jshell

Betty Joan is on the 20mg, twice a day regimen (for 40mg per day). We're just through our first week, and I expect to be on it for at least 2-3 more. Blech. The trembling, the panting, the big pees... We're going through them too. On the plus side, her appetite is healthy but she'd lost so much weight when she first started having intestinal problems a couple of months ago. She still seems too damn skinny, but hopefully the larger meals and copious amount of treats will help edge that weight back up. Her mood seems mostly normal, if a bit restless at times. And her stool seems normal. I've been using those as good signs, as the prednisone side effects can be very frustrating.

I too can't wait until this is over, but we've got a while to go (at least another week before we can start tapering down, and it might be a couple of weeks beyond that). The urination has been frustrating but manageable: I bike home at lunch (the weather has been cooperative so far) to take Betty out. So she's managing being alone 3-4 hours. After I get home in the evening, we seem to go out every couple of hours until bedtime. Last night our pre-bed pee lasted about a whole minute! But then she's been fine through the night for seven hours and hasn't wet the bed. She may have had one accident next to the bed, but the mild damp of the carpet and lack of any puddle markings or staining has me wondering just what is going on there... But that's been it. The effect that I really don't like is the trembling and panting. This is the strongest around breakfast time. I was thinking this may be muscle wasting or some variation on the "I need to pee!" dance, but it seems to be more food motivated. Maybe it's a bit of both. I don't see much of the trembling throughout the day or overnight, but morning and evening it shows up with some panting (strongest in the morning). Very weird. Today is Betty's seventh day on the Prednisone and the side effects seem as strong as ever. I hope the pills are doing their job. The good news is that everything else seems normal (stools, etc). I was just hoping that the intensity (which doesn't seem as bad as some stories I've heard) would have abated by now.

One pill every twelve hours. I believe they're 20mg, but I don't recall. No tummy meds, but her primary diet is Prescription Diet I/D (gastrointestinal), either a mix of wet and dry, or dry mixed in with some other kibble. Betty's stool is normal, though a bit larger in volume and a bit softer (but still well formed) than it was on her regular kibble diet. Her appetite seems normal. Actually she seems a bit more fixated on treats and on being fed on time than she has in the past (and she's always been food motivated). The vet also prescribed Tylosin along side the prednisone, but that's all she's on. So far she's been good on her walks. We went on one of our longer morning routes on Sunday, but I've decided to reign those back in with the rising heat and the thirst issues. But she's getting decent walks in and doesn't show any muscle problems yet.

Betty Joan is on prednisone, and is going through the common side effect of heavy thirst and heavy urination, and some occasional panting. I mentioned this to the vet earlier and all seems fine and expected. What I forgot to ask the vet earlier was how long this will last. We started the prednisone last Wednesday and are expected to be at full dose for at least another week or so until another blood test is done, and we may be at full dose for a week or two after that until we get into the weaning-off period. Will these side effects, particularly thirst and urination, continue for as long as she is on prednisone? Or will they abate? Thanks -- Jeff and Betty Joan

Heard from the vet regarding Betty Joan's latest blood work. She's still showing worrisome protein loss. We went through an ultrasound, blood work, and urine sample a month ago and kidney problems have been ruled out. Anyways, this protein loss may have contributed to her recent vascular incident. Betty's been on the I/D prescription diet (gastrointestinal) and the vet wants to keep her on that. But he also thinks that we should do a biopsy, or at least get her on Prednisone and check her out again in a few weeks. After all of the other tests and vet visits and prescriptions of the past couple of months, I don't know if I can do a biopsy right now nor if I should put Betty through it yet. She's just getting back to normal! And it's her birthday (eight years old)! I'm reading mixed things about the prednisone experience. Sounds like it gives good benefits, but Betty's home alone for eight hours a day and I hear that constant urination (and being leaky) is a problem; she also sleeps in bed with me. I'm guessing that if the vet suggested this that it's the right path...? I'm not even sure if I have a question here . It's just been a rough couple of months and it just seems to keep on going. This is my first time going through events like this and... well, like I said, I don't know if I really have questions or statements. I'm just trying to process it all. I guess I should take comfort in the fact that Betty seems happy and energetic again and that we'll find a way through anything that comes next.

