ahicks51
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Posts posted by ahicks51
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If it's oral melanoma, the vaccine has proven to be very useful.
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You can see the pink standing out against dark of his lip right between my thumbs just to the left of his canine.
D'OH! Image didn't come up when I opened this thread the first time!
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What color?
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Hopefully they've done a culture and sensitivity- the former identifies the organism, the latter describes to which antibiotics the organism is susceptible. That is presumably why the Baytril (a fluoroquinolone antibiotic, in the same class as Cipro) was prescribed.
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Never thought about trying this with hounds, but there are plenty of anecdotal data out there about this being the case with people- IBD and a number of other conditions are improved with coconut oil.
Part of this may be due to some "real" biochemical effect in which the fats in coconut oil are used in a more... direct fashion by the body. But there may also be a dietary component in that pure fat from coconuts will "dilute" the other foods being provided. For those hounds whose conditions are exacerbated by grains and other dietary carbohydrates, this would mean the fat:carb ratio is improved, possibly ameliorating any existing conditions.
But that's well into the theoretical realm. I don't think it could hurt to try.
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I tried him this morning on 1c. cooked, drained hamburger and 1 1/2 c. cooked rice. He gobbled it right up, so we'll see. The vet called me back yesterday to say in fact that they'd been WRONG about him gaining 10lbs - in fact he's lost 4lbs, so there is some wt. loss w/this.
What exactly is a 'raw' diet?
"Raw" food means raw meat and bones- chicken necks, turkey backs, beef heart, you name it. While there is usually some recoil at the thought of feeding poultry bones (amongst other things), know that COOKED bones definitely present a health hazard to the dog. Uncooked bones are a completely different matter.
Much of it depends upon what you can get locally. We're able to get many components locally on a price basis that is competitive with kibble. I just found a high-end supermarket that sells their turkey back for $.49 a pound, for example, and chicken necks run $.38/pound in case quantities.
It's a lot of work and there's due diligence in that you will need to do a bit of reading before taking the plunge. Some dogs won't even eat raw food; others won't go back to kibble once they've tasted it.
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And to answer your query- ELISA (ezyme-linked immunosorbent assay) is one method commonly employed in screening blood serum for the presence of tickborne diseases- but now that I think of it, they may use immunofluorescence assays instead. But don't let me confuse you with acronyms here- the type of test isn't the important bit for the discussion here.
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yeah Ethan was treated for Babesia Canis with Doxecycline over a year ago. Tested again for ticks and came out negative on all!
How did they find the infection in Dallas?
That's good to hear he was cleared of babesia.
TBDs are pernicious and there is some suspicion that not all TBDs are known, and therefore some may not register on a test. As a result, sometimes a course of antibiotics may help.
What part of the country are you in?
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Did he race or stay in the southwest for any amount of time? That would be important from a Valley Fever standpoint.
Have you considered a course of antibiotics for the possibility that there is a tickborne disease (TBD) that- for whatever reason- isn't showing up via ELISA?
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While "Oprah" may not help, many kennels help bust up the tedium with a radio.
Hardly a substitute for exercise, of course.
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Loose stool in the greyhound is hardly uncommon, and in itself it is not necessarily characteristic of PLE. Once the "other" causes have been ruled out (parasites and pathogens, etc.), it comes down to a big shrug and an "I don't know what it is" by the vet. It's very common.
You've already tried a number of the most commonly offered solutions. I would suggest a few more if the ones you have yet to try don't pan out:
1) Find a suitable kibble. You may need to go through a bunch of 'em. Sorry.
2) Add beet pulp. Get a big sack of it at the feed store, and add 1-2 tablespoons per meal. Soften it up with a little water about 3-5 minutes before eating- not soaking it, just keeping it from being hard enough to damage teeth. Many kibbles already have beet pulp added; Costco (Kirkland's brand), for example, already has some. Adding a bit more pushes stool from "not acceptable" to "eh- not bad."
3) Raw food or homecooked diet. Loose stool is caused by insufficient de-watering of the fecal matter. Precisely why this happens can come down to one of a number of causes, but based on both ends of the greyhound, too many carbs in the diet seems to be responsible (more on this in a second). Adding more fiber allows extra water to be dealt with in a more... pleasant fashion. The other venue- making sure the water doesn't end up there in the first place (more meat and bone) also works well. We switched our two non-fosters to raw food, and BOY did their stool improve.
It's interesting to note how many people have similar observations: take the carbs out of the diet, and the stool improves (be it from home-cooked, raw food, or reeeealy expensive bagged kibble or canned food). Similarly, greyhounds have awful mouths; take out the carbs, and the calculus, gingivitis, and the bad smell frequently go away. From these observations, it would seem likely that the breed enjoys high-protein, high-fat, low-carb diets, possibly from ancestry as hunting dogs, or maybe from track food which is often depleted in carbs.
A local vet with whom I spoke while in line at the post office noted he has had some success with Purina's veterinary probiotic called "Fortiflora." Never tried it.
Sorry you had to go through so many vet bills for what is such a relatively common problem with greys. I hope you can resolve it soon.
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What symptoms is your dog presenting that led to the suspicion of PLE?
