Trudy

But not the full thyroid panel? That is separate from normal blood work. I wouldn't put lots of faith in the thyroid results unless you run the full thyroid panel.

Low thyroid function can cause seizures - but did you run a full panel or just the normal one?

He needs to be seen by the vet, even if it is a different one. To me, NOT A VET, it sounds like a blockage of some sort. For x-rays, we usually pay around $100 for a couple of views. You likely won't need to sedate him for it. I paid $110 for an ultrasound recently and then paid $300 for a higher resolution ultrasound a couple of days later. Ultrasound prices are going to depend on how good the machine is.... more money for more powerful machines. Is he at least still drinking? I'm not sure if you can give Ensure or the likes to a dog, but I think it shouldn't be an issue if you avoid the chocolate ones. If he's still drinking, I'd see about getting something into him with nutrients besides water for now. Ask the vet when you call to make the apt - the sooner you get him in there, the better. Ryan ate a ball a couple of years ago. Eight months later he started having issues. Never miss a meal boy still was eating and puking it back up. Then decided it just wasn't worth the effort. X-ray showed something the vet wanted to look at again in a few days, but didn't feel it was an obstruction. We took blood to do some testing as something was wrong with him, he doesn't turn up a chance to eat. The vet visit was first thing Sat morning, we were in the lobby waiting for the vet to get in. Sunday he came running inside and stood at his food bowl waiting for it to be filled up. I went outside to see what made this change. The inside of the ball had finally made its way out.

A disc issue will not be seen on the x-ray. Inflammation is the body's way to respond to an injury, reducing any inflammation will reduce pain. You may want to consider pain meds as well.

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There is a pinned thread (Secret Santa 2007) on how it works. All details are in that first post of the thread

That's way cheap - are you sure that will include everything. For me, a CBC and Chem panel has always been just around $100 - here, in Boston, at the specialty hospital in Rochester. Tick panels can be expensive, especially if you are doing a FULL tick panel. If you can get all that done for $150 for each dog, go ahead and do it, you'll at least have a baseline for each dog if needed in the future, but that is a bargain in itself for the tick panel In the last month I've spent well over $1,000 on blood tests - hell, $325 of that was today. $150 for a butt load of stuff sounds like a bargain to me at this point.

The rules still apply - there will be ONE more round of matching to be done. But you need at least 50 posts to be able to sign up. Remember posts in the OT forum do not count toward post counts, so get to posting in the other forums so you can enter.

There are so many things that can cause increased drinking/peeing Ryan's neurologist suggested withholding water for 24 hours when I told them he was drinking gallons of water. I was not depriving a dog that "needed" that much water for that long. I would only pick it up overnight. My normal vet agreed with this - he doesn't like to deprive a thirsty dog of water for more than overnight. If they are drinking that much, there is usually a reason. Ryan started drinking gallons of water after his MRI last month. We are only now starting to figure his issue out and unfortunately, he doesn't have a very good prognosis. But since nobody has ever seen what is going on with him, I wouldn't even consider suggesting your Rickie is having the same issues. But again, there are many many many reasons for a dog to start drinking tons of water. Good luck getting to the bottom of it.

I am so sorry for your loss.

Specials page created Simply Treats HOLIDAY SPECIALS (<--- click there for the specials page) Selected treats (chicken stew, carob brownie muffins and fluffernutter muffins), through the specials page, are offered at 25% off, so $6.00 per pound of treats, plus your shipping. Chocolates are also on sale through this page (they will be at their old sale price on the chocolates page) - $2.50 each for the solids or FIVE for $10. These are great options for SS gifts - you can create your own combos for what you wish to spend. And also through the specials page, if you only wanted to order ONE or maybe TWO of the solid chocolate greyhounds, you can do so without paying priority mail shipping, but you will need to contact me as you won't be able to order through the site (set up only for priority mail shipping). This will allow for reduced mailing rates. I don't yet have the exact costs for shipping, but can get that this week - they will be mailed in a padded envelope. Great for those little teaser SS gifts or that slightly different gift for someone special without spending an arm and a leg.

Ok, I haven't participated in the GT secret santa in a long time since I've been organizing it for a few years since it got so darn big. I'll send out gifts if somebody didn't get something or it seems they didn't really get a "real" gift (only had that happen once a couple of years ago). This year I decided to enter Jet and Ryan - even though I can see who will be sending to me when I do the matches. So the secret isn't so secret, but should still be fun (sorry to the person that got us, I hope you don't mind). But, what sort of gifts are you hoping will show up in your mail boxes? For your dogs or yourself? Or what kind of 'neat' things are you sending This may be the last year Ryan is with us for Christmas, if he acutally makes it that long (I'm an optimist (usually realist, but making an exception for my baby) so I entered them both), so I want it to be special for the person we received. So I'm looking for ideas of what "out of the ordenary" things people may be including beyond what people suggest they'd like. And besides, it isn't like I do this with GT at all (though I do participate with another board when we do SS there).

Everybody that entered before 4:40 EST has been matched. Please check and update your packages. I will do ONE more round of matching if people are still signing up. But that last round will be closer to the deadline we announced.

Freezing, thawing and freezing again is not considered good food safety practice. Anything I've purchased that is not frozen at the supermarket will say if it has been previously frozen - this way I know to use within a few days or cook it and then freeze it.

