out in the background: my head knows that, my heart doesn't. It's been 8 years, and I still hear those sounds.) We didn't do a necropsy; the surgeon said it showed all the signs of a pulmonary embolism. Oreo was 8 years old, and her death broke my heart. I grieved, and I hated that I never had a chance to say good-bye to her. I got my last glimpse of her from across the room the night I brought her to the ER with the broken leg: she was lying down, and she had neon green vet wrap from toes to shoulder. But they wouldn't let me get close to her that night or the next day before the surgery because they didn't want her agitated. At home, after the surgeon's phone call, I cried and raged and screamed: I want my Oreo! and It's not fair! And it wasn't. (And when Oreo's successor turned out to have separation anxiety, after a poop deluge necessitating the third bath in one week, I sat on the curb next to a sopping wet Jacey and cried, Oreo wouldn't have done this to me!) (Adding petty insult to heart-breaking injury: the vet's office lost Oreo's collar. She wasn't wearing a martingale when I took her in, but she had on her tag collar--ID tag, SEGA star tag, rabies tag--and they were never able to find it. And part of my brain still insists: Lost my dog. Lost her collar, too. Since then, I've never left tags on a dog I've let out of my hands at the vet.) I've realized a couple of things since then. Oreo's vet called the day after she died to tell me not to second-guess myself about the surgery. The surgery wasn't optional. Oreo, like Roxy, needed the surgery to have any chance at a good future. We both made the right decision. That the surgery wasn't enough to save either of them was/is just plain bad luck. In Oreo's case, I'm sure that embolism spared her a lot of pain. Although cancer didn't show on her x-rays, I'm sure it was there (how else does a dog break a leg standing in the living room?). We'd have tried to nurse her through the recovery period on that pin implant (and Oreo was not a patient with patience), and she wouldn't have gotten well and we'd have had to do more surgery or decide to put her to sleep--and that embolism took all those decisions out of our hands. I'm sorry to have lost any remaining good times with Oreo, but I'm not sorry we were spared the bad days. And, with both our girls, the embolism could have happened at home, when neither of us could have done anything to stop it. That's something I don't think I could have taken. Two vets and a surgical team in the room with Oreo, and they couldn't save her. And if Roxy had had a whole vet team at her side, they wouldn't have been able to save her either. We didn't get to say goodbye, but we also didn't have to watch helplessly as it happened. I'm thinking of you and Kevin and Seka. I'm remembering the moments when I'd look past Sam, expecting to see Oreo, then think, No, she's at the vets and then No, she isn't! And all those odd hazards, like referring to "my dogs" in conversation with people or "Sam-and-Oreo" rolling off my tongue as if it was one word. It gets better--except for those little moments when it suddenly gets awful again, when you least expect it. But those moments show up less often. They really do. Regardless of what they find in the necropsy, please don't second guess anything you did--not the surgery and not the vaccine. You gave Roxy her best chance Kisses to Seka.

Heather, I'm so, so sorry to hear about Roxy.

Heather, I don't have much to suggest. But Seka might do better with oatmeal than with rice. Oatmeal has higher fiber, and often is more digestible than rice is. My guys have been perfectly happy to eat the cold, gelatinous, yucky clumped up oatmeal after it's cooled down, but you also can thin it down with a little chicken broth. Fingers crossed for Roxy and you: that she'll do well with the test at Auburn, and that you won't have to spend any more nights hunkered down in the motel bathtub as tornadoes zip through town.

It's just that she could have a UTI in addition to the spay incontinence, so it's possible that the DES is working just fine--but just isn't worth squat against a UTI on top of the incontinence. Or high blood pressure. Or whatever might be going on in addition to what the DES is fighting. If the vet says the big spots shouldn't be happening, I'd expect him to start looking into why they are happening: check for a UTI, check blood pressure, etc., maybe look into some calming meds if he thinks it's stress (and stress would raise her blood pressure). Maybe the foster dad made light of issues in order to get her out of the house, but if the vet says this shouldn't be happening, then the foster dad would be covering up something other than incontinence.

See the thread here. There are several possibilities there. Did your vet actually check for a UTI?

This article supports that.

I'm so sorry.

