Bizeebee

With a pup that young, I'd say it's also going to be important to tire her out as much as possible before you leave. It's going to be easier for her to relax and snooze if she's actually tuckered out. We gave the crate a couple days with our guy but he didn't like it and was totally fine without it, though he did a bit of howling/crying during the first few weeks. But, he wasn't destructive to himself or the house so he just had to cry it out, it got better as time went on and eventually he didn't cry anymore. Your neighbors may not like that approach, but if she's not destructive then waiting it out is probably going to be part of the process - in addition to the excellent advice already given ~ alone training, etc. There are OTC 'calming' treats that you could try right away, if getting a scrip is going to take longer than you'd like. Your mileage may vary but the ones we've tried for car rides - Zesty Paws brand - do seem to zonk him out. It takes a bit of trial and error to figure out how long they take to kick in after eating though.

Unsure exactly what kind of info you are hoping for; my thought would be if he's been exposed then he could become infected and I certainly would want to prevent that. I'm not sure what your relationship is with your vet, but ours is new to us and they don't request or require the follow up I would have expected either. We basically told them what hookworm protocol we wanted to be on and they didn't really question it or ask us to do rechecks - we are the proactive party on all of it. We definitely have to be the #1 health advocate for our pup; vets simply can't be it for every single patient. Maybe search some of the lyme threads elsewhere on the forum for stuff specific to the disease?

Not sure who you're speaking to here; the OP hound passed after the majority of this thread was discussed. But that pup was diagnosed with psychogenic polydipsia as the probable cause for the issue. We're doing a bit of wait and see with our guy; besides the drinking/peeing he has a lot of things that could be symptoms of something, but they could also be behavioral or just his personality. The first variable I want to eliminate is that he is almost done with the Prison Protocol for hookworms and it's a pretty intensive regimen that definitely could be impacting his kidneys and who knows what else. We have the last dose in two weeks and then we can see if anything improves once he doesn't have all those drugs running through him. Did your vet require you to do the input/output measuring before they treated for diabetes insipidus? Were there any others diagnostic tests they did? Was it an expensive treatment? I'd love for it to be as easy as that

I've read that in order for dogs to get the most out of veggies they don't necessarily have to be cooked, but broken down in some way - pulverized or blended. Since humans (and our saliva) do that adequately when we chew and dogs usually don't, you kind of have to give the veg a kick start on the digestion process. FWIW our hound snatched a couple small sweet potatoes off the ground while I was harvesting and he chewed 'em right up, but the chunks made their way through him no worse for wear, so I doubt he got a whole lot of nutrition out of that particular snack

That's an excellent question, and unfortunately is still a mystery Our 4 yr old guy - who is pretty well house-trained - is sporadically drinking and peeing a ton, and (understandably) doing some of that peeing in the house. Multiple UAs, a culture, bladder X-rays and ultrasounds all show nothing, so before we go down the route of testing for "zebras" we thought we'd see if changing food helped - since the problem began right after we finished transitioning to the current food he's on, and it's the only environmental change we can pin anything on at the moment. But figuring out food is it's own black hole of variables, so I'll take any info I can get to help me narrow the field!

We're in the process of troubleshooting a mysterious, minor health issue with our grey, and since it began right around the time we switched to our current food, we're considering finding another one. At the moment we're not in a position to go raw, so dry kibble is what I'm looking at/for currently. In my looking around, man do some of these foods have HIGH percentage protein! +30% just seems crazy high to me, for a dog that runs around in the yard after a ball a couple times a day but basically just sleeps and toodles around the house. Isn't there a point where there's too much protein for the kidneys to handle? Maybe I'm totally off base though... What do you consider an appropriate percentage protein for your dog food? How high is too high? How low is too low?

Thanks for replying! And so sorry you lost your guy Was there anything you could really do for the PP?

