It all started 2 weeks ago Wednesday night with Louise throwing up, twice. Then the smelly gas started. It was so bad all night that I had to move her to another room. Louise rarely throws up. Her tummy was grumbling and making weird noises, which it does sometimes with her colitis. But this was different. She was refusing to eat, which she just doesn’t do. She was mopey and blue. I made her favorite chicken and rice. No luck. The other dogs were sniffing her behind a lot, which they do when her Perianal Fistula Disease is acting up.

When she refused her breakfast Saturday morning, I called my usual vet. But it was Saturday morning and he was packed, so he said to go to the emergency vet. Before doing that, I called the cats vet (it’s a long story why I have 2 different vets) and luckily they were able to fit her in.

After waiting almost 2 hours (Louise was a doll, as usual), they did blood work and gave her fluids and some other stuff. They put her on Metronidazole (Flagyl), which is really hard on the system. She was not herself.

On Tuesday the vet called (while I was in the middle of grocery shopping, so you know I only heard half of what she said). She is a new vet to the practice, I had not met her before, and she is really nice and spent a lot of time explaining her diagnosis to me (while my ice cream was melting). She ran this special blood test (SPEC cPL) that showed significant pancreatic inflammation (high normal is 200 ug/L and Louise is 1,369). All the other blood work was normal. The Vet added Clavamox (Oh My Dog that is expensive) and some Spleen Support Formula on top of the Metronidazole.

In the last 2 weeks, I have researched the heck out of Pancreatitis in dogs. High-fat diets are one of the main things that they blame pancreatitis on. Since Louise has been on Z/D ultra (19% protein/14% fat) exclusively for years and never gets table scraps or garbage, it is hard for me to believe this is diet based. Certain conditions may predispose dogs to pancreatitis and I am thinking that it is just a mix of genetics and her other health issues.

Getting 5 pills into Louise at every meal has been a challenge. When she first got sick I ground them with some white meat chicken and wet food in the blender. I usually use Peanut Butter to give the dogs pills, but that is off limits because of the fat issue. After a few meals Louise started to refuse the mash. So now I wrap each pill in some cooked chicken breast and gooble gooble gooble. She is happy to eat again. Louise loves chicken.

We go back to the vet today to redo the test, so hopefully this bout has passed.

What kind of mischief did you get into today?

Just another DogDaz morning at the zoo ❤