Weight Gain

Alicia Mertz said:

Bob Scott said:

I was thin all my life....then I retired. :wink:

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:lol: :lol: You're a funny one, Bob. :wink:

Lean, yes. Good. Great, even. I just put Jaeger on a diet for that very reason. Even though he was eating next to nothing, he was still a little heavy for a working dog....

Dommie is THIN. Like "hi, you can see every bone in my body, just call me Jack Skellington with a black fur coat" kinda thin. :lol: I have a call into the vet because it's been a while since he saw Dom last and I STILL haven't been able to put any weight on him, but A) the vet is out until Wednesday and B) I figured that people on this board are probably more familiar with the raw diet than my vet is, so they might have better suggestions.

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Well, I really don't think you want "nicely rounded."

Maybe not every rib clearly showing, either......

It's good (IMHO) if you can feel each rib easily and see the
last couple easily.

BTW, is he getting salmon oil? The anti-inflammation agent that
everyone should be getting, IMO......... and with dogs, it should be
accompanied by Vitamin E (because E is used by the dog's system to
process oil supplements)?

I would (1) check with the vet about his weight, and (2) start him
on a lifelong salmon oil supplement for G.P., remembering that it
also contains the calories of any pure fat.

But I'd be making that vet call in the meantime. Who knows
what worm he might've picked up since he was checked last ?

A stool sample (if the vet says) is simple, and so is treatment,
in the unlikely event that he did pick up a ride-along since he
was checked.......

JMO!

Well, why not ask the vet to do the EPI ruling out immediately? I would not want to be terribly worried about it and not address it.

Sounds like you know that serum trypsin-like immunoreactivity (TLI) is the test; it's a fasting blood test (12-hour fast) and any vet can do it. The blood is sent to a lab if the vet doesn't have facilities.

http://www.petplace.com/dogs/exocrine-pancreatic-insufficiency-in-dogs-epi/page3.aspx

I would want to do it and know it, myself, and it sounds like you would too.

It's true that some dogs don't do well on the enzyme supplementation and that those dogs (maybe one in five) just fail, and have to be put down. If the treatment does not work on an individual dog, from all that I have read it's a kindness to put that dog down. However, on many dogs, it's very successful.

If you look at this, you'll see that the response just cannot be evaluated ahead of time:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=PubMed&list_uids=9656030&dopt=Abstract

Half of dogs with EPI diagnosed respond so well to supplements that they are clinically just like a non-EPI dog. One in five does not respond. And the rest respond on a scale in between.

You see that chances are pretty good that he doesn't have EPI -----and, if he does, that he will respond well to treatment. If he does not, you will do the right thing, I know, based on his quality of life....... but of all the probable outcomes, that is the least likely.

I really hope this is encouraging. Facts encourage me.

Thanks for the reply, Connie. Facts are encouraging to me, as well. In fact, they've been the only thing keeping me from pulling my hair out thus far.

The vet spoke to me immediately upon our first visit about EPI, but she felt as though doing blood work before a fecal would be getting ahead of ourselves, since there are a great many things that could cause similar symptoms and would show up in a stool sample. She did tell me, though, that if the analysis on the stool sample came back negative, blood work would be the next step (which is where we are now).

You said "You see that chances are pretty good that he doesn't have EPI...". What makes you say that? Just curious... Just odds in general, or did I say something specific?

Do you have any personal experience with EPI? The only thing I keep telling myself is that he doesn't exhibit all of the symptoms. From what I've read, the symptoms seem to be:

1. weight loss (I have had trouble putting weight on him, but he hasn't been losing any, nor is he anywhere near what I'd consider "emaciated".)

2. poor hair coat (His coat is AWESOME. First thing the vet commented on... So that's not a problem.)

3. flatulence (Nope. On average, Jaeger is WAY stinkier.)

4. increased appetite (He does act like he's starving to death when it's time to eat twice a day, but a couple of times he's stopped eating because he was full, and all our dogs go a little crazy for dinner...)

5. coprophagia (Every now and then when he's locked in his outdoor kennel all day long, he'll get into his poop...but very rarely. Again, Jaeger did this much more often as a pup.)

6. diarrhea (Yup. On and off problem, at least the past couple of months. Doesn't seem to coincide with anything, and his stool consistency, color, and frequency change during the course of the diarrhea.)

7. feces are often yellow-gray in color (I'm not sure what "yellow-gray" is, but his diarrhea has seemed a normal color to me. Kinda that light, baby poop brown? I know you know the color....)

So good, right? Maybe? Does it sound like anything else to you? Yesterday, his stools were still pretty soft, but formed, and this weird black and green color.

Hey Connie,

Yeah, I haven't had time to post....

I took Dom in again for bloodwork, and we got all the results back a few days later (and $600 later). They did EVERYTHING, and it was all negative. The vet called a few days after my appointment to tell me that nothing was wrong with Dom and that her best guess at this point was to change his diet (from raw, of course). She recommended Science Diet or Eukanuba - one of the hypoallergenic formulas - for 4 to 6 weeks to see if we noticed a difference.

