Roo

Greensboro is nice! Almost right smack between the mountains and beach Which group did you adopt from?

I agree with Jen - better to know than not know. My terrier has two cancers at the moment - a few mast cell tumors and a couple hemangiosarcomas (our vet said that at the rate she's sprouting these things, taking them off probably isn't worth the risk). That, plus her heart disease, mean she's basically a ticking time bomb. But I know what we're dealing with, and I'm vigilant about her behavior. As long as she's still eating (now that I've finally gotten her eating ) and can walk our usual .75 mile, she's still doing well. She gets excited about stuff. It's not her time yet because she's acting like her weird, grandmotherly, normal self. It sounds like Honor is still acting mostly fine, other than the limp (his reluctance to lay in a bed could be pain or could just be because he senses that you're upset - Daisy gets extra clingy when I'm sad or anxious about something). Pain can be managed, which it sounds like you're already doing. As long as he is comfortable and the cancer hasn't progressed too much, I don't think it's unreasonable to take him in for x-rays this week and still plan to attend the Hound Walk on Sunday. Even if you don't want to let him linger and let the cancer become more advanced (which I totally understand - we did this with our first hound - euthanasia upon diagnosis, but he was pretty bad off at that time), getting the x-rays now and having a diagnosis wouldn't be a bad idea. Then you can spoil him for the next few days until the walk on Sunday and have a euthanasia appointment for Monday, if it is indeed osteo (fingers crossed it isn't, though!). I definitely understand why you would want to euthanize right then, but if you really want him to attend the hound walk on Sunday (which does sound like fun!), there's no harm in setting a euthanasia appointment for Monday, keeping him on pain meds, and enjoying those last few days. (Again, assuming it is actually osteo, which I hope it's not!)

Welcome from NC!

Could she have some arthritis starting in her hips? Daisy the Terrier does this - she'll start to squat, walk a little, start to squat, walk a little, and by the time I'm verging on crazy, she finally pees She's 13 and has some arthritis, so I think her problem is pain-related. She'll act like squatting is uncomfortable (but she has no choice, so she eventually does).

Sounds just like my terrier! I've had her over a year and we take daily walks and I have yet to experience a pleasant walk with her next to or in front of me, not dragging as unhappily as possible behind me Drives me batty. (Mostly because she's a terrier and needs to walk, or else she goes batty ) In my case, I know she's probably hurting, but all our vets (we've seen, oh, 4 now?) have said that walks are good for her - she has an enlarged heart, a chronically dislocated shoulder, and arthritis in her hips. The walks help her stretch a little without the pain of intense exercise. Now if I could just convince her that the walks are good... I have yet to come up with any way to get her to walk near me voluntarily. I'm lucky that she does all her business right at the beginning and won't do anything on the actual walk, so I wrap her leash around my waist and use a carabiner to secure the leash handle to the leash to my belt loop. Then I can just walk. When there's no give to the leash, she keeps up better. If I don't do this, she will walk as far behind me as her 5' leash and my own arm will allow - and it gets pretty painful to have your arm forcefully extended out behind you with the weight of a 20 pound unhappy terrier for a mile-long walk. Doesn't matter how fast or slow I walk - I can speed walk or I can snail walk and she's still at the very end of the leash. This is pretty much it. Just pick your pace and go!

It actually may have been Fromm that she liked... I have no idea. We cycle through foods so regularly that they've all become a blur Still, I will steer clear of Evangers!

Yikes! Didn't know that. I've tried Evangers for Daisy but haven't had luck with any of their canned food for her (she loved the pork and peas kibble though) . Perhaps we'll steer clear of their kibble, too... There is a surprising lack of pork-based foods out there but I'm sure someone else will have one!