Are we talking weight loss + D, or...?
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A number of folks have reported unusual strong side-effects with this vaccine. I suspect- but have no proof- that the vaccine has a large slug of adjuvants that goes with the proteins that are injected to sensitize the animal to the bacteria it must combat in the mouth. Unfortunately, this leads to an increased incidence of side-effects.
Moreover, if this is the case (high concentration of adjuvants), it theoretically increases the risk of autoimmune diseases further down the line. The adjuvants added to these vaccines aren't specific to the injected proteins; they may also cause the body to be sensitized to its own proteins.
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The number of reports of side-effects from the vaccine have been quite high.
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If you haven't already, look up chocolate toxicity in dogs - then bookmark it for the next time. Even dark chocolate, it takes quite a bit of chocolate.
And what you have in those candy bars isn't all chocolate either.
The plant from which chocolate hails is under threat from two fungi; Witches' broom (Crinipellis perniciosa) and frosty pod rot (Moniliophthora rorei) have started to seriously impact cacao harvests. As a result, many of the new-ish types of chocolate are no such thing; they're "mocklate," more than anything else. Further consolidation of the chocolate industry (like Hershey's buying up Dagoba and Schmidt and Scharffen Berger) has led to the extinguishing of a number of "real" chocolate products.
Back in '07, the chocolate industry started lobbying congress to legally label partially hydrogenated vegetable oil + artificial sweeteners + fake milk as "chocolate," even when there's no cocoa butter present. I'm not sure if that ever passed or not, but chocolate is quickly becoming "chocolate" out of market necessity. It mimics how high fructose corn syrup (HFCS) replaced sugar in a number of products- and is now a universal truth. Just try to find hot dogs without HFCS or corn syrup solids. Now Pepsi has caught on to the fad of Mexican cola imports- products that contain sugar instead of HFCS- and branding it as such.
Expect to see a resurgence of "real" chocolate, but it won't be for a long time.
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The only thorough study on the subject showed that restricting exercise before and after feeding was correlated with an INCREASED risk of bloat (relative risk = 1.62, or 62% greater chance of bloat) in large breed dogs; the risk was slightly decreased- by about 6%, or a relative risk of 0.94- in giant breed dogs.
Most likely that's an artifact of the dogs under study. If you're a breeder or whatever and you think your dog is prone to bloat, you're going to follow popular wisdom and not exercise your dog before or after feeding. But because of familial history or previous experience, the dog bloats anyway.
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999 mg/dL sounds like operator error, or machine error. Your vet should contact the diagnostic lab and ask if they had a bad day or a bad batch run or something.
Get a container of test strips and do 'em at home- save you a pile of money, and it'll end up being more convenient.
ETA: A container of urinalysis test strips- sorry for the confusion. Multistix 10 SG test strips or similar are cheap through Amazon or eBay.
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So sorry to hear of it.
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Have you done research to find out if those mushrooms are even dangerous? There are lots of mushrooms that aren't.
I think it is best to err on the side of caution; unless you are absolutely certain beyond a doubt that a mushroom is not toxic, better to treat as if it is.
There are only two things to doubt when it comes to identifying "safe" mushrooms and "dangerous" mushrooms:
1) The word of a novice
2) The word of an expert *
And don't even think anyone can ID them over the phone. It's like telling someone what purple looks like when they've been blind from birth.
* Exception: mycologists. Even mycologists can be exempted from this exemption if they've consumed too many magic mushrooms during their career.
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Surely someone somewhere along the lines has checked the teeth, right?
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I meant to ask you, what do you mean by raw food? Literally?
Yeah. It's a little involved, but it means (at our house) chicken necks, beef heart, and assorted turkey parts- all uncooked. While poultry bones are exceedingly dangerous once they have been cooked, when they are raw they are well-digested and well-tolerated.
Under the right circumstances, it's not that much tougher than feeding kibble- although it certainly lacks in terms of convenience. For some animals, it's a pretty clear-cut choice; their... emissions are much better, for one. For another, it may preclude the need for annual anesthesia and dental cleanings. There may be other health ramifications, almost all of which have little or no acceptance in the veterinary community, but adherents are full of conjecture and anecdotal data.
However, if it is simply a food allergy, it may be enough to find a bagged food product without the irritating protein(s); suspect corn and wheat first, and move on to other ingredients if there's no marked improvement after several weeks of very careful elimination.
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Coco did this; we thought it was an environmental allergy, but it disappeared when we switched him to raw food.
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Does anyone know what causes IBD? Would SIBO precede it or follow it usually? I'm guessing this might be a chicken-and-egg problem that could happen either way. But I'd love to know whatever y'all know.
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Don't know what causes IBD, but I have heard that it is often related to whipworm infestation. I'm guessing any weakening of the gut, through parasite damage or improper diet, may cause it. Our greyhounds have generally had a lot of both, and I'm not talking about the track diet they get before we adopt them. I think they are used to a lot of meat in their diet and when we switch them over to high carb kibble, some of them have trouble.