Vet visit, I think. Vet should check Max's mobility--everything moving and flexing right? And check his eyesight. (In the meantime, turn on lots of lights and see if Max is more willing to try the stairs.)

If Tori continues to have trouble standing for long, give smaller meals more often, or consider bringing her meal to her while she's comfortably lying down. And--in case you didn't know--gabapentin prescriptions can be filled at regular pharmacies, generally for less money than the vet has to charge. It's usually available as 300mg tablets or 100mg capsules. I always got the capsules because I could control dosing better. Also, gabapentin seems to work better if it's given in smaller doses more often, rather than a large dose just once (or even twice) a day. My old man was getting 800mg to 900mg a day; I usually gave him 200mg at meals, and he ate four times a day.

A little over a month ago, I started trying to train Tigger using small bits of string cheese as training treats. At that point, I'd had him for about four months, and I'd never given him cheese. But he had a training session where he ate the equivalent of maybe half a stick of string cheese--and ate it on an empty stomach. After training, he had dinner, and a few hours after that he threw up. A few hours after that, he threw up again. By morning, he'd thrown up at least four times (including a "sneak off while mom's sleeping and upchuck behind the furniture" event). I took him to the vet, and they x-rayed. No sign of bloat, but the vet described an area on the film that showed irritation and inflammation. We gave him a shot of cerenia (GSOD and one outraged dog), and I took him home and put him on a bland diet for a day and a half. (Mostly oatmeal.) The cerenia was enough to stop the nausea, and Tigger recovered quickly. I'm wondering if what your vet saw on the x-rays was some inflamed, irritated tissue, and that inflammation resolved itself. One big difference here is that Tigger didn't feel bad--at least, not beyond the excuse-me-mom-I've-gotta-barf moments. When he wasn't barfing, he was eating and drinking normally (except that I refused to give him breakfast before the vet visit). Actually, Larry's behavior makes more sense: if you've got a queasy stomach, you shouldn't want to be eating everything in sight, but Tigger's brain seems to completely shut down the moment he sights food. (That's the only explanation for a dog that tries to take pills out of his housemate's mouth. Food, to Tigger, is the same as squirrel to other dogs.) We haven't confirmed that Tigger is lactose intolerant, but I'm going to operate on that assumption and give him something else for training treats--rather than run tests, or just give him dairy and wait to see what happens. Maybe Larry also had a one-off bad reaction to something, and the scary mass on the x-rays was inflammation.

Dogs usually shed big twice a year. As the weather gets cold--when you really wouldn't expect it--dogs blow out their thinner summer coat and grow in a thicker winter coat. I've never had one go from thin-summer to thick-winter without the intervening major shed. Both of mine have just started their Spring shed. The girl has 6 therapy dog sessions scheduled in the next month, and she's going to be molting her way through every single one of them.

I will say that unfortunately it is possible for a dog to break a leg and be treated for the broken leg without the vet realizing it's cancer. Adrianne's boy Wilbur had that happen, and I think Pam and Glen's boy (Archie?) had the same thing. My Oreo broke her leg standing in the living room, doing nothing, and her x-rays were gorgeous. This was 8 years ago--before I knew what I know now (and when few vets had high-def imaging equipment)--and I authorized the orthopedic surgeon to repair the injury with a pin. Oreo threw a blood clot after surgery and died, so we never confirmed cancer--but I'll believe it was osteo before I'll believe that a healthy 8-year-old broke her leg standing still. But if your boy's original injury had been cancer, you'd know it by now--which unfortunately doesn't mean it can't be osteo this time. But one thing to consider: Several Greytalkers have noticed that if a dog has had a previous injury, that's the limb where osteo seemed most likely to rear its ugly head, so it may be a promising sign that he's not limping on the previously injured leg. But these guys tweak neck muscles or twist their spines a bit out of alignment or just acquire old-age aches and pains, and scare the bejeebers out of us on a semi-regular basis. Here's hoping your boy's pain resolves into something controllable.