I absolutely cannot get pills into my terrier (no amount of trickery or attempts to force-pill have succeeded, and she flips out if you try to restrain her) but the metacam syringes we got after surgery were accepted really well. I put her between my legs (we've practiced this position with lots of petting and nothing awful happening to her and she's accepted this as not terrifying), gently scratched under her chin, stuck the syringe in the corner of her mouth, aimed at the throat, and pushed! Just be sure you have the syringe in far enough that the meds don't drool out if she inclines her head downwards after. Not sure if dogs are as prone to this as rats but rats are extremely difficult to syringe meds into (at least, mine is ) and once you get them in, they usually refuse to swallow and it all runs out again

It certainly does help! My self-confidence was at its highest when I was in martial arts classes. What martial art? Apologies if this derails your thread - I used to take Taekwondo and Jeet Kune Do and miss it terribly. I see "martial arts" and get all excited

I assume her tummy would still be a little unsettled from the sock that had been harbored in there for so long, so perhaps that's the cause of today's small vomit? But I'm not a vet or vet tech and I basically know nothing, so take my ideas with a grain of salt My jaw literally dropped and I squealed "WHAT!?" when I read that she threw up a sock. My goodness. I know mistakes happen and reading ultrasounds must not be super easy, but how can you misinterpret "sock in the gut" for "terminal cancer"? I hope today's ultrasound yields better and more clear and definitive results.

She may just be chilly in the morning (I know I'm always cold right when I get out of bed in the mornings!), or it could be excitement for the coming day. You may never know. Can you get a pair of PJs for her to wear overnight and see if that helps the morning shivers? I keep my house cold (58 at night usually, and 64 during the day) and my terrier wears PJs. The neighbors laugh at her fashion statement

Indeed

Nah, I set it down then walk away (to the other side of the room, where I wash dishes, eat breakfast, have a snack, peel potatoes, etc). I glance at her occasionally but try my best to not be anywhere near her or else she's like "Woah, you're way too close, definitely not eating now" ETA: Breakfast plate was licked (almost) clean this morning. Perhaps we're moving past our most recent hunger strike...

Maybe that's her problem. Her tummy is almost always grumbly. I can hear it throughout the day. Wonder what causes that... Her output is solid and she doesn't have gas (except the occasional little toot ). I need to find a Hispanic market around here... Fairly new to the area and don't know my way around well yet!

Cleaned her dinner plate! Meat and rice and some of the slurry (which is veggies ad oatmeal and eggs and meat). Never can predict her.

Her poops are solid! She hasn't been popping as much recently though with the lack of intake. We were at the vet last week and she didn't say anything about her teeth (she looked, too). They're not great, but they're not awful. I tried brushing when I first got her and it was a no-go. She can't be restrained or she panics. Doesn't like her mouth touched (never has). Even when I later tried just showing her the toothbrush (thinking we could work up to it) she pinned her ears back and took off running. I made up a meat-oatmeal-veggie mix for her (blended so she can't pick out the veggies, because she absolutely won't eat veggies) and she ate maybe 1/4 cup. I put down a little more and she licked it then walked away. I can't figure her out. Eta: I was thinking it may be her teeth because she won't crunch treats (but she will when she's in her crate, just not when she's in the kitchen), but unless they're so bad they're making her body sick (and she hasn't had any symptoms of anything other than her pickiness - she's maybe a little more subdued and less willing to walk, but she's never enjoyed walks, so... She still bounces around when I'm fixing her food, she just won't eat it) that doesn't really explain why she won't eat soft canned food or this recent slurry mixture I cooked up. She's eaten the homemade slurry before and loved it! Now she has no interest... She just wants to drink a lot, but she's always been super thirsty and her blood work has never indicated a reason for it. I think she drinks to fill her belly when she's not eating. (Unless there's an actual medical reason for the drinking that hasn't been discovered yet.)

Now we're refusing our after-potty cookies. Not outright refusing, just crunching, eating a crumb or two, then walking away. Goodness. Whenever she does this, I start to worry that something is really wrong with her. Then she'll gobble up a bowl of meat. I know the value is different and meat is MEAT! but if she was really feeling crappy, I think she wouldn't eat at all, right?

I've tried putting her food in other things and sometimes it'll work, sometimes not. She already eats out of a cheap ceramic bowl because she won't eat out of stainless steel. If she nibbles then goes away, I dump it on a paper plate and she'll nibble a little more, but it never gets her to finish it. Part of the problem is just her finickiness but the other part is the fact that I have to hold the plate still or it slides all over the room, and she has somehow recently decided that me being close to her while she's eating is scary. I have to stand across the room and not look directly at her, but I have to be in the room or she'll run off looking for me. Thank you!

