Victor

You might consider getting a prescription for Bravecto or Nexgard. We've been using Bravecto for several years and it has worked really well for us. We check our dogs for ticks when they come in, but if we miss one (which is easy to do) Bravecto kills it before it has a chance to transmit any disease. Just be sure to give Bravecto with a full meal to avoid GI upset.

Sorry to hear this, Annette. I hope it's something that's treatable. If your vet thinks it may be liver disease, you might ask UW Veterinary Care about their liver disease studies. I just read about them in the latest newsletter: Take care, Victor

I hadn't heard of Wobbler Syndrome before, but when I looked it up the symptoms seem quite similar to those of lumbosacral stenosis (LS). I wonder how one tells the difference? Good luck with your appointment!

Maybe fleece booties would stay on better? Here are two options: https://dogbooties.com/shop/fleece-booties/ http://www.therapaw.com/cushy-pawslippers.aspx Hope you can find something that works for him!

Hopefully it was just the heat, but it's good you're getting her checked. I believe walking in circles can also be a sign of a stroke.

Could it be a sprain? I wonder if an ultrasound would be helpful?

I'd never heard of that--thank you! We'll be on the lookout for it!

I'm pretty sure they're not doing it to each other; we've been leash walking them this past month, and they're pretty quiet indoors. They often brush up on plants on our walks, though, and we do live in a wooded area. I don't know what plant would cause this, though?

That's wonderful news! Congratulations!

Thanks, everyone! With the upcoming holiday, our vet is booked solid, so I appreciate your input! We initially cleaned it with diluted chlorhexidine, but that only seemed to make it worse/larger. We clipped more of the fur around it and have been keeping it as dry as we can. We found two other smaller sores beneath it and clipped the fur around them, too. It's so puzzling!

Has anyone seen anything like this? We're wondering if it's some sort of insect bite, since we found one on Joy a couple weeks ago and then just the other day we found this one on Gilgun. They're both in roughly the same area (lower back). Joy's healed after we clipped the fur around the wound, but Gilgun's still looks pretty bad, as you can see. Any advice on treatment? Or what might have caused this? Thanks!

Our angel Lana had something similar happen. X-rays showed that she had two foreign objects embedded in one of her pads. Under sedation (not anesthesia) the vet was able to extract the object closest to the surface (a small piece of asphalt), but the other one was too far in. Our vet consulted with a surgeon, and the surgeon advised against doing surgery right away to get the other object. She suggested we wait until after the wound healed to see whether Lana was still lame. She gave two reasons for this: (1) she wasn't confident she'd be able to locate the object in the pad tissue during surgery, and (2) sometimes the body is able to push the foreign object out. After wearing a Therapaw on that paw for a week or two, Lana was walking normally again. Then after a longer period of time (maybe a month or two?), Lana started favoring that paw again. When I inspected the pad, sure enough there was a tiny black stone just visible in her pad. I was able to use tweezers to dig it out, and then she was fine! Since that experience, we always put booties on our greys' paws when we go out for a walk. We don't have sidewalks in our neighborhood, and there are just too many things on the road that could hurt their paws. In the summer we use the 330 weight Denier Cordua Booties from dogbooties.com, and in the fall/winter we use the 500-weight Denier Cordua Booties. People (especially kids) love seeing our dogs in their booties, and our dogs love all the attention they get! Hope this helps!

We've been giving our two greys Bravecto for a year and a half and haven't had any problems. We do our best to find and remove ticks before they become embedded, but they're so easy to miss (especially deer ticks), we're grateful to have Bravecto as a backup. We use Interceptor for heartworm prevention. Since Bravecto works on fleas, too, we didn't feel the need for the extra flea prevention in Sentinel. By the way, Merck can send e-mail reminders every 12 weeks if that's helpful: https://secure.merck-animal-health.com/reminders.aspx

No experience with diazepam, but we've found that frequent little treats help distract our boy from his car anxiety. When he's at his most anxious we give him a tiny treat every 5 miles, which is enough to distract him and keep him looking forward to the next tiny treat. It's amazing the difference it makes! Victor

Joy had an appointment at UW Veterinary Care yesterday, so I got to meet Pogo! He is such a sweetheart!!! He leaned into my hand when I petted him, and he put his head against my chest when I gave him ear scritches. You could tell he was enjoying all the attention he was getting from everyone! Pogo is so lucky to have you. I know how hard this is (we lost our Lana to bone cancer), but I know he appreciates everything you're doing for him. Please give him a big hug for me! Take care, Victor

I'm so sorry about Brendan. I don't know if this helps, but we had a similar experience with our angel Lana. The vet said she'd never had that happen before. Afterwards she spoke with an anesthesiologist, and apparently some dogs do have that reaction to the sedative. I don't recall what sedative was used, though. Please take care.

