I didn't want to bore you with all the details of our life lately since not much has been going on but here is a quick summary.
Not much agility going on. Since we don't have much coming up in the way of trials we are only training on days that the weather seems acceptable. My definition of acceptable is probably different from that of my northern friends but nonetheless everyone has a standard! We have not had many nice days lately that have corresponded with days I have been home. I've been trying to work a lot lately to save up for vacations, home improvements and the tremendous amount of taxes we usually owe.
Also, my half-marathon training takes a good portion of my free time. I'm up to about 20 miles a week and today we are heading out on a nine mile run. We are also planning to book our flights today and have paid our entry fees so there is no turning back now. This is the race we have chosen-it looks really pretty. And as a special treat our moms are going with us to cheer us on-it is Mother' day weekend after all.
We had an adopter for Holli, but that fell through at the last minute so she is still here waiting for her forever home. But I'm pleased to announce she does seem house-broken now. I wouldn't leave her loose unattended all day or all night but she has not had an accident in over a month and I no longer need to take her out every 20 minutes!
I still have made no decision on the obedience thing.
I am in the midst of deep cleaning my house room by room. This is mostly a hair and dust eradication project. I'm glad to be done with three rooms but they were sort of easy. Debating on starting another or just killing time until I have to go run.
So that's what's been going on here. Not too exciting. And it's not likely to get much more exciting for another 6 weeks or so. If anyone has veterinary topics they would like covered feel free to suggest!
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Summer
5 months ago
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6 comments:
How about Addison's Disease, as it is near and dear to my heart. :o)
Are you familiar with the newly recommended low dose starting point of Percorten? So many veterinarians start out following the label recommendation, which is WAY TOO HIGH for the majority of dogs. I am so thankful that my vet was familiar with the studies done showing that many dogs are able to start off on a drastically reduced dose. As a result, Luke was started off on about 3/4 the recommended dose and we only reduced 3 times (by 10% each time) until we found his optimum dose of 1.1 ml (he is 78-80 pounds).
I'm just shocked at how many vets are not educated at all about this disease or the treatment. Often times it goes undiagnosed for a good deal of time (my vet diagnosed Luke in two days - again, lucky!). I've heard of several vets who say that Prednisone is not needed with Percorten unless the dog is stressed. That is absurd.
I feel very badly for many of the folks who post on my A-dog list with stories about what their vet is or isn't doing. It's just sad.
So I guess I would love your thoughts on why this disease is so foreign to many veterinarians.
Wow, sounds like you a lot going on with the deep cleaning and the training for running, geeze talk about putting some of us to shame!!! LOL Glad about the house training, now to hope the PERFECT home that will be good forever shows up really soon
I avoided posting about Addison's before because 1) it's rare and 2) I hate endocrine disease!
But I think the difficulty in diagnosis is that the disease is so uncommon (I've seen dogs being treated but have never diagnosed it myself) and it tends to mimic other diseases making it more challenging.
As far as advances in treatment I think this has more do with the effort of the individual veterinarian. In MO we are required to take 10 hours of continuing education each year. 10 hours to cover all advances in all diseases, surgery, medications, management, etc. That's not much! I try to attend a conference that allows me to obtain much more than that as well as visit the exhibit hall to learn about new products and medications. In addition I read magazines and spend time on VIN (the veterinary information network). These things cost time and money and not all vets are willing to do this. Some just want to keep doing things the way they always have-they are comfortable with it and it's easy. But that doesn't make it right or best for the patient. Personally if I diagnose something I am not familiar with I try to read up on it to be able to treat my patient the best I can. My goal has always been to treat every pet as I would treat my own. Of course some vets don't treat their own pet that well!
Ok, long answer but I will try and do a post about Addison's sometime. One of the reasons I do posts about medical conditions is it forces me to review and research which is good for me!
I do think that there are many owners of Addisonian dogs that know more about the disease than vets and if you want to write something about owning a dog with Addisons I'd love to add that to the post.
I would gladly do a write-up for you --- just let me know when you plan to do the post and what you want me to write about. You may want to give me a maximum word count, or else I tend to go on a bit long. lol
Could you do something about teeth, appropriate things to chew on, etc.? My boys are obsessed with Nylabones and I'm not totally convinced they are the safest thing out there. But they are a great baby-sitter and last longer than 5 minutes. Jamie (13) has slab fractures on his back teeth but those were rawhide-induced, BEFORE he got crazy about Nylabones. Phoenix spends at least 1 hour a day chewing aggressively but his teeth seem no worse for the wear at age 5. They make him happy and keep him occupied. If he wasn't chewing the Nylabones, I'm afraid he'd be eating my house. BTW, both of them have very clean teeth with no tartar and pleasant breath, even the 13 year old. Thanks.
Karissa-I will try and get to it in the next few weeks, maybe even by the weekend. Would you want to write about your experience as an owner, how it affect your daily life and agility and what you do to manage the disease at home, etc? And any other points you feel are important. I will probably post it as a separate post after my overview, that way it won't get too long between the two of us.
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