Wednesday, November 30, 2011

Lingering

Zodiac's illness persisted all weekend.  He perked up a little and begged for table food but did not eat dog food at all.  I had him on Cerenia and metronidazole and decided on sunday to add omeprazole (Prilosec) to the regimen. This, along with the addition of canned i/d to his food seemed to help some. By monday morning he was eating better than he had all weekend.  Then yesterday he didn't eat dry food at all and didn't finish his food even after adding canned.  So, naturally I panicked and brought him to work.  I did a test for pancreatitis (he has not been vomiting, or having diarrhea though) and it was negative.  I repeated the other bloodwork and the only change (if I believe our machine which is sometimes a little iffy) is a mild anemia. So this could go along with a bleeding ulcer (which makes sense, especially since he has been on Rimadyl long term) or of course (using my traditional worst case scenario thoughts) a bleeding tumor.  Anyway, he really isn't acting terribly ill. He's not himself, but not bad.  So I decided to add sucralfate into the regimen.  I've never been totally convinced of the benefits of this, always considered it a "can't hurt, might help" kind of thing but he did seem to feel better last night.  He actually chewed on  nylabone, played with a toy, and was making the rounds licking the floors and other kitchen appliances.  And today he seemed more interested in eating than he has all week.  So I'm still hoping for just an ulcer or other curable GI problem.  That would be more likely than something else, but I will of course continue to worry until he's better.  That's just me.

And we already got an application on Holli!  It looks good but still needs to have a vet check and home visit, so not a sure thing yet.

Also I got projectile pooped on today.  We were anesthetizing a rescue kitten for a neuter when he started to vomit.  I held him over the trash can to limit clean up and during the abdominal contractions he blew diarrhea out the back end-all over my pants and shoe.  What a glamorous life I lead.  He never did actually vomit either.

I did the math on Legend's year in AKC.  She did get 13 QQ's and 520 points.  That's almost double what she got last year.  I know we went to more trials but I'm still pretty impressed with her.  That total includes all those NQ's from contact issues and some of those not-so-successful outings like the ill-fated summer trip to Tulsa.  Lyric has done pretty good too.  Really compared to my other dogs she's had a great first 18 months of trialing.  When all the points have been recorded I will get to see where she ranked among all Poms this year.

4 comments:

Kathy Mocharnuk said...

OOOOH NOOOO projectile poop, that sounds very glamorous!!! LOL. Hope things are back to 100% for Zodiac and that things are going well with the application for Holli, hope that is a spectacular home ;-)

Sara said...

Poor Zodiac. Hope he's feeling better soon.

Jen said...

I hope Zodiac starts feeling better! Sucralfate seemed to help my old girl, so maybe there is something there. And ewwwwwwww on the projectile poop... the worst I had was liquid poo dripping down my scrubs and into my pockets. I don't think the kitten even knew he was pooping.

Diana said...

I hope Zodiac is feeling better. Thats always worrisome.

Projectile poop, gross. I worked at an endocscopy center once and Im not even going to tell you what happened when empting all the containers at the end of the day. Ugh!! Not fun.

Sounds like all your dogs are doing awesome agility wise. Congrats, thats great.