I know this was a long time ago, but did either of you ever find definitive(ish) diagnoses for your pups? We're dealing with a lot of the same issues and so far all the first round tests (UA, cultures, concentration testing, etc) have been negative/normal.

I know this was a long time ago, but did you ever get a definitive(ish) diagnosis? We're dealing with a similar mystery and the U/As, urine cultures, usual-suspects, etc have all come back negative/normal. There are so many variables that we're looking for as much info as we can before we deep dive into a million tests

I know this was pretty long ago, but did you ever find any medical reason for Ernie's peeing issue? Our guy is having very similar problems and all the common medical culprits (UTI, bladder crystals/stones) are coming up normal/negative.

Anyone have any insights/tips for a 4yo male going in for a Cystotomy? I haven't been able to find many threads on this topic, is it pretty rare in greys? How long was your pup's recovery? Did you use a cone or some other method of lick-prevention? What kind of bladder control/retention should we reasonably expect while he's healing? Has anyone successfully treated struvite stones with diet/increased water (avoiding surgery)?

Our vet didn't act like the hooks were "no big deal" the way it sounds like some have, but they definitely didn't have any idea about the ongoing hook resistance in greyhounds, and had no knowledge of any treatment protocols outside the standard (that no longer works). You will probably need to educate them thoroughly on the "greyhound hookworm problem" and various protocols that are out there, and research extensively on what a lifelong hook (even low level) infection could look like for your pup (diarrhea isn't the only symptom). I've read enough to know that I don't want that for mine. I would hope once vets are educated they'd realize that the Prison Protocol was created by other vets and as long as it isn't being given along with other flea/tick/heartworm meds the risk of overdosing is minimal. Obviously, some dogs are having a hard time on the protocol, but it does seem to be working for the dogs that can stick to it. If the problem is REinfestation (as opposed to larval leak), and you live somewhere where it freezes in the winter, you might actually have a chance of getting the hooks out of your dog while the winter gets it out of your environment. But larval leak is also a real contender issue and the Advantage Multi (active ingredient) is the only thing I've heard that really deals with that.

Yes, I definitely mean Advantage Multi/Advocate! Good luck to you as well

It's tough, people are less likely to talk about things that work, and then it feels like all you read is about when it doesn't.

For what it's worth, we've had zero issues giving the Advantage (and drontal) twice a month. Poop gets a little worse the day after treatment but that's it.

It depends what you want them to work on: Fleas, ticks, and heartworm? They probably do work as well. If you want them to help keep the hooks at bay, the answer is no. If you compare Frontline with Advantage you'll see that their active ingredients are different, and the Frontline only claims to stop fleas and ticks - we shouldn't expect it to do any more than that. So as far as hook prophylactic, the Frontline isn't doing anything. Whereas, the Advantage kills/prevents fleas, heartworms, hookworms, roundworms, whipworms, mange, and other microfilariae. Heartguard is obviously for heartworm, and maybe at one time it worked for hookworms (they claim it does) but it's pretty clear from the experiences on here, and from the vets who wrote the Prison Protocol, that it isn't working well for greys and their hooks. Since the Advantages covers pretty much everything except for ticks, that's what we'll use monthly (in addition to a tick med) once we're done with the Prison Protocol. I'd rather have something more "full coverage" anyway; I'm less worried about fleas than whatever he's bound to catch eating delicious rabbit poop.

I don't think any of the protocols have a schedule they advise for retesting, but my thought has been to have at least a month between tests - obviously depending on the state of her poop and her healthy in general. If it changes suddenly it might be time to test again. Because the test only looks at a small sample it's pretty easy for them to have a negative result, but they might not really be clear of hooks. It's been my experience that most vets aren't aware of the state of the hookworm problem in the greyhound community and will need to be educated by you on things like protocols and retesting, and the general resiliency of this particular hookworm. Are you using Advantage Multi as your monthly flea topical? That is supposed to prevent the larval leak, hopefully stopping any hangers-on from reinfesting in case the drugs didn't catch them all the first time.