I would not send home made goodies to the UK due to their postal issues. Expect packages to be hanging out there for a while. Australia customs likes to take stuff, UK stuff will make it in but sit, Canada should be fine as long as ingredients are listed.

Jeff posted a link in this thread. I tried to match the other night, but hey, more bugs - surprise! Once it is fixed, I'll do another round.

Since he is currently an only dog, I would stop kenneling him if you can. Confine him to a safe room where things won't be knocked over onto him if he seizes and knocks into them. I can only speak from Ryan's seizures, but I wouldn't want him seizing in his kennel, as he'd likely break a foot or two because he'd manage to get them out between the bars and snap one while still thrashing about. If not a foot, a toe or a toenail Ryan had such a violent seizure one morning and made it into the living room and seized against the wall and bounced him into the solid stand with the TV on it. I had to tackle the TV before it landed on him as that TV was rocking and on its way off the stand and onto Ryan. That was the night I was more bruised from the seizure than he was. He also got up onto the couch and flew off it into me, knocking me over as I was trying to catch him. That was a very bad night. Thankfully, none of his seizures have every been quite that violent since then.

Until recently, we have kenneled Ryan when we leave. He typically has his seizures in the wee hours of the morning. If you have another option until you figure out when he has his seizures or can figure out what is causing them, I'd go that route. Jet is usually asleep when he seizes and only wakes up when she hears us.

From Dr Couto this morning: All the clinicians in the service are gone to our cancer meeting, so I am the only one left covering clinics; my next 4 days will be rather hectic

I don't recall strong side effects when we started Ryan on Pb. But I do remember holding him upright when we added KBr to the mix. We gave it a while to let him adjust, but he never did so we called the vet and told him we had to reduce the dose. I'd rather have a seizure here and there than a dog that can't stand up on his own. I'd stick with the Pb, but drop the dose to half on your own and see if that works. The first dose is a guess at what will work anyway. It is going to take a while to figure out if the dose is at a good level for him. You know your dog and as an old vet used to say, what's the point of fixing the problem if the side effects give you a dog that is just a "blob" - they aren't able to enjoy their life that way. So, if the side effects are too much with 60mg 2x a day, drop it down a little until he's not quite so bad. If you have to later after he is used to it, you can up the dose gradually if he's not in a therapeutic range.

The fluid is being generated in the abdomen by one of the organs, but they cannot tell what organ. They think there may be a clot in one of the organs that is causing the fluid. They can't drain it yet as doing it too quickly could cause him to collapse or just a slight pressure change could do it too from taking a bit off. So for now, Eeyore Pudge he is. He doesn't seem to know he's still sick - he's happy as Ryan normally is. Back to playing a bit more, "talking" when he wants something bad enough (like dinner tonight - he had quite the song and dance for us). He's mostly back to normal visually other than a large abdomen and slow on walks and not being able to go quite as far as he could. His neurosurgeon didn't tell us how big the clot in his neck was, but made it sound like they were small little things as she said they could have been small pieces of tumor. Our regular vet said it was large and gave us the report from his radiologist. Seems the clot in his neck, and makes sense now why the hell it was hurting him so badly, was at least the length of my hand! He gave me the option of Monday of continuing with the neurosurgeon to diagnose this problem. I told him we liked him better... and his office is closer and in an emergency, he lives one street over from us - he could run here as quickly as he could drive here if we needed him to. He knows his stuff and he knows greyhounds very well (he worked with track greys when he was in the UK) and he's honest with us.

Just a reminder to those of you shipping over seas... over large bodies of water. If you are shipping between the US and Canada - you should ship before the December 10 deadline, but you are not expected to ship this week.

Monday that was a thought, but now that there is no indication of a liver issue, no, biopsy isn't being considered.

OSU has been in the loop since the MRI - I'll be getting more info this afternoon from my vet to send to them now that we have results from Monday's testing. Neurologists around the country and many internal medicine specialists around the country have also been contacted. There are actually several heads working on figuring Ryan out with many more being consulted as things are found or not. The normal blood work usually doesn't really show liver issues unless your liver is pretty much dead. He did a normal panel to see if anything has changed since his MRI a month ago and did liver specific testing as well. Those showed perfectly fine results. Wouldn't know a damn thing was wrong with him based on all the blood tests that have been done on him. So many things have been considered and tossed out the window. We can't just willy nilly treat him for things either. Would be nice to get him off some of the meds he's on, but they are afraid to change anything yet for fear of pushing him over a cliff we don't know where is at.

My vet would never like to hear the word INTERESTING again in regards to Ryan. Everybody he has talked to has said it. He's talked to a lot of people. All the testing from Monday came up with nothing - other than his liver is fine - which is good But they still don't know. Tomorrow we go see another radiologist with a super duper ultrasound that can get some good images of Ryan's abdomen - which is still full of fluid - from one of the organs in there, but they don't know which one. They are now looking for pheochromocytoma. He's also leaking some protein through his kidneys - which can cause large clots around the body. The clot in Ryan's neck I guess was about 4 vertebrae long. They think he has one in one of the organs in his abdomen which is causing this fluid. So, the poor boy gets to be poked and prodded some more tomorrow.