KF_in_Georgia

Maybe less fluff on the beds for a while. When she walks on a soft bed, her foot may bend where it shouldn't. Firmer footing might be safer. (I've got a broken-hock boy who had surgery to install a bone screw after he was injured in a race.) Prepare for lots of leash-walking: no running--or gate-jumping--at all for a while.

Breakfast in bed. Deliver her meals to her. If you need to adjust her meds to more doses in a day, feed more small meals and fewer large ones.

Is it gone in a streak all the way down the tail? Or is it gone in a patch about as wide as your hand, just in one patch nearly midway down the tail. If the latter, it might be stud tail. (If the former, I haven't got a clue.) Pictures of stud tail here.

It could be a flea allergy. But it looks like the rash one of my dogs used to get if she had been lying in the grass. She'd get the rash, and the skin on her feet would get very pink.

Advantage Multi already contains a flea/tick preventative, so I'm not sure why they sent K9 Advantix, too. There might be some concern that the Advantage Multi on its own isn't enough. Talk to the vet, but you might want to stagger the products: Advantage Multi on the first of the month, and K9 Advantix on the 15th.

Vet check for a urinary tract infection.

Silver still ate fairly well. She had grown a lump on her side, and we were investigating that. (We had done needle biopsies and couldn't get a useful sample.) We decided to remove the lump, and we did pre-surgical lab work. Silver's liver numbers were awful, and the vet thought she might have a growth on her liver. We called in an ultrasound expert. He didn't see anything scary on her liver, but there was a growth on her heart that hadn't been there in x-rays three weeks earlier. And for the first time ever, Silver was too tired to try to jump up in the car, and I had to boost her. The ultrasound vet thought she might have a couple of days before the growth ruptured, and she faced the risk of bleeding out. There was no reason to put her through that, so she and I shared a cheeseburger, and her vet put her to sleep. I still miss my wonderful girl. I'd see if your vet is willing to do labwork to see if any of her results are off.

Did your vet do any lab work? My old girl seemed okay--just old and panting a bit--until we did lab work and got awful numbers. We did an ultrasound after that and discovered a growth on her heart--something that wasn't revealed by a stethascope. I hate to be scary. But after all the time you've had with her, you're probably used to how well your girl handles heat, and if you think she's not handling it well this year, it might really be that something else is going on.

Look up lumbosacral stenosis in dogs. Also, see here: http://www.grassmere-animal-hospital.com/cauda_equina.htm

Ours has never been an needle/injection for bordatella. It used to be a nasal "snort," but for a year or more has been oral. I clearly remember one dog rearing back after getting a snootful of the vaccine and whacking her head on the metal exam table and making the table ring. I'm such a bad mom. I laughed at her. Next visit, we moved her out of table range.

Muzzle. And duck tape. And the dog can still bang the injury with the muzzle and cause harm, especially if the wound is left unbandaged to get air.

Our group has done this with gauze tied loosely around the tail and the dog. The gauze didn't freak the dog any more than a spook harness or a belly band would. But note that happy-tail dogs can still reach the tip of the tail to chew or lick... This is better for prevention than for a cure.

I felt the second post was valuable for its discussion of preventing trouble and bringing down the dog's temperature.

Suggestion, print both articles--especially the second--as a PDF and email it to yourself (and maybe your vet). Keep it in your email storage and have it ready to email to any ER vet or anyone else who needs the info on short notice. Or print it, and keep a printout in the trunk of your car. I keep vet records in a folder in the trunk and digital x-rays on my phone. We haven't had this happen, but my boy has a screw in his hock, and I want his x-rays handy if we have a weekend emergency.

https://greytarticles.wordpress.com/medical-first-aid/anesthesia-surgical/about-malignant-hyperthermia/ https://www.ngap.org/malignant-hyperthermia-y608.html It may be inadvisable for Adam to have any anesthesia procedure in the future--with any vet. If there's an emergency and he requires anesthesia, make sure that vet knows what happened this time.

