Cant Keep Quiet!

Well, Artie's blookwork came back mixed.  One of the thyroid indicators was normal and one was high.

I talked to the vet and he suggested halving her thyroid medicine for about a month and then getting her weight and doing the blood work again.  This way we'll see if the thyroid was causing the weight loss or not.

One possible bonus to halving the thyroid medicine is that it might cause Artie to slow down a bit.  That would be a good thing.  She still runs and jumps like she's 12 months instead of 12 years.  Artie also has a high pain threshold.  When she was about a year old she cracked a bone in her paw.  We didn't know anything had happened until she went running through the house crying in pain.  She didn't stop running, though.

Artie's been falling a bit more lately and I've been worried that she'll jump and land wrong or run into something and hurt herself.  If her energy levels go down a bit, maybe that fear can ease some.

Technorati Tags: getting old, Vet

Artie is getting old.  She just doesn't know it yet.

Since July, Artie has been to the vet 3 times.  Twice in this month alone.  She's going back on Tuesday.

I can't really say that the last two are definitely due to old age, but I can't rule age out as a factor, either.

In July Artie started having trouble with incontinence.  Blood work showed that she has too much protien in her blood.  It was caused by a problem with her kidneys and required that she go on a special diet and take medication for the incontinence.  She had to be taken off the steroid she was given to deal with the effects of flea allergy.

Two weeks ago I took her back to the vet because she was shaking her head almost constantly and losing hair.  I knew that the hair loss was due to the flea allergy.  We've been fighting this battle since she was a puppy and it always gets bad this time of year.

Artie had lost 3 pounds since the July visit (mostly likely due to all the itching and head shaking) and the vet gave her a half dose of a steroid to help her out.  Everything else seemed normal.

Roughly this past Wednesday, she started shaking her head again and itching more.  Not as bad as two weeks before but I didn't want things to get too bad so I took her back today.

In two weeks she had lost 3 pounds even though she was eating as much as normal for her.  The head shaking and scratching only started back up this week.  She really shouldn't have lost so much weight.  So a visit to try to nip the head shaking and scratching in the bud turned into a 45+ minute visit with the vet to try to figure out just what was wrong with the dog.

Two things we figured out for sure, she has a kidney infection (again) and may have a yeast infection in one of her ears.  Anything else will have to wait for the results of blood work.  The blood, though, can't be done until Tuesday.  Due to my work schedule, I'll have to leave her at the vets so they can draw blood about 6 hours after she has the medication.  I'll pick her up on my way home.

Another thing we discussed but didn't address is the fact that Artie is becoming clumsy.  She still runs and jumps but she doesn't always land well.  More and more often her legs go out from under her and she ends up hitting the ground.  I know this is due to old age and there isn't much we can do about it.  I just wish Artie realized that she's getting old and decided to take her energy levels down a notch.  I worry that one day she'll hurt herself.

So that was my somewhat depressing visit to the vet.  I don't blame the vet for Artie getting old.  Plus everyone in my vet's office love Artie.  Whenever I take her the vet techs will come from where ever they are working to stop and say "hi" to Artie and pet her.  She's probably been treated by all of the vets there at one time or another as well.  By the time we left today she had filled up on treats by various members of the staff.

It looks like we will be seeing more and more of the vets as things go on.  I guess it's a good thing she loves to go there and they all adore her.

Technorati Tags: getting old, Vet

For nearly 12 years now, my dog has acted like an air-headed, happy-go-lucky mutt whose only care was who would rub her belly next.  It turns out that Artie has been hiding her brains behind a stupid grin/act for all this time.

A couple of weeks ago, Artie started having problems with incontinence.  It started out just happening in the morning before she woke up and then got to the point where she was dribbling all over the place.  When I took her to the vet it turned out that her urine was way too dilute, especially for a dog that hadn't had anything to drink in over 12 hours.  Urine and blood tests also came back showing that she had way too much protein in her system than was good for her.  Basically, her kidneys aren't working properly.

Since then she's been on medicaton for the dribbling and a special low protein diet ever since.  Well, she's been on medication ever since, the diet she just won't eat.

I'm not a big fan of shoving pills down my dog's mouth.  I'm not afraid of it, I've done it several times and she's never tried to bite me, I just don't like to do it.  So I bought some pill poppers/pockets.  I managed to hide the pills in those for less than a week.  Then she figured out what was going on and would just eat around the pocket and leave them.

That is, when she was eating the food she'd eat around the pill pockets.

I started out giving Artie the dry low-protein food mixed with canned low-protein food.   She'd eat the whole thing up.  That lasted about 3 days.  Then she'd eat the canned food and leave the dry food.  Now she's leaving the canned food as well.

I mixed up a piece of cheese in her food tonight to tempt her.  She brought out a mouthful of food, dropped it on the floor, and pushed it around until she had just the cheese.

She's never been this smart.  We've always been able to get her to eat something she didn't want to eat by mixing it with canned food or some other treat.

Right now, besides the pills I'm shoving down her mouth and a few biscuits, the only thing I'm sure she's eating is grass.

Any suggestions? I'd mix cat food in her bowl but that would defeat the whole "low-protein diet" diet.

If this continues tomorrow I'll have to call the vet and see what he suggests.  I'm not keen on buying a different type of low-protein brand at $30 a pop to see if she eats that.  I still have most of the last bag I had to buy.

Technorati Tags: dog, low protein diet for dogs

My dog nearly choked to death tonight on her own collar.  It's been at least 20 minutes since it happened and I'm still a bit shaky from the whole thing.

I had put the dog out in the backyard for a bit.  Because of the way the land slopes beneath our house, the door leading to the backyard actually has a landing and then stairs that lead to the yard.  Artie will go out and do her business and then either explore the backyard or come up and lay down outside the kitchen door until we let her back inside.

I'm not sure how it happened, but today when she laid down she managed to get her dog tags and part of her collar between two of the boards on the landing.  The dog tags dropped below the boards and then twisted so that they kept her in place.

Artie could only lift her head about an inch and couldn't move from her spot.  She panicked (understandably) and twisted and kicked around on the landing.  During her struggles, she knocked out two or three of the balusters near her.

I wasn't that far away and I heard her struggles and came to see what was going on.  Since she was right in front of the kitchen door, I really couldn't see what was wrong.  At first I thought she had a stroke and that was why she couldn't get up.  I managed to get out the back door and when I tried to pick her up I saw her problem.

I couldn't get the tags out, either, and I didn't have anyone around that could help me out.  Luckily, I managed to force Artie's head down against the landing and work the collar over her head.  It wasn't easy and I'm sure it hurt her but it finally came off.

She seems just fine now.  She's not acting hurt at all and I gave her a snack bone and she ate it right up.  She still doesn't have a collar on her, though.

Even with the collar off the dog, I couldn't get it out of the space between the boards in the landing.  It wouldn't go up or down so it's wedged in there pretty tight.  I might be able to get it out from the bottom, but I'm not going to try that until tomorrow.

My cats all have collars that supposedly break away if the animal gets caught by the collar.  I wonder if they make something similar for dogs.

Technorati Tags: collar, dog, tags

This video is too, too funny.

Thanks, Mom, for showing me this video.

Technorati Tags: cats