February
21
2012
We’d hoped this food would bring improvements, but it hasn’t really. Not much that we can tell anyway. His abdomen continues to be normal, but his legs, man his poor legs. He can’t even bend them. The edema isn’t all the way up to his groin now, but it’s still up to the stifle joint and his legs are just fat and horribly swollen.
Continue Reading >>
February
17
2012
Rhade started Purina HA this morning. Early, early as in like midnight. He had a brief moment of water diarrhea this morning, but now a bit after 8 PM he already is up to dry cow patty, just shy of formed but soft. Hopefully the lower fat content will allow his peripheral edema to go away and his protein to go up. (His abdominal edema/swelling/ascites/whatever it was has continued to stay gone since he’s been on the hydrolyzed protein foods.)
Wish us luck.
February
16
2012
Rommy points.
Her breeder was pretty sure she would. Sure enough, she’s pointing.
At cars. LOL
February
13
2012
I posted my review of Dr. Noll’s treatment of Rhade on Insider Pages. Apparently he sits around trolling the internet worried about what people are saying about him. Or pays someone there to do it anyway. Seeing the truth of how badly he botched Rhade’s care apparently does not sit well with Dr. Noll. And I use the term doctor loosely there. He was so bothered by it, he sent me a certified letter about it, essentially threatening me if I don’t take it down.
(Here’s an observation. I think it says something that such a small practice doctor is so worried about what is being said about him on the internet that he dedicates resources/time to not only “monitoring” the internet, but trying to bully anyone that says something he doesn’t like. Paranoia that people are talking bad about you has its roots in one of two places. Mental illness or knowing you are a screw up.)
Well I say bring it. I’m not taking it down. It is all fact.
If he doesn’t want the world hearing about what an incompetent putz he is being, here’s my advice to him. He should stop being such an incompetent putz! When a dog comes in losing all its muscles with intractable diarrhea, do some fucking tests! Figure out what is wrong instead of just willy nilly guessing what is wrong. Don’t assume it is EPI just because it is a German Shepherd. DO THE FUCKING TEST AND FIND OUT FOR SURE. Do a God damned chem panel and find out that the poor dog has protein losing enteropathy instead of ASSuming you can possibly know what is wrong just by looking at the animal.
And when you prescribe stuff, be sure you actually prescribe appropriate amounts and give correct directions for use. Otherwise it won’t work.
And one more thing. Don’t be a complete classist asshole and make assumptions about what treatment a dog will or will not get just because the owners are not well off. Actually GIVE a proper referral to the IM vet instead of just writing in the chart that the dog should see one.
So yeah. It is a fact that you are incompetent when you don’t do your job correctly.
February
12
2012
We put a call in to the vet Friday about what to do regarding Rhade’s diet. We haven’t heard back yet. He’s still swelling in the hind legs. I’m wrapping them with the polo wraps which has kept the swelling completely down in the right hind but not as well in the left hind. But still, is artificially keeping it down with compression enough? I mean his protein must still be low or he wouldn’t be swelling. And if he does have lymphangiectasia, he’s going to keep losing it as long as his diet is too high in fat so we need to act on the diet ASAP I think instead of sitting here wrapping his legs and just argh.
I’m not good at waiting when it feels so urgent.
February
10
2012
And his stomach is so quiet. I keep checking to see if he is alive still because I don’t hear the borborygmi. Pretty sure that something is wrong in there and making him require digestive enzymes. The only thing I know of that would do that is EPI.
BUT
And there is always a but isn’t there?
Now that he’s digesting his food, he is showing severe signs of lymphangiectasia now. The fat in the Royal Canin is too high for a cLI dog so holy cow we are seeing the effects of too much fat on Rhade now. His hind legs look like huge tree trunks all the way up to his groin. HUGE. Gigantic edema. And diarrhea. Water. Bad.
It makes sense that if he developed EPI (or is developing EPI?), that without the digestive enzymes to break the fat down into the right molecules for the lacteals to absorb, his symptoms would be lessened and not really clear cut the way the cLI dogs I read about are. They eat a tiny bit too much fat and WHAMO! they get bad problems. Rhade seemed to have a lot of leeway there in the total fat he could eat, but that would be because the limiting factor in how much fat the lacteals were getting hit with was how much lipase he was able to make. Now he has adequate lipase in his diet and he has experienced his first WHAMO! moment.
Crap.