Don't lose hope! These buggers are incredibly tough, but even just keeping them under control is much better than nothing. I've done too much googling about what happens when hooks go untreated to believe that long-term treatment is worse than the alternative. I am curious how you treated the hooks when you first got her? And for how long? My impression from reading here is that anyone who treated with the 'standard' regimen should adopt the mindset that they haven't really treated at all, just because the standard doesn't seem to touch these things. Was she ever consistently hook-free? If her counts are climbing it does sound like it's time to restart treatment of some kind. We're doing the Prison Protocol right now (AdvantageMulti and DrontalPlus every 1st and 15th of the month) and we're pretty optimistic so far. He has minimal side effects (just a bad poop day right after dosing) and doesn't mind the medicine, and we had our first negative test a couple weeks ago. Per the protocol we're going to keep treating through most of the winter to get multiple negative tests, and to make sure the cold temps kill any hooks deposited in our yard. From what I understand about how the Advantage works, the key is to keep that drug in their system continuously in order to keep new hooks from hatching and latching. We'll likely keep using that as our monthly flea topical once we're out of the woods. QuestPlus has almost the same active ingredients as the Prison combo, but I would think doing Advantage and Drontal might be easier (it's already packaged in the right dosage), if you haven't already tried it. And if you have tried it and it failed then Quest probably isn't going to work any better. I know I've read about a slightly different protocol here in this thread, a few pages back, that I think came out of Ohio State? I've also been wondering about Telmintic/Mebendazole, which is a hookworm drug approved for humans as well as dogs. It looks like the side effects seen in dogs make it less likely to be recommended, with safer alternatives out there, but for a lot of people who've been struggling without success for a long time it might be worth asking vets about.

Honestly, I'm not sure, but definitely on pickup day. Bismarck got a dose with some wet food on his way out the door. Our guy had been waiting there to be chosen for a long time, from April until August, and I don't know if our group has the funding to treat dogs that are there for so long with an intensive protocol. The vet records we got for him didn't show any hook treatment during that time, and he was positive when we brought him home, but not with a super heavy load, so who knows. I think most dogs come and go to forever homes too fast for the kennel to do very many rounds of treatment. I think to use QuestPlus instead of something like the Prison Protocol you'd want a vet to figure out the dosage and frequency to try to match an established protocol. It has most of the same active ingredients as DrontalPlus & Advantage Multi but it's packaged and dosed for horses. If you're in Wisconsin your kennel might be our kennel (Burlington), so they might be able to answer some of those questions too if you think you want to use it for treatment.

Sounds like the QuestPlus (has ingredients from both Advantage and Drontal) might work out better for Lola if you have to keep treating. Our kennel mixed it up with wet food for the pups. But, with any luck she won't need it!!

Our adoption group was using QuestPlus (liquid dewormer for horses) right before dogs left the kennel, which has moxidectin (same as Advantage) and praziquantel (same as Drontal). But it definitely has to be dosed differently for a noodle horse. Looks like Strongid has the pyrantel pamoate (also in Drontal), but maybe a vet or someone here would know which one is preferable for hooks. I'm not sure how many versions of Drontal are out there, but our vet stocks the Drontal Plus 'Taste Tabs' which look like little bones and do kind of smell like treats (our guy agrees). Does Percy just not want to eat them? You could probably grind it up and put into some form of otherwise delicious liquid. Or are you seeing side effects? Sometimes the day after dosing Bismarck has less-great poops for a day, but fortunately that's all we've seen as far as side effects of the meds go. We have been doing Prison Protocol (Drontal Plus and Advantage Multi) twice per month - the 1st and 14/15th since Sept 1 and got our first negative result a week or so ago. Granted, Bismarck's worm count was lower when we first tested, but that was also less than a week after his Quest dose at the kennel. But as long as he's healthy while on the meds, we're not messing around. Any chance Percy is a stealthy poop-eater? Or could there be something else in his environment that is fighting back against the meds efforts?