Sam took an NSAID briefly, but he developed stomach problems, so we stopped that. (Remember that Meloxicam and Metacam are basically the same sort of med but the pill form is much harder on the dog's stomach and also is harder to dose properly. (It needs to be divided to hit the right dose.) The liquid is easier on the stomach, but it's more expensive. Sam was taking the pill form, and that might have caused his stomach problems.) Sam also took Robaxin, Gabapentin, and Tramadol--all on people scripts I could get at the nearest Walgreen's. He eventually was taking 600mg of gabapentin, taking meds 4 times a day. He'd take a 100mg capsule most meals, two capsules on other meals if he was having a bad day. (He also was taking soloxine and glucosamine--we stopped fish oil since it can be an anticoagulent--and I just used a rolled slice of turkey lunch meat and glued all his pills inside his "turkey burrito" with a dab of peanut butter. Sam's housemate dog got a pill-less slice of lunch meat with peanut butter. Sam was a senior dog (I think he was 10 when he started having trouble). He hadn't been playful for years. Occasionally, he'd have a terrifying Bambi-like split he didn't know how to get out of, and the prospect of that happening when I wasn't home horrified me. But mostly he just needed to be able to stand up and lie down comfortably, and the meds did that for him until one day--they just didn't. He was 13 years old, maxed out on all the meds, and he spent a whole sleepless night panting. We made our last trip to the vet's the next morning. (The vet smelled Sam's breath and suspected that Sam's kidneys were giving out.) We had tried chiropractors. His first visit gave him some relief for a couple of weeks. His second visit was a horror: he screamed in pain, he nearly went for the chiropractor, and he was in pain again in less than 48 hours. We just upped the meds and I never made him go back to the chiropractor.

Snakes are edible--even by people. (There are recipes online.) The head is the dangerous part on a venomous snake, since that's where the poison will be. http://animalquestions.org/reptiles/snakes/are-snakes-edible/

Try a harness instead of a leash for walking. Avoid stairs if you can. Raise his food and water dishes so he doesn't have to stoop. I had a boy who would scream when he laid down, and it was a tweaked disk in his neck.

I agree it doesn't look like an emergency if the eye itself looks okay.

Yes, vet visit soon. She might have eaten something she shouldn't that is bothering her now. (Says the woman whose dog ate socks. Plural.)

I'm not sure how useful ultrasounds will be in preventive care. I'm not sure they'll show things early enough for treatment. I lost my 11-year-old girl to hemangiosarcoma in October. We'd been investigating what was wrong, and we didn't know what it was until the ultrasound. But the ultrasound revealed a growth on her heart that wasn't even a little visible on an x-ray taken three weeks before. So many problems spring up quickly, and it's almost as if you'd need an ultrasound the right week for it to be useful. I'm sorry you've lost your girl.

One old boy had minor symptoms, but it never progressed to the point where we needed to treat anything. (LP is an old-dog condition, and I've only had two dogs make it to "old." I lost my other three when they were 8 years old.) Easy recommendations include using a leash with a harness rather than with the collar. There also may be better positions for food and water bowls to make it easier for Wendy to swallow. And there is the potential for surgery to make things better. I'm sure other people who've been through this will chime in. I just knew I recognized the symptoms from what I've read on here. Depending on pollen conditions in your area, Wendy might have something that's more like post-nasal drip from allergies, though, and your vet should look into that, too.

Research laryngeal paralysis.

They're fine. Soak their kibble to make it soft. It shouldn't slow him down at all. And know: No more scary dentals. No more gum infections. No more pain from bad teeth.

I think the general estimate is that about half of all dogs (not just greyhounds) will get cancer. Some of those dogs will have cancers that can be successfully treated. But about half of the greyhound cancer patients will have osteo. Some of them will have successful amputations and chemo, but the cancer usually will come back. But if half the dogs get cancer, and half the cancers are osteo, that's 1-in-4 or 25% facing osteo. In the old days, dogs didn't live as long as they do now (better nutrition, better health care today). Longer lives mean there's a longer time for cancer to strike. Osteo is considered an ailment of middle-aged (7+) to old dogs, although sometimes we lose young dogs to osteo. But if you look up osteosarcoma in dogs, you'll see it's not a peculiarly greyhound affliction; it's common to large breed dogs. The National Canine Cancer Foundation says, "Larger breeds have a high propensity for the disease. Dogs like Great Dane, Irish setter, Doberman pinscher, Rottweiler, German Shepherd and Golden Retriever are at greater risk of contracting osteosarcoma because of their size and weight." I've lost three dogs at the age of 8: one osteo, one immune mediated thrombocytopenia (an immune-system disorder), and one to a blood clot in surgery (although she might have had osteo that didn't show in the x-ray; she was in surgery for a broken leg). I lost one 11-year-old to hemangiosarcoma (a different cancer), and I lost one 13-year-old to old-age issues, including kidney trouble. These days, I try to adopt older dogs. I'm getting too old for crazy youngsters, and I dread growing too frail or sick to care for a dog that will then have to be rehomed. My baby is 4 years old, and if I'm lucky enough to have him into his teens, I'll be into my 70s. Losing them hurts, but having them heals. It balances out.