Muzzle with stool guard, and don't let her play on your sympathies. You can put an oversized long-sleeved shirt on her so she can't scrape the wound with the muzzle. Just roll up the sleeves so she doesn't tangle her feet in them, and tie up the shirt-tail so she doesn't trip. If you don't have a stool guard, use duct tape over the holes she could get her tongue or teeth through. If you do have a stool guard, you still might want duct tape to cover any roughness when you fasten the guard to the muzzle. Oreo in her jammies by KF-in-Georgia, on Flickr My first girl was injured in about the same place yours is hurt. You can see the scar she got when I felt sorry for her one night and left the muzzle off while we slept. She sneaked out of my bed and down the hall, where she removed vet wrap, bandage, 4 stitches, and all.

That looks exactly like a corn. Also, watch to see if Echo limps more on hard surfaces (asphalt/concrete) than on softer ones (grass, carpet). That's a good indicator of the presence of a corn.

I think she looks lovely. A pound or two wouldn't hurt (those hip points), but a pound or two isn't going to satisfy your co-workers. I read once that vets rate a dog's weight on a scale of 1-5. 1 is dangerously thin; 5 is obese. 3 is absolutely perfect for most breeds, but greyhounds are supposed to be a 2. When my girl used to help her sick housemate finish off his dinner, she put on about 4 pounds and the vet fussed because her ribs and hip bones had disappeared. (She raced between 55 and 61 pounds, and she still weighed less than her top race weight, but the vet wasn't happy.) Try this: Look at the photos here: http://www.greyhoundclubofamericainc.org/show-south2.html Those are show greyhounds. Print a couple of those photos where the ribs and muscles are visible and show those to your coworkers. Those dogs are show-winners, and the expert judges certainly didn't think the winning dogs were too thin. Also, with your girl's bad leg, letting her gain weight would do her no favors. (You also can try cheerfully telling your co-workers, "Her vet says she looks great!"--whether the vet has actually said that or not.) Know that you're not alone. A friend and I take our greyhounds to a senior assisted living home for visits. Every visit, the receptionist goes on and on about "Those poor babies! They're so skinny! I hate to see them so underweight." (And she insists on hugging the dogs and making a lot of "poor, pitiful you" noises at them.) My friend and I just roll our eyes, take a deep breath, count to 10, and manage not to punch the woman.

Agreeing with the previous posts: get x-rays. Osteo is massively, extremely painful. But your boy could have arthritis. He could have a tweaked back or neck. He could have something not fatally wrong that would respond well to an anti-inflammatory. But if it's cancer, he's in a lot of pain and you need to know what's going on.

I've owned 5 greyhounds; only 1 had no dew claws. I used to be a dog groomer, and it was rare to have dogs of any breed without dew claws--like, maybe, "one-in-forty" rare--so it's not just greyhound breeders that leave the claws.

My girl does. I think maybe her knees aren't comfortable in that squat (or the grass tickles her), so she gets up, moves around some, then goes again. Also--she likes to mark, so she'll check to find other smells she needs to cover up. She can completely pee outside, walk into PetSmart, and immediately zero in on the end-cap display that needs its scent adjusted...

I'm an ex-dog groomer, and we often used the head-tapping when we needed to dremel nails. For Aston, keep an eye on how much fat he might be getting from these lovely treats. Peanut butter and cream cheese are so yummy to dogs (and us) largely because of the fat. If he likes fruit, you could mix flavored yogurt with mashed banana and freeze that, too. Maybe small kidney stones--or crystals rather than stones? They could cause the discomfort and the bleeding, but if they've moved on out that could clear up his urine.

Best wishes to you and your boy...

If he can have dairy, then a tub of soft cream cheese is a possibility. Also, try canned dog foods: spoon them into a resealable container and pack them down as densely as you can so they're lickable rather than chewable (or gulp-able). Make it a narrow container, so he can get his tongue in there but not his whole mouth.

Your post headline says "hypothyroidism"--but the article says "hyperthyroidism". As I understand it, hyper- is pretty uncommon in dogs, while hypo- is the one that is diagnosed so frequently in greyhounds. And it seems that Dr Dodds is attributing the uncommon hypo- to the raw food diet. I wonder if they're studying whether a raw food diet including beef trachea has a beneficial impact on common hypothyroidism; that would mean that a raw food diet actually could help hypo- greyhounds.