RockysDad
07-10-2012, 08:12 PM
Update 31 July 2012
Rocky had been very ill the last 24 hours. He had lost total control of hind limbs from Monday morning onwards.
Last night, I had to carry him in and out and he could not stand to urinate, or the other one.
Later at night, I had to ask my brother to come over to help me carry him inside as it got cold and he would not let me pick him up as he did earlier in the day. We picked him up together and took him upstairs and lay him on his mattress.
He really was not happy last night.
I was up for most of the night as he was very uneasy the whole night.
The vet appointment had been booked for the 31st.
The vet for the second opinion came today, Tuesday at 10:30am.
The advise was that rocky was too far gone to attempt any type of treatment and as he had no mobility nor any realistic chance of regaining it, that the best thing to do was to euthanase so his sufferring was not prolonged.
He was still sharp of mind, albeit he was drifting in and out of deep sleep all morning.
I cradled him during the procedure and shut his eyes, kissed his forhead and thanked him for looking after me for the last 12 years.
He is now at peace.
I want to thank all of you who responded to this thread.
I wont be getting another dog yet, its too soon, but when I do, I will be sure to keep in touch with this community.
Thanks once again.
Rohan.
Hello and thank you for reading our story. If you are a TL/DR person, please skip to my summary and questions at the bottom. For those who like to know our story, please read on.
My little fellow, Rocky, is a German Shepherd X who has been with me almost 12 years. He's 12 in September.
Its a funny story how I ended up with him. My friend and I went to a kennel all those years ago, because my friend had read about a dog he was interested in, in our local paper.
My friend did not buy any dog that day. But I saw this little runt of a pup, whose belly was all swollen and he was getting pushed around by the rest of the litter and was really getting no love. 5 weeks old, he fit in my palm. He was in bad shape. The rest of his litter were selling for a lot of money. The kennel owner said I could take him for fifty bucks. So I did.
Actually, I then bought him a friend to play with, a male rottweiler, but he died from cancer in May 2007. That's another story.
Rocky was very sick in the first couple of months, indeed he was full of worms and was found to have a congenital heart defect. The vet I took him to said he wouldn't last more than few years at best, but here we are almost 12 years later.
So, around the beginning of 2011, he started to lose hair around his shoulder areas, symmetrically.
He started drinking lots of water, and was very very hungry. He developed black pigmentation in the groin area. He lost some of the hair on his tail. He had pee accidents inside for the first time.
And he was getting a pot belly.
I did some research and came across Kate Connick's site and learned about Cushings. I did some more reading online and it scared me.I was horrified to read some of the drugs used had in some instances, caused dogs to die through some reaction.
Around August 2011, I took him to the local vet, where he had his checkup and vaccination. I told the vet of the symptoms and he ran some blood tests and asked me to collect urine.
The blood tests showed elevated liver results and the urine test showed that ratio (i cant recall what they called it now) was way out of whack, and the testing lab suggested Cushings.
I ended up back at the vets very quickly anyway, because Rocky developed a bladder infection. So we treated him with the amoxyclav and that cleared up, but then returned within a few days, so we repeated with another course and it went. Touch wood he has not had another bladder infection since.
Anyway, discussions with that particular vet was that treatment was expensive, there were a lot of tests and if it was adrenal cancer the prognosis was poor.
Because of the heart murmur, I wasn't sure about doing the ultrasound as it required sedation.
The vet said, that for dogs his size, roughly 40kg, that he usually prescribed "benevolent neglect" as opposed to treatment.
So that is what we have done so far. We've also changed a lot of habits, and I have come up with this stuff myself as I have not seen a vet since September last year.
Our regime is as follows:
Supplements:
Rocky has 20g of fish oil capsules twice a day (20 caps)
Rocky has 1 * 20,000mcg cranberry once per day (1/2 tab morning/evening)
30g of MSM Joint Powder (Glucosamine, Chondroitin) - 2 * 15g servings in warm water, one with breakfast, one with dinner
Meals:
125g of wet meat loaf dog food (from the supermarket chiller)
250g of dry dog food for mature dogs
The food is steamed and around 250mls of water is added.
The steamed portion is kind of like a cake, and it's served to him half in the morning (breakfast) and half in the evening (dinner).
Snacks:
He has one boiled egg every day.
He has a a few slices of ham every day.
This regime was after his usual diet was causing him issues.
The steaming of the food with added water has helped him with excessive thirst.