Thanks all. I should hear the results of her latest blood panel tomorrow. I'm a bit concerned about some of her organs, still (drinking a lot of water, urine seems pretty diluted, but it's not 100% clear). This may be getting thrown off by the fact that summer temperatures are finally creeping in here. We'll see what the blood results say. I may just be extra paranoid after all that's happened. As for her mood and energy, Betty seems almost puppy-like! She's insistent about having dinner and dances about when it's actual dinnertime; she's insistent about getting desert, and about laying down with me to watch TV afterwards. She's very excited to see other dogs and neighbors. She's pretty close to her classic form, with just a bit of lingering head tilt and nystagmus. All of this has me feeling pretty good about her recovery, especially for just two weeks after having to leave her overnight at the emergency vet for the first time, not knowing what the outcome might be (and really fearing for the worst for the first time). Time to give Betty some extra hugs before bedtime.

She didn't race, but I believe she came from Oklahoma. She came here just before she turned two (and she turns eight this week).

I asked about this, but tick born diseases are very uncommon here (mountain deserts of Salt Lake City, UT), and we haven't traveled anywhere with them.

A quick update on Betty Joan. As mentioned in my earlier post, it's been a rough couple of months, with nearly three weeks of diarrhea, getting moderately better from that, and then the scary stroke-like incident. That occurred nearly two weeks ago. We had our second vet follow-up today, and our first non-critical visit in what feels like quite a while. As for what was causing so much diarrhea, it's still uncertain, but it wasn't a parasite (Giardia). There were some strange bacterias showing up in the tests, but its unsure if they're related. Just Greyhound intestinal problems, I guess? We're getting another round of blood work now just to check everything out. Without going into more exhaustive tests, it's likely that the neurological incident was either a small stroke or vestibular syndrome. Betty Joan is recovering quite well, walking very well, and is showing a lot of her old excitement and attitude. She was even happy to see the vet! (We use a mobile vet who comes to us, and we were out in the parking lot when he showed up, and she was quite fine to go over and say high with her tail wagging). The strongest symptom left over from The Incident is nystagmus, which occurs most when she's looking up. She still shows a bit of head tilt, but she's not off balance. Hypertension / high blood pressure is effectively ruled out at present as none of the recent blood work has shown signs of that, but may be something to look at going forward. We'll know the latest blood results on Thursday. It's all pretty good, so far! I may have shared this picture already, but I love it. My queen of unflappable cool:

Something similar was happening to Betty Joan a couple of weeks ago. She could still walk, but would drag her feet. First on one side of the body, and then the other. One Wednesday morning, we were a couple of blocks away from home when this happened again - she tripped, was suddenly dragging her feet / not walking, and her eyes were going a little goofy. I still wasn't sure what was going on, so I lifted up her front legs to see how strong her back legs really were. When I set her back down, she seemed fine and we turned around and walked home. I went to work, thinking "if this shows up again, it's time to call the vet." When I got home eight hours later, she was totally disoriented and unable to stand or move about very well (but somehow she made it up our stairs, and then fell off the bed). So we went to the emergency vet, where she ended up staying overnight. She was improving by morning, and I took her home that day. We didn't run any expensive tests as she seemed to be mending. We also did not put her on any medication at the time. I've been told that she had something "like a stroke". It may have been vestibular syndrome. She has a follow-up visit with the vet today. It's been nearly two weeks since The Event, and she's improved a lot and is walking mostly normal (still drags her right legs, sometimes, but infrequently), although her eyes are still twitchy and her head tilts when she looks/stands a certain way. Since this is the first vet visit when we're not in crisis mode, I hope to get some good answers today about what happened to Betty, and I'll report them in this forum. But the moral of the story is - yes, the dog can go back to normal quickly after one of these small events (Betty would), but they may be precursors to something bigger.

If Bella is having trouble standing, you might try wrapping a towel around her stomach and using that to help hold her up. My Betty just went through something like this and the vet said they used this technique in the morning to help her go outside and go potty. (I had taken her to the emergency vet and left her overnight for observation).

