Undiagnosed Illness...Please Help!

[tootsie]

This is my first post to the forums. I really appreciate that there is such an informative web site, simply reading posts has done a lot for me. My dog Tootsie, is less than 2 years old, and since Tuesday night she has been vomitting profusely and refusing to eat, which is concerning since she is a very food oriented dog. She was taken to her regular vet after a few more vomiting episodes on Tuesday afternoon, they did xrays and a blood panel, but they couldn't see anything wrong. They sent her home after subq fluids on Carafate, which did no good, and by Thursday night my fiance and I had her at the emergency vet. They did another blood panel, more xrays, still nothing. So after Thurs night on fluids I picked her up and brought her to our regular vet for more IV fluids. Our regular vet called Fri afternoon and said she would prefer to keep her over night, she had not been vomiting, but regurging. Saturday they told me I could come to pick her up, they had her on 2 other meds to control acid in her stomach, and another to settle her stomach. Yesterday afternoon she was great, looked good, still no eating, but I limited her fluid intake. She got a couple of mouthfuls of grass before I could get to her, and was sick 4 times last night after drinking some water. She hasn't been sick this morning,since about 4 am. I've given her some pedialyte and her 2 meds minus the carafate, and she seems ok, not interested in food though. I was wondering if anyone had any advice. Sorry the post is so long, but I'm extremely concerned for my baby, and it's gotten very expensive. I'd appreciate any feedback anyone could give me. Thanks. - Mandi

[chivas]

Hi, Mandi _ i am in norfolk, too - who is your vet? My now deceased 17 yr old dog went through something like that once a year for the last 3 years of his life. I would give him the meds the vets prescribed but it seemed to have to work itself out of his system before he was 100%. I can no longer remember what the meds were though. Though I do know I would give him sodium free broth in place of his water and no food till he could hold the broth down.

[tootsie]

I just started at Sajo Farms, will never bring my dog back to the Va Beach emergency vet. Sajo was good, but they still can't tell me what's wrong with her, and they've run everything but a fecal. They may have done that, I'm not sure. They were very patient with her, she's a little head shy since she's deaf. The doctor was very good and so were the rest of the staff, but most overnight stuff for a dog this big is very expensive, and start up with a new vet is as well. I'm hoping that since she is definetly into the pedialyte and has yet to have another upset, she'll soon work her way out of this. The doctor thinks it could just be a stomach and intestine upset, they did antibiotics as well. Shots of pepcid seemed to help, but witholding her water and giving pedialyte every hour seems to be working, if I can just keep her out of the grass, that's all she wants to eat. She was eating dirt in my backyard, we live on a tidal creek, and when she was vimitting the other night she was vomiting dirt. The dr said that the dirt may have been what was causing the inflamation in her intestines. Hopefully it will soon run its course. About how long did it last every year in your dog? I appreciate the response.

[chivas]

It lasted about 5-7 days with my dog. And he was very finicky too so we went through alot of trial and error trying to find something he liked to eat. I used to go to Sajo when Dr Banta worked there, now I take my pets to Dog and Cat Hospital, Dr Hallstrom there is WONDERFUL. Why wont you go back to VA Beach ER clinic? the one on VA beach Blvd? I had 3 of my pets there within 8 days back in January and Dr Taft there was just great.

[tootsie]

Dr. Taft is really good, but unfortunately some of the assistants in the back have an issue with dealing with larger dogs. My dog has trauma to her mouth from staying there, i asked the girl who brought her out fri morning why there was blood in the bottom right canine of my rot (it has a purple tint to it indicating blood within the tooth), and she proceeded to tell me, well she's not the best behaved dog we've had, so I'm sure someone got rough right back with her. I asked if they had to muzzle her, which I had offered to do before I left Thurs night, and she said, no, but when you wake her up, she gets startled and scared, she's a big dog, maybe she intimidated someone. I told her that wasn't acceptable, I wanted to know how without needing a muzzle did my dog end up with trauma to her mouth, and she told me maybe my dog got what she deserved. I'll go see the holistic doctor who moved to the Greenbrier emergency clinic from now on. I'm hoping that my dog will get over whatever this is soon, I can't imagine how uncomfortable she must be. She is still drinking the pedialyte, I'm considering the broth or rice, however, she is not on a natural diet and I don't know how this will effect her, she doesn't have a picky stomach usually, so I'm hoping for the best. Thanks for your info.

[StephanieandToby]

I wonder if it could be food poisoning?
Toby had food poisoning once...lasted about a week and the symptoms were the same as you are describing....
Hope she gets well soon!