The cranberry pills have prevented another bladder infection thus far.
The other supplements seem to help with mobility - well until recently. We'll get to that soon, that's why we are here.
He was also having only one meal a day, but since he started to become lame, through observation i saw that after a meal, his lameness was less, so I split up the main meal and provided protein snacks during the day per my current regime.
Now, since that last vet visit, a few health hiccups have occurred and I am not sure whether they are all cushings related.
He was always very active, but one day on our walk, around December last year, his left leg seemed to pop out of his joint. I had to pop it back in and I carried him home. But he seemed ok after he got home. It did pop out a couple of times after that but I just popped it back in. Has not recurred since.
About 3 months ago, he walked out of a room in the house, next thing I heard was a loud thud. I went out of the room and saw him laying on the carpet. Basically, I thought he was dead. He peed on the floor and also made the other mess. I felt no heartbeat when I felt his chest, and his heartbeat is very distinct to the touch becasue of the murmur. Anyway, I was shattered and i cradled his head in my left hand a little distance off the carpet and was stroking his heart region with my right hand, about where I would normally feel his heartbeat. After about 10 seconds of stroking him he suddenly sprang back to life. I was overjoyed. To this day i don't know if it was a seizure, a fit or if he was actually dead and somehow I managed some freaky CPR. Dunno.
Then, more recently, around the end of May 2012, I had to work at the office one week and was leaving him out when I was not home. My mom was coming to spend time with him on most days but she has her own health issues so she could not come all days. One day I came home and there was no bark.
So I went out the back and looked for him. He was curled up around the side of the house. He didn't even hear me come right up to him and finally he only woke when I touched him. At that stage, I did not know there was anything wrong with him, so I proceeded to call him inside and told him I would get his dinner. He followed me in.
But, after preparing his dinner, he would not eat it! So after trying to coax him for an hour I gave up and took him inside.
We live in a double story house by the way, and Rocky has his own single bed mattress on the floor in my bedroom at the front of my bed.
He could not climb the stairs. No energy. Would not even try. First time this had ever happened.
So, I thought of my experience with another shepherd my family had, and that shepherd did not eat and the next day she died - she basically dropped dead. So I thought, maybe this is what is happening to him. It was about 7pm by then, and I was not able to take him to a vet.
Anyway, I carried him up the stairs and put him into his bed. He was hot, and I mean really hot. Like a fever for sure. And his heart was racing, murmur and all , like there was a couple of guys in his chest beating bongo drums.
So that night, I did not sleep at all. I basically just comforted him, stroking him and occasionally trying to get him to drink water, which he would not.
Finally, around 4:30am the next day he finally sipped some water from the large spoon I was coaxing him with.
Around 5:30am he had a gulp from a water bowl I had brought to him.
Around 6am, I tried to feed him a little spoonful of his previous nights neglected meal, he refused at first. After about 10 minutes though, he ate a few spoonfulls and subsequently I ended up spoon geeding the whole lot to him.
He then went back to sleep. He woke up a few hours later, got up and came to my office room upstairs and poked his nose into me, and wanted to go outside and do business and we went down. He walked himself.
Then he was Ok for the last few weeks, until about the last week of June, where the lameness really hit when the really cold weather hit us. We are in Sydney Australia by the way.
Now, he has become much more lame. He has trouble going down the stairs and sometimes can go down very slowly but a few times he ended up losing control of hind legs and slithering down. Since then I always walk in front of him so he wont fall.
Same with climbing the stairs, sometimes he climbs one step at a time and makes it up there. Because a couple of times he actually lost control on his climbs and ended up sliding back down, now if he climbs, I stand behind him so he wont fall.
Sometimes his hind legs have been too weak, and I have carried him up. But he is very proud and he doesn't like the help. He prefers to try and only if we gets stuck on step one will he allow me to pick him up, otherwise if i try to pick him up before the stairs he growls. But if he gets past step one, I stand behind him and the little fellow climbs all 24 steps.
He still has a very sharp mind, he is not dulled and still wants to chase his soccer ball even though his legs limit it now. He still brings the ball to me to throw.
It's his lameness that has made me think to reassess this "benevolent neglect" of cushings. Sure he has the other symptoms, but he copes with them.
Anyway, after googling I found this site, so that is how we ended up here. Its a pity I never found this site last year, but that is life....
So, that's where we are up to now - July 10, 2012.
TL/DR starts here!
