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KF_in_Georgia

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Everything posted by KF_in_Georgia

  1. I'm so so sorry to read this. She'll be missed. Godspeed, Lexie.
  2. Get her an inflatable e-collar. Lots of dogs start to panic if they get water in their ears. The e-collar will keep her head above the water. Savvy greyhound owner Jennifer Bachelor maintains a blog with posts about training her agility dogs, training obedience, and training well-rounded dogs. She has dogs that swim, and links to some of her articles on the blog's swimming tag are here: http://neversaynevergreyhounds.blogspot.com/search/label/Riley Swimming
  3. Try to get a video for her vet to see. On the video, talk to her, make sure to get a shot of her face and any eye movement, etc. You want the vet to see all the perplexing stuff.
  4. Brush daily. Once food has set on the teeth for 24 hours, it's plaque. A friend of mine has a blog post with info on toothbrush, toothpaste, and a video. http://neversaynevergreyhounds.blogspot.com/search/label/Teeth
  5. I went to smaller meals more often when my oldie, Sam, went off his food. With him, he was just too feeble to stand and eat a full meal. You'd think he could just eat a bit, then come back later, but I'm not sure that occurred to him. He also stopped eating hard kibble. Sort of the opposite problem from yours. I started grinding 3 cups of his kibble in the food processor each morning, then adding a scoop of that to whatever special stuff I could entice him to eat: oatmeal, yogurt, Ensure liquid--whatever. He had gotten to the point where he'd eat the special food and lick the kibble clean, so if the kibble was too small to just lick clean, he'd go ahead and eat it. That at least guaranteed that he was getting enough calories of stuff that wouldn't upset his stomach. But Sam was taking pain meds for arthritis, and when we had a night where he panted all night and didn't sleep at all, I told him he wouldn't have to have another night like that. We went to McDonald's that morning and got him sausage-cheese biscuits, then went to the vet. (Sam was starting to smell funny--almost amonia-like breath--and the vet figured his kidneys were packing up.)
  6. Jumbo cotton balls and an ear cleaning solution. (I don't have a preference.) Soak the ball in the solution. Hold the cotton in your hand a moment so it warms up. Put the ball in the dog's ears and massage the ear from the outside. Then wipe inside briefly with the cotton and remove it. Repeat on the other ear. Different cotton balls in each ear to avoid spreading any infection from one ear to the other. If you wind up with too much solution in the dog's ears, you can put a dry cotton ball in and massage to dry it out. If you ever have to put a liquid medicine in your dog's ears, work outside. The dog will shake his head when the liquid hits and you'll have solution everywhere.
  7. Also be careful of medicines and supplements intended for humans. I've heard of Melatonin flavored with Xylitol, children's liquid Benadryl (being used for allergies on a small dog) flavored with Xylitol to make it more palatable to children. There's a reason my girl chomped down on my thumb when I tried to shove pills down her throat this morning. No Xylitol in the pills.
  8. If you give aspirin, a vet will have to wait through the wash-out period before you can give a heftier pain reliever. And aspirin may cause more bleeding (it's a blood thinner). If your vet's office has an answering machine, leave a message, asking the vet to call a prescription for a pain med to a local pharmacy. (You name the pharmacy and give their phone number.) I think you want a new vet--one who won't leave you with a dog in pain without also leaving pain meds. One possibility is a veterinary dermatologist. (Just google those two words and add your zip code to find one near you.) My girl is seeing a dermatologist over her nails--but hers definitely isn't SLO and she isn't losing nails. (He thinks it's vasculitis.) But my guy said SLO isn't one disease: It's a term encompassing a few different nail problems that manifest similar symptoms and thus get lumped all together, so maybe that's why your vet says it isn't SLO.
  9. When the glands are working properly, there should be a little of the fluid expressed when the dog poops (or is frightened). I had a boy that pooped on puppy pads when the weather was bad, and you often could see the fluid hit the pad before anything else did.
  10. We're using Pet.ReLeaf, Hemp Oil 700. I've bought it at a local pet boutique. The bottle is about 30 droppers full for $36. I squirt a dropperful on a piece of bread for each dog. Recommended dosage for dogs 50-75 pounds is two droppersful a day, one dose (on an empty stomach) in the morning, one at night. I don't like the idea of doping my dogs day in and day out through the rainy season. I found I could wait until the thunder started to give Pet.ReLeaf, and my 11yo Jane would calm down very quickly, so I'm not having to keep the dogs on it all the time. And it doesn't seem to matter if she just had dinner
  11. Is she aware of you when you talk to her? If you call her? I'm wondering about "absence seizures." Jacey could walk up to her food dish and forget what to do next. She was 8 at the time, and I lost her not long afterward from a totally unrelated issue.
  12. Heartworm preventative, dewormers, etc. We use all of those to protect our dogs. What makes Bravecto more dangerous than those? At least with a pill you don't risk spreading a toxin to other people or pets in the household, the way you do with a topical. Capstar, the pill that kills fleas quickly, is considered safe enough for puppies and is used in veterinary hospitals to prevent incoming patients from bringing in hordes of fleas. Some dogs have had bad reactions to Bravecto. Around here, the problem med has been Heartgard Plus, which gave my dogs diarrhea (from the flavoring rather than the active ingredients), so even the "harmless" part of anything can cause a problem. This household has used Bravecto without a problem for several years now.
