Unknown Illness

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stevereyes2020
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Unknown Illness

Post by stevereyes2020 » Fri Aug 26, 2016 7:57 pm

I have a male Black Lab intact named Coal. The night before last I came home from work and he was acting a little off. Super tired and he wouldnt even lift his head off the couch. Weird because he usually greets me at the door.

He was whining a bit and seemed to have a hard time standing up, and walking seemed stiff.

We took him to the vet the next morning and the vet said his physical exam was good. Full motion range in joints no obvious signs of pain or discomfort. They did blood work and an ultrasound on his prostate. Ultrasound was good but we had to wait for the blood work to come back in the next day.

We went home. Coal immediately flopped down on the floor and stayed there all night. He got up to eat his dinner but refused to drink anything. His whining was worse this night. He seems to be in pain for sure. A couple of times he tried to stand up and it looked like his front legs were going to do the splits. He gave up and went back to sleep. Hubby tried to help him up and he yelped.

Next morning (this morning) Coal still hasn't had anything to drink. It's going on 24 hours without any water. Hubby tried to squirt water in his mouth and he yelped again and he was whining quite a bit so we called the vet to see if the blood work has come back. The vet said that everything looks perfectly normal except for a slight rise in his liver enzyme. He said it was most likely that he got into something toxic (we spend a lot of time in Northern Ontario) and his liver might be having a hard time processing it. (We always use the same flea and tick treatment Revolution and he has all of his shots. Every year)

So we took him back to the vet and they put him on IV fluids and medications. They ran more blood tests, more ultrasounds and did a urinalysis. They sent us home with pain meds and antibiotics. These antibiotics are called Clavaseptin. Amoxicillin mixture. Used mainly for treatment of periodontitis. We are still waiting for a couple of tests to come back but the vet can't explain what is happening to him...

There's been no vomiting or diarrhea. No head shakes or itching. He's urinating and defacating normally. Also seems to be eating normally.He's just not acting like himself. He seems to be in real pain.

I should also mention that we have a female Choc Lab 9 who is also not spayed (please don't judge it's a long story and we had our reasons for not spaying and neutering).

She was recently in heat so he was overexcited for a couple of weeks. Normally he's quite tired after she's in heat but nothing like this. She is not displaying any symptoms of illness.

If anyone has any ideas for us it would be great! Maybe someone has had a similar situation with their dog?

shags
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Re: Unknown Illness

Post by shags » Sat Aug 27, 2016 6:54 am

Since it seems like your dog has front end problems, and because he had a pain response when your dh tried to give him water ( assuming he needed to crank the dog's neck somewhat to do that), I'd be thinking there's something going on with his neck. Maybe ask your vet to do some cervical xrays.

A couple of months ago my 12 year old setter had something similar going on, except his pain seemed to be more to the rear. Labs and films showed everything normal. Vet put him on abx and carprofen without much improvement over a couple of days. So he took him off the carprofen and subbed corticosteroids. Within a day and half my dog was much better, and after a few days was back to normal. We never figured out what the problem was, but credited the steroids with reducing whatever inflammation was causing problems.

My vet is conservative with the use of cortisone, so my dog was on it at the lowest effective dose for a week or so.

Timewise65
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Re: Unknown Illness

Post by Timewise65 » Sat Aug 27, 2016 9:35 am

Our male retriever showed similar illness a few years ago. We spent a ton of money with vets trying to figure out what was going on. They did a tick panel on him and it was negative. but after a few weeks of his declining health, we took him to an emergency vet hospital. Their a young vet looked him over and read all his test results. He said he suspected some type of tick fever and want to test it again, as sometimes they get a false negative. He ran the test and it came back positive. He put him on Doxy and said to keep him on it for 6 months. He took him off of all other meds....

Next morning he seemed better and started drinking water. After 3 days he was back to normal. We completed the 6 months of Doxy and that was over 5 years ago. He did have a replapse about 2 years later, we did Doxy right away, and it cleared up right away. He is now 10 years old healthy as he can be.

Good Luck, I know how hard this can be, not to mention the expense...

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birddogdoc
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Re: Unknown Illness

Post by birddogdoc » Mon Aug 29, 2016 12:16 pm

An infectious disease SNAP 6Dx test is not a bad idea, nor is the suggestion to have the vet take cervical (neck) x-rays. What were the "other blood tests" they ran with the ultrasound on the second visit? It does seem like your vet has done a job at this point in ruling out some obvious causes. I'm also assuming a good neurological exam was performed on the limbs that wanted to splay out. From the post, it sounds like it's only been a few days of medical management of the symptoms, so in fairness to your vet, you haven't given it much time. Keep us updated.

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