So, to my questions.
I am thinking of getting another vet to look at him, so first questions is if anyone here is from Australia do they know any vet in Sydney who they have had a positive experience in managing cushings?
Then, about the treatments.
I am thinking about talking to a vet about this again, but I still fear the ultrasound and putting him under sedation.
In the experience of readers, where the acute symptoms match cushings, can you start a treatment with only taking a ACTH, then taking another after induction (lysodren) or does one have to go through the low dose / high dose tests first? Is it a procedure to be followed or vets discretion?
Also, he is getting on 12 years. The last thing I want to do is try something and then it ends up killing him like some stories I read, so I am really looking for good information here from peoples experiences about how safe lysodren really is. I think that is what they use here in Australia.
Also, does anyone have experience with that antifungal stuff, ketaconzole or something like that it is called.
The tests and pet meds are also very expensive here in Australia, so before I make any decision I need really understand whether it is going to help him.
I am really emotionally wrought by his situation...i know his hind legs are weak, but he does not complain of pain, he does not whimper, probably because of the excess cortisone...
And that's the other thing I am worried about...If i treat him now, will it unmask pain for him via his joints that he thus far is not feeling as much perhaps? Then, I've heard that once the excessive cortisone is cut off, sometimes pituitary tumor grow aggressively..and other conditions of normal ageing become apparent...
And while I have seen pictures of dogs recover some muscle mass and lose the pot belly, in his case, being the age he is and with the legs having deteriorated in such a quick time (basically in three weeks).
Should I just continue "benevolent neglect" like the first vet suggested and perhaps look for something for mobility - like metacam - but then again, he's got all that cortisone. So the mobility loss is either because of bad hip, cushings deteriorating the muscle or a combination.
He is still extremely flexible though...this guy was one of those dogs that could make back legs go flat on the floor pointing backwards while he was on his belly, and he can still do that...
So, to treat or not to treat, at almost 12 is it worth any associated risks? What are the plusses and what are the biggest risks?
He's my best mate and I want to help him..but this disease is a damned if you do and damned if you don't based on a lot of material i read, so really looking at other people's experiences to help me make the right decision...
Anyway, that's a lot of text for a first post....
Please share your experiences with us.
Name is Rohan, by the way.
Rocky had been very ill the last 24 hours. He had lost total control of hind limbs from Monday morning onwards.
Last night, I had to carry him in and out and he could not stand to urinate, or the other one.
Later at night, I had to ask my brother to come over to help me carry him inside as it got cold and he would not let me pick him up as he did earlier in the day. We picked him up together and took him upstairs and lay him on his mattress.
He really was not happy last night.
I was up for most of the night as he was very uneasy the whole night.
The vet appointment had been booked for the 31st.
The vet for the second opinion came today, Tuesday at 10:30am.
The advise was that rocky was too far gone to attempt any type of treatment and as he had no mobility nor any realistic chance of regaining it, that the best thing to do was to euthanase so his sufferring was not prolonged.
He was still sharp of mind, albeit he was drifting in and out of deep sleep all morning.
I cradled him during the procedure and shut his eyes, kissed his forhead and thanked him for looking after me for the last 12 years.
He is now at peace.
I want to thank all of you who responded to this thread.
I wont be getting another dog yet, its too soon, but when I do, I will be sure to keep in touch with this community.
Thanks once again.
Rohan.
Hello and thank you for reading our story. If you are a TL/DR person, please skip to my summary and questions at the bottom. For those who like to know our story, please read on.
My little fellow, Rocky, is a German Shepherd X who has been with me almost 12 years. He's 12 in September.
Its a funny story how I ended up with him. My friend and I went to a kennel all those years ago, because my friend had read about a dog he was interested in, in our local paper.
My friend did not buy any dog that day. But I saw this little runt of a pup, whose belly was all swollen and he was getting pushed around by the rest of the litter and was really getting no love. 5 weeks old, he fit in my palm. He was in bad shape. The rest of his litter were selling for a lot of money. The kennel owner said I could take him for fifty bucks. So I did.
Actually, I then bought him a friend to play with, a male rottweiler, but he died from cancer in May 2007. That's another story.
Rocky was very sick in the first couple of months, indeed he was full of worms and was found to have a congenital heart defect. The vet I took him to said he wouldn't last more than few years at best, but here we are almost 12 years later.
So, around the beginning of 2011, he started to lose hair around his shoulder areas, symmetrically.