[chivas]

OMG i HOPE you call the ER vet and tell the office manager what happened to you! That is TOTALLY unacceptable!! I had a very unpleasant experience at Greenbrier ER vet with an assistant and didnt waste ANY time in calling the office and complaining, nothing against the practice just that one assistant. I didnt know they have an holisitic vet there ( i use a combination of holistic and traditional with my pets). But i do know Dr MacQueen and Dr Pozniack both practice holistic med. Do you happen to know if Greenbrier has a cardio dr there? I need to get a cardio workup on my cat and only know of the one at Tidewater ER right now.

[tootsie]

Originally Posted by StephanieandToby

I wonder if it could be food poisoning?
Toby had food poisoning once...lasted about a week and the symptoms were the same as you are describing....
Hope she gets well soon!

Thanks! I appreciate all the input and help from everyone. She's doing much better. I think the pedialyte helped and the fact that I took her off the carafate as well. I was wondering if anyone had any idea when I could give her water when she wanted it. I'm trying to limit her overall intake for now because yesterday and last night, after she drank water she became ill, vomiting up mostly water. I don't want to aggrivate her stomach, but she seems to want to drink, she is even trying to get to the toilet. yech. Should I allow her access to plenty of water, or a little at a time to prevent a setback? Thanks again! I'm so relieved that she's better and I now have somewhere to panic and vent to.

[StephanieandToby]

Originally Posted by tootsie

Thanks! I appreciate all the input and help from everyone. She's doing much better. I think the pedialyte helped and the fact that I took her off the carafate as well. I was wondering if anyone had any idea when I could give her water when she wanted it. I'm trying to limit her overall intake for now because yesterday and last night, after she drank water she became ill, vomiting up mostly water. I don't want to aggrivate her stomach, but she seems to want to drink, she is even trying to get to the toilet. yech. Should I allow her access to plenty of water, or a little at a time to prevent a setback? Thanks again! I'm so relieved that she's better and I now have somewhere to panic and vent to.

You need to start giving her small amounts of water throughout the day and then increase the amounts if she is holding it down.It's a fine line, because you want her to get hydrated, but vomiting up water can dehydrate them more than if you'd given them nothing...

[tootsie]

Yeah , supposedly not eating was due to the fact that she was ill, but a week was just too much for me. The vet we saw previously said it was due to the vomiting. Her laidback approach had my dog losing 10lbs in just a week. Well I took her back today, and despite the sample being over 12 hrs old, I demanded that they examine it. They said it was mucus, not worms, and told me that since she is on heartgard that should prevent any worms from getting into her system. I had a different vet today, and he handled my dog really well, and managed to get the x-ray they couldn't get last tuesday even with her sedated. He didn't even have to sedate her. He then addressed her not eating, and then reviewed the x-ray. He was upset that the other dr at his practice had not read the xray as he had. She is going to have surgery tomorrow morning. Thanks for all the advice. This has been very stressful.

[chivas]

What kind of sugery? Does she have a blockage?

[tootsie]

They finally did the appropriate x-ray after 6 days of waiting around. We saw another doctor at our vet, and he had no problem obtaining the x-ray that eeven with sedation the other vet could not get. With this one x-ray we saw the blockage, and although they have not yet determined what it could be, they are doing surgery this morning. The doctor doing the surgery is the doctor who found the blockage, and I have confidence in him doing it. I only wish I had had the opportunity to see him before yesterday. It's been very stressful and expensive. I can only hope that this will correct the problem and allow her to stop vomiting and eat.

[StephanieandToby]

Horror! That's a huge mistake...I can't believe your poor dog had to suffer that long because of the first vet.
Let us know how the surgery goes. I am sending good thoughts your way!!!

[tootsie]

Originally Posted by StephanieandToby

Horror! That's a huge mistake...I can't believe your poor dog had to suffer that long because of the first vet.
Let us know how the surgery goes. I am sending good thoughts your way!!!

Thanks so much. I appreciate it. She came through the surgery fine, so when I go to get her, hopefully she can come home Thursday afternoon, I am going to see if they will adjust my bill because of her neglect of my dog's health. I don't want to sound hypocritical, because I will continue to take my dog to this practice, however, I will request that she see the male vet who works there instead. BTW she had a corn cob that she had some how gotten out of the trash stuck there. It was completely whole, which means that she swallowed the entire thing, I'm lucky she didn't choke on it. Not quite sure how she got it, but we are definetly locking up the trashcan in our pantry from now on. I'll be damned, never thought I'd pay $3000.00 for a corn cob.