I don't really buy the "diet" bit, especially since a) the diarrhea didn't start until LONG after he was on the raw diet...long long long...and b) we put him back on the dry food that he was on before we ever stared the raw, and he still has the runs. Ugh.

My only guess at this point is something like Dientamoeba fragilis, which would be extremely hard to detect in a fecal and also very hard to eradicate. The vet agreed that it *could* be the reason, so she happily prescribed me Metronidazole for three weeks.

While I'm upset that we can't pinpoint the problem with Dom, I can't complain about this vet. She's been very helpful, very concerned, and she will price match ANYTHING. I got 100 Metronidazole for less than the vet's price for 42.

However...haha...we were rubbing Dom's tummy on Friday night, and guess f*cking what? The dog has ringworm now, too. None of the other dogs have it, nor do we (thank God), and I know that young dogs or dogs with a lowered immune system are more likely to contract it, so I can only guess that he was susceptible to it because of whatever is causing the diarrhea. What do you think??

My vet is out of town for a week, and the attending vet doesn't know me, so she wouldn't give me medical advice over the phone... I'm doing Betadine baths every 3 days (whole body), applying Betadine just to the lesions every morning, and using antifungal cream (something like Lotrimin) every night. I wanted to do Lime Sulfur dips, but I can't find the Lime Sulfur concentrate at any of the garden supply stores around here. I'll order it online if I don't see an improvement in his condition by next weekend. Thankfully, we caught it while there are still only 4 or 5 lesions, but I don't want it to become any more widespread.

We've also sanitized the environment as well as possible. His kennel, cage, and the back porch have been bleached, and we've vacuumed as best we can.

Any suggestions?

I swear, I've had more problems with this pup than any other dog I've ever owned. For now, I'm going to attribute it all to the fact that he got a really bad start, but does it sound to you as though he may have some sort of an immune deficiency? My mom has a rescue dog that has a compromised immune system, but he suffered years and years of abuse and neglect before she got him.

Okay, enough rambling. If you have any specific questions, I can get detailed results of his tests.

Thanks, as always.

I don't know if it has much to do with the subject at hand but seeing as the symptoms(low weight gain, runs, etc...) are similar to some stuff I have seen posted- you might want to check out a couple of the threads in the health forum on SDC (www.sleddogcentral.com) as there was a couple of loooonnng threads on clostriduim, etc of a couple of varieties and testing etc..... beware a couple of the threads are very long(as in make yourself a coffee and pack a lunch if yo want to read the whole thing long..)

http://www.sleddogcentral.com/forum/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=6958&SearchTerms=clostridium

http://www.sleddogcentral.com/forum/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=5853&SearchTerms=clostridium

http://www.sleddogcentral.com/forum/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=5171&SearchTerms=clostridium

http://www.sleddogcentral.com/forum/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=3469&SearchTerms=clostridium

http://www.sleddogcentral.com/forum/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=1852&SearchTerms=clostridium

http://www.sleddogcentral.com/forum/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=1889&SearchTerms=clostridium

if those links lon't work just go to the forum and enter "clostridium" in the search for the health forum. I don't know if this will be of any use but what the heck.

Here are a couple of ringworm sites that looked good:

http://www.marvistavet.com/html/body_ringworm.html

http://www.doggiesparadise.com/dog-skin-disorders-ringworm.shtml

MarVista Vet is one of my all-time go-to vet med pages.

Both these sites (and others) do discuss ringworm and its connection (sometimes) to reduced immune response.

So I'm reading about enhancing the immune system. It took a while to eliminate all the sites that were selling something. :roll:

You know what? Two things common to both western-med-type sites and alternative-med sites are exercise and (guess what!) Omega 3 EFAs.

LMAO! You and your Omega 3 EFAs! That's great, though - thanks for the research. I'll definitely look at upping those in his diet.

Okay, to you and Lynn - I am at work right now and have to finish up quarterly payroll reports, but I will definitely check out ALL of those sites this afternoon/evening. I've never heard of clostriduim, and the vet never mentioned anything about it, so I'm really interested in what it is and whether or not it may be a culprit in Dom's mystery illness.

The only good news (and to answer your question, Connie) is that Dom HAS put on weight. When I took him to the vet the first time for the fecal (on July 11), he weighed about 47.5 lbs. The vet was indeed concerned about his weight, so of my own volition, I doubled his raw diet. In a week (by July 19, when I took him in for the bloodwork), he put on 5 lbs; and as of last night, if my bathroom scale is at all accurate, he's about 64lbs. That's about 16lbs in not quite 3 weeks.... Can you believe that? Doesn't that seem REALLY fast?

He's not on the raw anymore, and he's just getting a "normal" amount of dry food now. Oh well. At least I know that he CAN put on weight, although the vet did say that it shouldn't have taken THAT much food. He looks a lot better now, though.

I'll post again once I have time to read all those sites!