The irony is that parasites (helminths- usually Necator americanus, the common hookworm) is used to manage intestinal, autoimmune, and allergic diseases experimentally in humans. TSO (pig whipworms- they can't attach, so new eggs must be consumed every two weeks) are available OTC in some countries, in fact. They probably toy with the T1/T2 immunity thingamabob and put things back in order somehow. Some advocate this approach based on the near absence of autoimmune disorders in some developing countries.
As for its origins: some theories suggest that (in humans) ulceration as a result of NSAIDs (which cause tiny ulcers in the gut) or possibly too much acid over time (from overconsumption of carbohydrates) results in a mixing of the immune system with intestinal bacteria. Eventually, the body becomes sensitized to some of the bacterial proteins; if the epitope on these proteins- the precise amino acid chain that the immune system reacts to- closely resembles the body's own proteins, the resulting immune reaction may result in autoimmune attack.
We know this happens with rheumatic fever- Strep. pyogenes proteins apparently resemble proteins of the heart, brain, joints, and skin, resulting in autoimmune attack once the infection is gone. We also know it happens in Reiter's syndrome (reactive arthritis), in which a number of organisms (some of which are pretty common STDs) result in an autoimmune reaction against the large joints, the eyes, and the urethra (resulting in the charming diagnostic triad "can't see, can't pee, can't bend the knee"). In both these diseases, the similarities between the bacterial proteins just happen to jibe with the body's own proteins, which are then assaulted by the immune system because of the bad coincidence.
With some types of intestinal disorders, ankylosing spondylitis, and rheumatoid arthritis (and probably multiple sclerosis, maybe some types of diabetes, possibly cystic fibrosis, and maybe a slew of other diseases), it's the same deal- we just haven't pinned down the organism for some of these. With Crohn's and ulcerative colitis, as well as ankylosing spondylitis, it's probably the common organism Klebsiella pneumoniae. With Rheumatoid arthritis, it's probably the common UTI organism Proteus mirabilis. A number of organisms have been proposed for MS:
http://jcm.asm.org/cgi/reprint/44/6/2099
With CD, UC, and AS, the proffered solution is straightforward: stop eating amylopectin starch, which is what causes Kp to generate the irritating protein. As starch is found exclusively in vegetable matter, an all-carnivore diet is one way to get it done. In an animal that clearly tolerates a pure carnivore diet (cats, dogs), this is well-tolerated. Humans have tolerated pure carnivore diets in limited experiments for a year without supplementation- not even vitamin C. That a number of dogs in early stages of IBD (chronic, unresolved D, etc.) seem to turn around quickly and without apparent drawbacks on diets somewhere between "heavy" and "absolute" in terms of animal protein is a good sign that there may be a similar mechanism at work. It certainly doesn't have to be klebsiella; migrating the flora away from bugs that are happy on vegetable matter may be all it takes.
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Back to this question, the probiotic we used is called PB8 by Nutrition Now, Inc. It has 6 Lactobacillus strains and 2 Bifodobacterium strains: L. acidophilus, plantarum, rhamosus, casei, paracasei, and salivarius; and B. bifidum and longum. How do I find out if Clostridium (he has both perfringens and difficile strains) pulls out pullulanase? And whatever else I need to know about this kind of thing?
The effects of clostridia are due to their toxins, rather than a reactive disorder such as that due to molecular mimicry, so there's no worries about pullulanase here. In fact, in the canine, it'd be purely hypothetical- it's still not well-accepted in human medicine, although there are precedents (rheumatic fever and Reiter's syndrome, aka reactive arthritis are both well-accepted examples of diseases caused by molecular mimicry). Clostridia produce toxins effective on muscle tissue as well as red blood cells.
Human nutrition is a mess; veterinary nutrition is a little better in that one can experiment on animals more readily than humans. But the "science" of probiotics makes nutrition look good in comparison. Many of these organisms are isolated in one species, and used in another; I seem to recall there's a few strains that are in yogurts that nobody really knows what animal they were originally pulled from. The implications may not be immediately obvious, but when comparing the gastric flora of cattle (obligate herbivores) to humans (omnivores leaning towards carnivory) and cats (obligate carnivores), it's pretty clear that maybe feeding the same critter to all three might not be a good thing.
If your problem were in a human, my advice would be to get away from all bifidobacterial species. It's not so clear-cut in the canine.
I don't know much about the veterinary supplements, but I see that Purina's "Fortiflora" has only one species (Enterococcus faecium)- an occasional pathogen in humans, but acknowledged as a probiotic in the canine:
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=A...74d3057817dc511
I know one vet locally who advocates its use in greyhounds with poorly consolidated stool. Never tried it on our hounds.
Help! Silas Split The Skin Between His Nail Pads!
in Health and Medical discussion
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Do you mean between the toes, just above the webbing?
We had that happen once; I couldn't figure out how a vet could stitch it, so I cleaned it out very carefully with dilute povidone iodine, washed it clean again, and then added just a bit more diluted povidone. Then I padded the space between the knuckles, wrapped it with another piece of tape, put a baby sock over it, and hoped for the best. I think I cleaned it every 8 or 12 hours- I forget now. It took 2-3 days to close up, but once it closed it didn't re-open. Phew.