Thanks, all. I'll have some good questions now to review with the Vet on Tuesday. I can't remember if vestibular syndrome was explicitly ruled out or not, but I'll bring it up again. I remember my vet firmly saying 'no' to taking anti-inflammatories, but I don't think I was able to ask the right questions at the time (still a bit in shock and overwhelmed). I was not aware of checking the blood pressure and will ask about that too. Betty is heartily consuming food again (earlier in the week she was a bit tepid, but as I've been feeding her more I've noticed that our potty-walks have needed some expansion) and is braving the outside stairs, so I think things are moving in a good direction. Nystagmus (I think) is still persisting, but neither vet was concerned about it. Her eyes, particularly her right eye, twitch a bit when looking up, but the pupils on both sides are the same dilation and the eyes aren't flickering left-to-right, which seems to be a bad sign. Until the next vet appointment, we're just taking it very easy (which sadly means that Betty will miss her first Farmer's Market opening since I got her).

Howdy. I'm Jeff and I have a little fawn brindle greyhound, Betty Joan, who is about to turn eight. I've had her almost six years now. I was fairly active here when I first got her and for a while afterwards, and then drifted away (I drifted away from a lot of things, it seems, as I started to head into my mid-30's). I've been meaning to re-register for a while now as we've been through a couple of rough months. At the end of April I went to Denver (from Salt Lake) for a few days and had Betty boarded at our usual place. I picked her up on a Tuesday, and Tuesday and Wednesday she was fine. I think her last stool on Wednesday was a little soft. The past few times she's been boarded, which isn't all that often, she seems to have soft stool starting a couple of days after I pick her up and it solidifies within a day or two. But this time, by Thursday, it turned into liquid Diarrhea, and she started getting pretty lethargic. By Friday she was also vomiting up whole meals. When the vet visited on Saturday, she had dropped weight from her usual 55 pounds down to 42! She was put on metronidazole and prescription diet i/d (dry) (for gastro-intestinal health). The vomiting stopped, but the stool never really seemed to solidify. It seemed like it would be getting better and then regress. As for eating, she seems to hate the dry prescription diet i/d. I would cook rice and mix the rice in and if the rice was warm, she would actually sort it all out and eat only the rice! So two weeks into this mess, Betty went in for an ultrasound to get a better understanding of what was going on in her stomach and intestines and to get some more thorough blood work. While she was at the vet they gave her some presciption diet i/d in Wet form, and she gobbled it up. I've been mixing it with the dry ever since to get her to eat it all and it's been working. Silly puppy. Anyways, her intestines were really inflammed and there were some spots on her gall bladder even. She was started on Clavamox in addition to the Metronidazole and still, she did not seem to be getting much better: she would improve for a few days, and then regress. Almost like clockwork (ie - on Tuesday I would think she was getting better, then Wednesday it would regress and by Thursday I would be all stressed out again). A friend of mine suggested that she might be re-acquiring the bug (I can't remember if the exact cause has been determined, there have been so many possibles and rule-outs thrown at me). So I started making a point of washing her food bowls at every meal with anti-bacterial soap and did some extra cleaning around the house. It seemed to help, as by her fourth week, her stool returned to normal and a lot of her energy seemed to return. Except for some odd flashes: one morning when I got out of the shower, Betty wouldn't leave her bed, even though she had been moving around fine earlier. As I tried to get her up, she seemed to be having problems with one of her legs. We'd gone through this a couple of times before, and I thought it was a twisted or sleeping leg and that it would pass. And it did. On another day while on our walk, she suddenly stumbled and then started dragging her back left foot. I tried stretching it and we stopped for a minute. When we got going again, suddenly she was lifting her front-left foot very high on each step. We were nearing the end of four weeks on the medication and I thought that it was having odd effects. But we had just a couple of days left, so we ran it out. I think there may have been a couple more of these incidents, particularly in the last month. And I noticed during at least one of them that Betty's eyes seemed funny. Then over memorial day weekend, she started consuming a lot more water than normal and having clear urine (and loooong pisses), which started to worry me. From the dehydration fears when this round of Big D started to over-hydration... I thought it might be