He started drinking lots of water, and was very very hungry. He developed black pigmentation in the groin area. He lost some of the hair on his tail. He had pee accidents inside for the first time.
And he was getting a pot belly.
I did some research and came across Kate Connick's site and learned about Cushings. I did some more reading online and it scared me.I was horrified to read some of the drugs used had in some instances, caused dogs to die through some reaction.
Around August 2011, I took him to the local vet, where he had his checkup and vaccination. I told the vet of the symptoms and he ran some blood tests and asked me to collect urine.
The blood tests showed elevated liver results and the urine test showed that ratio (i cant recall what they called it now) was way out of whack, and the testing lab suggested Cushings.
I ended up back at the vets very quickly anyway, because Rocky developed a bladder infection. So we treated him with the amoxyclav and that cleared up, but then returned within a few days, so we repeated with another course and it went. Touch wood he has not had another bladder infection since.
Anyway, discussions with that particular vet was that treatment was expensive, there were a lot of tests and if it was adrenal cancer the prognosis was poor.
Because of the heart murmur, I wasn't sure about doing the ultrasound as it required sedation.
The vet said, that for dogs his size, roughly 40kg, that he usually prescribed "benevolent neglect" as opposed to treatment.
So that is what we have done so far. We've also changed a lot of habits, and I have come up with this stuff myself as I have not seen a vet since September last year.
Our regime is as follows:
Supplements:
Rocky has 20g of fish oil capsules twice a day (20 caps)
Rocky has 1 * 20,000mcg cranberry once per day (1/2 tab morning/evening)
30g of MSM Joint Powder (Glucosamine, Chondroitin) - 2 * 15g servings in warm water, one with breakfast, one with dinner
Meals:
125g of wet meat loaf dog food (from the supermarket chiller)
250g of dry dog food for mature dogs
The food is steamed and around 250mls of water is added.
The steamed portion is kind of like a cake, and it's served to him half in the morning (breakfast) and half in the evening (dinner).
Snacks:
He has one boiled egg every day.
He has a a few slices of ham every day.
This regime was after his usual diet was causing him issues.
The steaming of the food with added water has helped him with excessive thirst.
The cranberry pills have prevented another bladder infection thus far.
The other supplements seem to help with mobility - well until recently. We'll get to that soon, that's why we are here.
He was also having only one meal a day, but since he started to become lame, through observation i saw that after a meal, his lameness was less, so I split up the main meal and provided protein snacks during the day per my current regime.
Now, since that last vet visit, a few health hiccups have occurred and I am not sure whether they are all cushings related.
He was always very active, but one day on our walk, around December last year, his left leg seemed to pop out of his joint. I had to pop it back in and I carried him home. But he seemed ok after he got home. It did pop out a couple of times after that but I just popped it back in. Has not recurred since.
About 3 months ago, he walked out of a room in the house, next thing I heard was a loud thud. I went out of the room and saw him laying on the carpet. Basically, I thought he was dead. He peed on the floor and also made the other mess. I felt no heartbeat when I felt his chest, and his heartbeat is very distinct to the touch becasue of the murmur. Anyway, I was shattered and i cradled his head in my left hand a little distance off the carpet and was stroking his heart region with my right hand, about where I would normally feel his heartbeat. After about 10 seconds of stroking him he suddenly sprang back to life. I was overjoyed. To this day i don't know if it was a seizure, a fit or if he was actually dead and somehow I managed some freaky CPR. Dunno.
Then, more recently, around the end of May 2012, I had to work at the office one week and was leaving him out when I was not home. My mom was coming to spend time with him on most days but she has her own health issues so she could not come all days. One day I came home and there was no bark.
So I went out the back and looked for him. He was curled up around the side of the house. He didn't even hear me come right up to him and finally he only woke when I touched him. At that stage, I did not know there was anything wrong with him, so I proceeded to call him inside and told him I would get his dinner. He followed me in.
But, after preparing his dinner, he would not eat it! So after trying to coax him for an hour I gave up and took him inside.
We live in a double story house by the way, and Rocky has his own single bed mattress on the floor in my bedroom at the front of my bed.
He could not climb the stairs. No energy. Would not even try. First time this had ever happened.
So, I thought of my experience with another shepherd my family had, and that shepherd did not eat and the next day she died - she basically dropped dead. So I thought, maybe this is what is happening to him. It was about 7pm by then, and I was not able to take him to a vet.