We use Bravecto. It's a chewable that you give once every 3 months. It's supposed to kill ticks faster than Nexgard, which means there's less likelihood of the tick transmitting disease.

Instead of trazodone, you might try alprazolam (Xanax) in the morning. We've had better luck with alprazolam than trazodone. (Our anxious girl freaks out on trazodone.) Also, after switching to alprazolam, you might try replacing the Clomicalm with amitriptyline or fluoxetine (Prozac). See http://www.cpt-training.com/psychopharmaceutical-options-for-canine-thunderstorm-phobia-and-general-anxiety for more options.

Fingers crossed for you and River!

Hope Twiggy is continuing to improve! How are her kidneys doing?

I'm so sorry for your loss. We lost our first two greyhounds, Lana and Duke, within six months of each other about a year and a half ago. Not a day goes by that we don't think of them, and we still miss them terribly. The saving grace for us was that we still had Duke after Lana left, and we adopted another female greyhound, Joy, to keep him company. Then when Duke left us, we adopted another male greyhound (Duke's cousin, Gilgun) to keep Joy company. We also found this book to be of help: The Loss of a Pet: A Guide to Coping with the Grieving Process When a Pet Dies by Wallace Sife http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1630260797 Take care, Victor

Wonderful news! Keep up the great work, Twiggy!

I just checked one of our past pathology reports, and it says the reference interval for AST is 21-53 U/L and for creatine kinase it's 22-491 U/L. These intervals are non-breed specific, however. In "Clinical pathology of Greyhounds and other sighthounds" (2011), OSU reported reference intervals for greyhounds of 24-57 U/L for AST and 76-254 U/L for creatine kinase. This was from a sample of 100 greyhounds.

Our boy Gilgun was diagnosed with chronic pancreatitis this past August. He had been having the following symptoms the previous six months: * Shallow/rapid breathing at rest (this was the only symptom at first) * On-and-off loose stools * Licking his lips as if nauseous * Sensitive to abdominal palpation An ultrasound of his abdomen in March didn't show any inflammation of his pancreas or thickening of his intestines. Blood tests were all normal, but we didn't run a GI panel at the time. By the end of July he was lethargic and nauseous, and he continued to have on-and-off loose stools. After an episode of explosive watery diarrhea we had a GI panel run, and it showed PLI=753 (normal is <=200) and TLI>50 (normal is 5.7-45.2) We immediately switched Gilgun to w/d and stopped all fish oil, Tartar Shield rawhides, and biscuits. He was also started on weekly cobalamin injections. Two months later his PLI was down to 194 and TLI was 37.6. His cobalamin (286) and folate (5.4) were still low, so the vet added folic acid supplements and we continued the cobalamin injections. The latest GI panel was a month ago. At the time PLI=34 (yay!), TLI=17.9 (good), folate=10.7 (good), and cobalamin=325 (getting better). We decided to continue with the cobalimin injections to be on the safe side. We also added a daily probiotic (Proviable). For food he's currently getting Honest Kitchen Verve, which is relatively low in fat (9.22% on a dry matter basis). His bowel movements are greatly improved, he doesn't seem nauseous, and his breathing is back to normal! GILGUN (at time of diagnosis) 4 years 2 months 3 pumps of Grizzly Salmon Oil per day (suggested amount for his weight) 3.5 cups of IAMS ProActive kibble per day Various biscuits (IAMS ProActive Health, Nutro Ultra) ~1 Tartar Shield rawhide chew a week Lineage: http://www.greyhound-data.com/d?i=1936471

Yay, Twiggy!!!!