Thank you!! I'm okay with spending on this - it'll probably end up being cheaper in the long run than all the food I've been buying and throwing away (half cans and the tail end of a bag of kibble that no shelter would want donated). I wonder if they'd let us sample it...

She's eagerly gobbling up meat and dog treats, and she'll eat peanuts - just not peanut butter She hasn't been on pepcid long-term - just a couple doses. We're not even sure if acid reflux is causing the regurgitation or if it's something else. It doesn't happen every day but has become more common recently - at least once every week or two. She needs to start a daily dose of Benadryl for mast cell tumors but I have such a hard time getting pills into her. Lunch meat is the only fairly reliable vehicle for pills, but that only works sometimes and I'm not fond of the sodium content, even when I get the lowest-sodium option. I'm waiting till she's eating fairly reliably before adding anything else. She ate most of her dinner, but she did it slowly and with many glances in my direction to make sure I knew she didn't like the addition of the canned food She had blood work done in August (came back all good with slightly low blood sugar) and the vet didn't say we should repeat it, but I'll ask about it on Wednesday.

I was just at an international market! Wish I'd thought to look They have stuff from all over Asia, Mexico, India, etc - bet they'd have tripe. Guess I'm going back!

Oh, that must be why the vet suggested a probiotic! She didn't say why and I couldn't puzzle it out. Thanks! I've stopped the pepcid but if there's something causing nausea, we'll give it another try and add probiotics this time. I've tried parmesan and she no longer has any interest in it She also will not touch peanut butter! She's so strange Haven't tried tripe but that may be my next stop. Where do you even buy it?

She actually handles food changes surprisingly well, but the Merrick canned I tried the other day did have a somewhat loosening effect on her I'll pick up some Pedigree gravy and ask the vet about the Hills stuff. I bought a small can of Nature's Variety Instinct Rabbit (which she's eaten and enjoyed in the past but which is too expensive for me to get regularly, especially when she's being snooty about her food) so I'll try that this afternoon. She's picky about her fish food - sometimes she'll eat fish-based foods, other times she sniffs it and turns her nose up because it smells too fishy. I heat all of her meals anyway because she won't eat if it's cold, but recently she won't eat when it's warm either At this point, I'm willing to just feed her whatever she wants (which seems to be limited to meat and rice - she refused her egg white today) but I want to make sure she's actually getting proper nutrition, too.

Daisy is not a greyhound, but as I am a greyhound person I am turning to you guys for help Daisy has decided not to eat. For three months (a record for her) she cleaned her plate at every meal. For the past week, she hasn't really eaten a full meal despite the fact that nothing has changed. She was just at the vet last week for some regurgitation problems and we were told to start pepcid. This is when the eating problems started. She ate a meal with her pepcid, then was acting nauseous the next day, wouldn't eat, threw up bile, then gobbled down dinner. I stopped the pepcid for two days and she ate alright, then I started the pepcid again. Two doses in and she stopped eating, only her appetite hasn't come back even after stopping it. I doubt the pepcid s causing the problem, but it was all I could think of! Anyway, the vet suggested feeding her meat and rice, so I bought beef and rice and gave her a bowl of that last night after three days of her barely touching her food. She gobbled it up. Had the same thing for breakfast this morning. I'm going to try mixing in some canned food tonight but I'm not optimistic - she's still being picky about anything that isn't meat and rice, so she likely won't eat anything that smells like canned food. My question, then, is what homemade meat-based food can I give her so that she eats but still gets good nutrition? She's 13 and has a variety of medical problems that we're keeping an eye on so eating is really important (in other words, I can't just wait her out). We're headed to the vet for chest x-rays on Wednesday (checking in on how her heart is doing - she's been coughing more recently and is less willing to drag along behind me on a walk) and I'll ask her, but it would be nice to have some ideas going in.

Beet pulp is extremely helpful for firming up stools! PRH gives a little baggie of it to every adopter with instructions to add about a tablespoon to each meal. Iams worked wonders for my boy who constantly had the runs (and who went through a few rounds of Flagyl). It also regrew the hair on his bald thighs for some reason Our sensitive stomach girl couldn't tolerate any foods we tried except for Nutro Sensitive Stomach. They may have changed the recipe since then (this was a few years ago) but it could be worth a try if Iams doesn't work.