  13. A friend of mine has champion agility dogs who occasionally hurt their feet. She's gotten very experienced in bandaging, especially bandaging feet, after one of her husband's dogs was harmed by bad bandaging at the vet's. She's posted her bandaging techniques and warnings on her blog: http://neversaynevergreyhounds.blogspot.com/search/label/Bandaging
  14. This is a Bravecto household. I've used Bravecto on four dogs and not had so much as an upset stomach from any of them. (And a couple of the dogs were ones that had diarrhea--caused by the flavoring--with Heartgard Plus) We do Interceptor monthly to prevent heartworm; I have my Google calendar set to warn me the first of every month. Then it reminds me every 12 weeks about the Bravecto. (Actually, it warns me in 10 weeks to check whether I need to reorder, then reminds me to give it two weeks later.)
  15. I don't know that essential oils are effective, but I'll leave that discussion to someone else. (I once fostered a dog who'd been on garlic for months to prevent fleas. The Capstar I gave her killed hundreds of fleas.) I just wanted to issue a warning: Rosemary apparently lowers the seizure threshold in dogs as well as in humans. https://www.epilepsysociety.org.uk/complementary-therapies OR https://healthypets.mercola.com/sites/healthypets/archive/2017/07/10/pet-seizures.aspx I know of one dog who experienced seizures after ingesting treats with rosemary, and there is a possibility that an externally applied essential oil may be a problem, too. I'm not saying "Don't use them." I'm just saying be aware of this potential complication and keep and eye out for it.
  16. Has she had an ultrasound with this recurrence of the vomiting? Could she have swallowed something when she was feeling better and now be suffering the consequences? Have you tried smaller meals more often? When Jane had swallowed a sock (I didn't know), she didn't have room for a cup and a half of kibble at meal time; after about an hour, she'd wake up, vomit, and go right back to sleep. I wound up going to one cup of kibble, three times a day, and she was able to keep down her food. She finally vomited up the first sock after a month (there was another one 11 days later), and suddenly she could eat a cup and a half of kibble without vomiting. Good luck.
  17. Senior dogs sometimes have a problem getting all the calories out of what they eat. They can eat more than they did when younger and still have a hard time maintaining their weight. And if a senior dog becomes ill, a skinny senior may not have the physical reserves needed to recover--no "weight cushion" to help with recovery. My 10-year-old lost three pounds between check-ups, and my vet was not happy. I mixed up powdered goat's milk and started adding that to her kibble at every meal. She ate more eagerly, and she put the weight back on. (She's still two pounds lighter than her race weight of 55 pounds.)
  18. Take her muzzle with you. If needed, it will be more comfortable than the vet's in-house muzzles.
  19. Peeing has never been an issue on my dogs on gabapentin.
  20. Try this one: https://greytarticles.wordpress.com/medical-first-aid/anesthesia-surgical/high-potassium-during-anesthesia-causes-greyhound-sudden-death/
  21. Note, though, that a back-seat hammock requires the dog to go from the ground to the seat. Without the hammock, a dog could conceivably step from ground to the floor of the back seat, then up to the seat.
  22. Measure before you buy. Many ramps are too wide for the doorways of passenger cars; (SUVs have wider doors. My ramp is too wide to rest at the bottom of the door. It only works if I rest the top on the back seat, and that makes the ramp too steep for my boy's comfort.) The other issue with a ramp in a passenger car is where do you park? The ramps usually stretch too far from your car into the next parking space, and if another car is there, you don't have room. (People using ramps on SUVs usually load from the back hatch.) I tried a plastic Rubbermaid step-stool, but my boy wouldn't use it. My boy has a screw holding his hock together, and he won't try to jump up. My girl won't jump because she's just a princess. I have to lift her front feet, then boost the back end. The boy will put his front feet on the seat, then I boost him the rest of the way. I had an appendectomy in January, and the orders were that I was not to lift anything that weighed more than 20 pounds for four weeks, so the dogs spent 4 weeks not going to any meet and greets, but the four weeks was up last Friday.
  23. You can find a "dry shampoo" at pet stores. It's a spray-on liquid that you'd rub with a towel to remove the excess and dry the dog. It's usually mildly scented, and it works well if your dog needs freshening up but is unable to be bathed. (My girl threw up on herself after she was spayed. She wasn't allowed to be bathed at that point, but a vomit-scented dog was not ideal.) It's also useful to have this on-hand if you have dogs who pee on each other...or themselves. Beyond that, keep your dog well-brushed. It will help with shedding and with coat quality. And have dog-wipes you can use to collect/remove excess hair after brushing and to help control pollen your dog picks up outdoors. (In a pinch, I've used a wet paper towel.) In a pinch, google "do-it-yourself dog bathing" and add your zip code. My two greys have each had only one bath since coming to my house (2+ to nearly 3 years ago).
  24. My angel Silver had one. Vet removed it (local painkiller, not general anesthesia), and it was fine. (He closed it with a dissolving suture.) She never had another one.
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