Anyway, I carried him up the stairs and put him into his bed. He was hot, and I mean really hot. Like a fever for sure. And his heart was racing, murmur and all , like there was a couple of guys in his chest beating bongo drums.
So that night, I did not sleep at all. I basically just comforted him, stroking him and occasionally trying to get him to drink water, which he would not.
Finally, around 4:30am the next day he finally sipped some water from the large spoon I was coaxing him with.
Around 5:30am he had a gulp from a water bowl I had brought to him.
Around 6am, I tried to feed him a little spoonful of his previous nights neglected meal, he refused at first. After about 10 minutes though, he ate a few spoonfulls and subsequently I ended up spoon geeding the whole lot to him.
He then went back to sleep. He woke up a few hours later, got up and came to my office room upstairs and poked his nose into me, and wanted to go outside and do business and we went down. He walked himself.
Then he was Ok for the last few weeks, until about the last week of June, where the lameness really hit when the really cold weather hit us. We are in Sydney Australia by the way.
Now, he has become much more lame. He has trouble going down the stairs and sometimes can go down very slowly but a few times he ended up losing control of hind legs and slithering down. Since then I always walk in front of him so he wont fall.
Same with climbing the stairs, sometimes he climbs one step at a time and makes it up there. Because a couple of times he actually lost control on his climbs and ended up sliding back down, now if he climbs, I stand behind him so he wont fall.
Sometimes his hind legs have been too weak, and I have carried him up. But he is very proud and he doesn't like the help. He prefers to try and only if we gets stuck on step one will he allow me to pick him up, otherwise if i try to pick him up before the stairs he growls. But if he gets past step one, I stand behind him and the little fellow climbs all 24 steps.
He still has a very sharp mind, he is not dulled and still wants to chase his soccer ball even though his legs limit it now. He still brings the ball to me to throw.
It's his lameness that has made me think to reassess this "benevolent neglect" of cushings. Sure he has the other symptoms, but he copes with them.
Anyway, after googling I found this site, so that is how we ended up here. Its a pity I never found this site last year, but that is life....
So, that's where we are up to now - July 10, 2012.
TL/DR starts here!
So, to my questions.
I am thinking of getting another vet to look at him, so first questions is if anyone here is from Australia do they know any vet in Sydney who they have had a positive experience in managing cushings?
Then, about the treatments.
I am thinking about talking to a vet about this again, but I still fear the ultrasound and putting him under sedation.
In the experience of readers, where the acute symptoms match cushings, can you start a treatment with only taking a ACTH, then taking another after induction (lysodren) or does one have to go through the low dose / high dose tests first? Is it a procedure to be followed or vets discretion?
Also, he is getting on 12 years. The last thing I want to do is try something and then it ends up killing him like some stories I read, so I am really looking for good information here from peoples experiences about how safe lysodren really is. I think that is what they use here in Australia.
Also, does anyone have experience with that antifungal stuff, ketaconzole or something like that it is called.
The tests and pet meds are also very expensive here in Australia, so before I make any decision I need really understand whether it is going to help him.
I am really emotionally wrought by his situation...i know his hind legs are weak, but he does not complain of pain, he does not whimper, probably because of the excess cortisone...
And that's the other thing I am worried about...If i treat him now, will it unmask pain for him via his joints that he thus far is not feeling as much perhaps? Then, I've heard that once the excessive cortisone is cut off, sometimes pituitary tumor grow aggressively..and other conditions of normal ageing become apparent...
And while I have seen pictures of dogs recover some muscle mass and lose the pot belly, in his case, being the age he is and with the legs having deteriorated in such a quick time (basically in three weeks).
Should I just continue "benevolent neglect" like the first vet suggested and perhaps look for something for mobility - like metacam - but then again, he's got all that cortisone. So the mobility loss is either because of bad hip, cushings deteriorating the muscle or a combination.
He is still extremely flexible though...this guy was one of those dogs that could make back legs go flat on the floor pointing backwards while he was on his belly, and he can still do that...
So, to treat or not to treat, at almost 12 is it worth any associated risks? What are the plusses and what are the biggest risks?
He's my best mate and I want to help him..but this disease is a damned if you do and damned if you don't based on a lot of material i read, so really looking at other people's experiences to help me make the right decision...
Anyway, that's a lot of text for a first post....
Please share your experiences with us.
Name is Rohan, by the way.