Wanted to report in on our current "success" with the Prison Protocol. We started our guy on it on Sept 1 and just had our first negative fecal for hooks! I want to see at least two more negatives before we cease intensive treatment but it feels great to at least seem to be moving in the right direction! Now bring on those freezing temps to kill the buggers in my yard!

Update: Vet started him on a antibiotic and antibiotic-like drug for sheath infection and broad spectrum stomach bug. Nothing of note in the UA or bloodwork (thank goodness!) and no Giardia. Bonus = first negative test for hookworm since we got him and started the Prison Protocol!! He's already much more peppy than he had been She also wonders if the food we were transitioning him to is a little too high protein and *gasp* that the lethargy might be partially because of the lack of the (yucky) carbs (wheat & corn) he was used to in his old food. So, I guess we're picking up the food-finding journey once he's all healed up.

Congrats on your new boy! We have a new boy as well (got him in Aug), and it sounds to me like you're doing just fine, your guy is just still settling in, figuring out what his "pet" personality is going to be. I don't think he's holding some sort of 'grudge' about no longer being on the couch, but even if he is a little grumpy about it - it's your couch and you're the boss! If he's not up, chin in your lap, eye-begging to be on there with you (what ours does) I don't think it's that. Was being on the couch a significant part of his routine? I think of a routine as feeding times, outside times, human coming and going times - if none of that has changed I think he'll survive on his own bed (and not the couch). Obviously, I don't know what his normal behavior at that time of day used to look like (passed out cold on the sofa?), but it makes sense that he's settling in to the point where just lounging around even when you're home is normal. Greys are much different than other dogs (at least most I've met) in that they don't behave like they constantly need attention and are perfectly happy just laying around near you. And I think they have "sad eyes" like 80% of the time, so I try not to read too much into that. As for the yawning, that does seem like a lot, and I think you're right about it being a calming signal more than tiredness. Any chance that something has changed at your house recently that would spook him a little but that you wouldn't notice? Like the furnace turning on and off? Our guy does a lot of what I now know are calming signals when we come home for the day, so I've tried to acquaint myself with them to try to communicate back to him - encouraging the calm. I'd say, yawn right back at your boy. Here's a link I like for explaining calming signals - http://en.turid-rugaas.no/calming-signals---the-art-of-survival.html As long as you aren't seeing negative changes with eating/drinking/pottying, I think the evening lounging (even if a little huffy puffy) is probably a-ok

Our 4yo guy came down with some kind of bug over the weekend, which had (what seems to us) an odd presentation. I'm hoping someone here might have an idea of what it might be. Short story is that it started Saturday as a couple of peeing accidents inside (not explained by long interval between outside visits or anything like that), drinking tons of water, having to go outside many times per night/day (considerably more than normal), and transitioning Sunday to cow-pie poops and borderline diarrhea (fortunately all pooping occurred outside). He's definitely not himself, he hasn't been sleeping on his bed in our room, does a lot of pacing around, getting up and down - clearly trying to get comfortable, has no interest in playing when outside (very out of character), and didn't do his normal rooster routine at the alarm this morning (also very out of character). We started feeding boiled and rice today and we'll probably throw in some pumpkin and/or Olewo carrots since we have it. We figure if he doesn't improve in a day or two we'll take a fecal and urine sample to the vet and go from there. My main question, though, is does anyone have any idea what kind of bug would potentially cause urinary and bowel issues? I normally assume they would be separate, but maybe not? Would a UTI cause bad poops? Would a stomach bug make him want to drink and pee a ton? I want to try to make sure the vet checks the right things if it comes to that. The only other thing of note (that I can think of) is that he caught a rabbit in our yard a week ago - he didn't have a chance to eat it but obviously could have picked something up from it, or from its poop that was no doubt in our yard.