So now I am back to yes, his protein losing enteropathy sure as heck could be cLI. In fact now I think I finally believe it is.
Damn. Now to figure out how to feed a hydrolyzed protein food when they are all too high in fat.
February
8
2012
But he’s still Rhade. People question why put him through all this, why keep him going when he’s mostly just treading water and not getting better? Well…
February
8
2012
Rhade is now two months from when we saw the IM vet.
Continue Reading >>
February
8
2012
The vet felt that Rhade may now have developed EPI. Not an unreasonable hypothesis given the symptoms. This left us with a choice on how to spend the money we had available for him.
- Go ahead with the ultrasound and look for any possible partial obstruction which is unlikely but not impossible after all this time.
- Get him a cTLI test again.
- Get more enzymes.
Sucks not having all the money you need to “do it right,” but we have to do the best we can with what we have
The vet was able to do a very thorough physical exam with the ascites virtually gone from Rhade’s abdomen Monday. He felt nothing. This makes the possibility of a partial obstruction being found even slimmer.
If we get the cTLI done we won’t be able to buy enzymes for a while so knowing won’t do any good. If we buy enzymes, we can’t get the cTLI done right now. We have some enzymes left from when the first vet thought Rhade had EPI (but he didn’t), so yesterday morning we started using them at 2/3 the full dose. (We found out before that it can help to build up to the full dose and not just jump straight to it.) Since we started the enzymes, his borborygmi have been very mild and quiet. They had gotten quite severe lately. Anytime we’d think we’d done something to help, they’d be right back a few hours later. This time however we are 36 hours in and they are virtually absent. The one time yesterday that he had bad borborygmi, I had given him his two pet vitamins between two meals. Today I incubated his vitamins in his meal and no problems.
Today his stools are dark brown instead of dark tan. Still soft, but we aren’t up to the full dose yet.
Since using the enzymes won’t hurt him and he’s showing improvement in his EPI symptoms with them, we chose to go with buying the enzymes now and doing the cTLI to confirm later when we’ve raised more money.
February
8
2012
When I got to my “friend’s” house to see Ninga, I found out that his girlfriend was withholding water from her! A sick dog! She was too busy being upset that Ninga had been peeing in the house to care about her health. She said that Ninga was drinking too much (a clear sign of health problems) SO SHE TOOK WATER AWAY FROM HER! And the way she talked she had been limiting it for several days. This contributed to Ninga being in ketoacidosis and dying.
What further disturbed me was seeing Baby chained to the wall in a tiny space barely big enough for her to lay down, no room to move around, between an entertainment center and the wall. This space is smaller than a size 300 varikennel people!
Boz was in a crate on the other side of the room, but I couldn’t see him. You see his crate was covered with a blanket or something. I had been concerned when the crate they had borrowed when they took him over to their house came back with the tray cracked up and the front of it mangled, but now I think I understand.
Mind you her precious pitbull was not confined inhumanely when I was there. It was loose and able to move around. And I know that previous dogs my “friend” had were not kept inhumanely confined either, so I had no cause for concern to warn me to not let them have my dogs. Just shows how people can fool you. ALWAYS DO CONTRACTS!
Of course when Rosie the pit did move, his girlfriend hit her and yelled at her. Later that night she showed me bites on both her arms from the pit. She said she has bitten her before but never that bad. No doubt the poor dog is getting fed up with getting hit.
I have put them in a home just as bad as the one they came from, the exact same hell I rescued them from, and I stupidly did not do adoption contracts so I have no recourse. I hate myself for this.
Technically they had not adopted Boz. They were supposed to take him during the week and bring him home on the weekends to help me out because Boz is a handful and needed more exercise than I could give him. Also they were supposed to help me work on getting him used to being out of the crate and around people without going nuts from stimulation overload so he could potentially get adopted. They just kept him. My fault of course. I told myself that if Boz is happy and they are good to him, fine, and let it slide. NEVER LET IT SLIDE.
If I had known they were treating those two that way, I NEVER EVER IN A MILLION YEARS would have asked them to watch Ninga. And yes, I asked them to WATCH Ninga. But they “adopted” her like they did Boz.
But yeah, I am hating myself for not doing contracts now because if I had, I would have filed in court first thing to get the dogs back. (My contract requires damages in the sum of $5,000 per dog, but will accept the dog in lieu of damages, making it enforceable in court.)