related to coming off of the meds and didn't pursue it. So - last Wednesday, we're a block and a half into our walk, when one of these incidents kicks in again and she's dragging her right back foot this time. And her eyes are definitely going funny. Again, I'm not sure what's going on. Doggy funny bone, perhaps? Stepped on something? I stretch the leg and then lift up her front paws to see how well she's standing on the back ones, and when I put her back down, she's fine. We turn around and walk home. I was starting to get very suspicious, but still not enough to call the vet. I wanted more evidence of ... I don't know. Wednesday night, when I get home from work, Betty is very dizzy and wobbly. Her eyes are going goofy and she's having problems standing and walking (but somehow she walked up the stairs!). I called a neighbor who agreed to take us to the emergency vet and ... This was our first big emergency. I was freaking out and crying but eventually was able to get her to the vet and tell them the story. It was definitely some kind of neurological condition, ranging from blood clot/stroke to tumor. I left Betty there overnight, and that was just rough as she's all I've got, but it was the best place for her. The best we could do is see if she got better or worse overnight. But it was the first time I had to really think that she might die or have to be put down. There were tests we could run, but they were extremely expensive. Having just done other blood work with our normal vet, I thought it might be good to wait until we could get a copy of those tests. The following morning, Thursday, they called and said Betty had improved overnight and was able to stand and walk, but with assistance. They wrapped a towel around her stomach and used that to help give her support. After my vet sent in their lab results from the previous month, I talked with the doctor at the emergency vet and we went through the possible scenarios, with blood clot / stroke being the most likely. I could come in and take Betty home, but would need to watch her for a couple of days and do a follow-up, either with the emergency vet or our normal one. They decided not to give any medication, as it seems that with unknown neurological cases, treatment for one potential cause creates problems if the cause is something else. And Betty had apparently improved enough overnight that the best course was just to watch her and follow up. That was over a week ago now and I'm happy to say that Betty is doing well, so far. She was very wobbly that first day back, but steadily improved. She would drag both of her right feet, but that has nearly gone away completely (the worst part of this is that she's ground one nail on her back paw down to almost nothing, and thus it bleed pretty easily). She's been afraid of stairs and we've just taken the handicap ramp into our loft and staying on the ground floor. We've started working on stairs again and this morning when we went outside for our morning constitutional, I finally got her to go down and back up the four wooden stairs outside (after some heavy resistance). She still has a bit of a head tilt and is still a little unsteady on her right legs, but this morning she even tried running down the hall on her own (it didn't last long, but it is the most energized that I've seen her). It's been interesting, watching her brain try to correct itself. She's still vastly underweight, which is partially my fault. When I was mixing the wet and dry dog food, I wasn't mixing enough and was giving her about 3/4 a cup less per day than she needs. But now that I know that I've been mixing better. She's still on the prescription diet for intestinal stuff, and we have another followup scheduled with the vet for next Tuesday. Hopefully I'll finally get some answers about it all (I've heard so much under stress that I can't remember it all, but now should be of clear mind). I'm still not sure what's happened, but suspect that the problems last month with the diarrhea (and very very low levels of some kind of protein that my vet was concerned about) and the (likely) vascular incident are related. Anyways, I just wanted to share the story and will keep posted on her situation. Since she's improved so much, I'm still electing to forgo the expensive tests, as MRI's and Spinal Taps don't catch everything anyways. Here is the first picture I took of Betty after she got home last week - http://campl.us/bis4 And here she is from a couple of days ago re-enacting a film noir crime scene - http://campl.us/bk4j

Utah (Salt Lake Valley) Salt Lake Veterinary Services Dr Rick Whitty 4020 South Howick St Salt Lake City, UT 84107 (801) 261-3655 Office Hours: M-F 8 - 6, Saturday 8 - 2. Salt Lake Veterinary Services is a mobile veterinary practice started by Dr Whitty. They come to your home for checkups and examinations. They can also pick up and bring back the dog when surgery or specialists are required. Dr Whitty has been our primary vet for a few years now and I'm comfortable with his knowledge of Greyhounds.