Yorkie throwing up blood

[cristinaberger]

I am curious if anyone out there has experienced something similar. My yorkie is a 2 year old female and she has always been healthy until yesterday. She started drinking unusual amounts of water on Saturday, peeing every hour. The trend continued on Sunday, Monday and Tuesday with nothing else unusual going on. Then Wednesday morning she threw up what looked like food from the day before and she refused to eat all day long but did drink lots of water.

On Thursday morning she threw up something brownish which seemed to be dried blood. She was not walking well and only managed to stand long enough to pee. I immediately took her to the vet.

They x-rayed her but could not see any signs of obstruction or any other internal issues. The white blood count, red blood count and platelets were fine as well. She did not have a fever.
They did say that she was dehydrated so they kept her for the day and administered IV fluids until the evening.
They will get the rest of the lab results tomorrow for kidney and liver function.
When I picked her up from the vet tonight, they did say that her blood was very thick and milky and they suspect that she might have a very high fat content in her blood, which if confirmed by the test results tomorrow, could mean pancreatitis.

She's been sleeping ever since I brought her home (so the past 3 hours), took her outside to pee but she could barely walk 3-4 steps, even stepped in her own pee which she never does.

Tomorrow morning I am taking her back for another round of IV to thin her blood out and get some of that fat moving. I will also get the remaining results in the morning.

She weighs the same as last year, 7 pounds, she looks quite skinny.
She is a picky eater and I am pretty sure I made mistakes with her diet.
She likes cooked food that we eat (soups with veggies in them, or boiled and baked meat). She also likes apples and carrots. Dehydrated chicken breast or bison or bacon. Her favorite is liverwurst.
She has never been on regular dried dog food. I also don't give her raw meet. Everything she eats has to be organic and I stay away from cereals (though she had an occasional pasta left over maybe once every month).

The doctor thinks that she's either not capable of processing fat due to a genetic issue or that the ratio of fat and proteins in her diet is way too high. She proposed feeding her 1 part boiled chicken breast with 3 parts white rice as her main meal in the future.

What is your take on all this? I will get back tomorrow with more updates of her status and blood results. But I am curious if my story sounds familiar to anyone out there.

[MaWilliams3]

Originally Posted by cristinaberger

I am curious if anyone out there has experienced something similar. My yorkie is a 2 year old female and she has always been healthy until yesterday. She started drinking unusual amounts of water on Saturday, peeing every hour. The trend continued on Sunday, Monday and Tuesday with nothing else unusual going on. Then Wednesday morning she threw up what looked like food from the day before and she refused to eat all day long but did drink lots of water.

On Thursday morning she threw up something brownish which seemed to be dried blood. She was not walking well and only managed to stand long enough to pee. I immediately took her to the vet.

They x-rayed her but could not see any signs of obstruction or any other internal issues. The white blood count, red blood count and platelets were fine as well. She did not have a fever.
They did say that she was dehydrated so they kept her for the day and administered IV fluids until the evening.
They will get the rest of the lab results tomorrow for kidney and liver function.
When I picked her up from the vet tonight, they did say that her blood was very thick and milky and they suspect that she might have a very high fat content in her blood, which if confirmed by the test results tomorrow, could mean pancreatitis.

She's been sleeping ever since I brought her home (so the past 3 hours), took her outside to pee but she could barely walk 3-4 steps, even stepped in her own pee which she never does.

Tomorrow morning I am taking her back for another round of IV to thin her blood out and get some of that fat moving. I will also get the remaining results in the morning.

She weighs the same as last year, 7 pounds, she looks quite skinny.
She is a picky eater and I am pretty sure I made mistakes with her diet.
She likes cooked food that we eat (soups with veggies in them, or boiled and baked meat). She also likes apples and carrots. Dehydrated chicken breast or bison or bacon. Her favorite is liverwurst.
She has never been on regular dried dog food. I also don't give her raw meet. Everything she eats has to be organic and I stay away from cereals (though she had an occasional pasta left over maybe once every month).

The doctor thinks that she's either not capable of processing fat due to a genetic issue or that the ratio of fat and proteins in her diet is way too high. She proposed feeding her 1 part boiled chicken breast with 3 parts white rice as her main meal in the future.

What is your take on all this? I will get back tomorrow with more updates of her status and blood results. But I am curious if my story sounds familiar to anyone out there.

Poor baby. I hope she gets to feeling better.

[Potter]

Oh dear. I am sorry to hear. My Yorkie, Pao just had pancreatitis few months back. He spent a total of 5 days between vets and ER. It has been a lot of worries ever since. Pancreatitis can reoccur and diet change is usually important. Pao did start with small portions of boiled skinless boneless chicken breast and rice for the first few days and gradually changed to Royal Canin Gastro Low Fat Food only available through the vet. Dogs who has had pancreatitis cannot have a lot of fat in their food, protein has to be moderate and fiber has to be low to moderate as well. I am not a nutritionist, just learnt from that experience and is still learning.

I still have to be careful with his diet....he just had hemorrhagic gastroenteritis last week and a nausea 2 nights ago...I hope your vet will help you out and continue to give you good advice.

[cristinaberger]

Thanks Potter. Do you think the hemorrhagic gastroenteritis have anything to do with the pancreatitis or maybe is it caused by the new food prescribed by the vet?

[Lovetodream88]

I hope she gets better. When not feeding a good quality dog food you need to be feeding a recipe from a vet nutritionist with supplements like at balanceit.com or you could be doing harm to them. Hopefully this is not what happened here and it's something that she can get better from. When she is better though you need to look at how and what your feeding. They didn't give you any medicine or anything? I'm not sure I would have left with just fluids if she is having a hard time walking and such.

[cristinaberger]

Yes, the vet mentioned to me the balanceit website. I will look into it. But now I will have to take into consideration that she might need a low fat diet for a long time so I hope I can find some recepies for her specific condition. As long as it's clean, organic food, without pesticides, chemicals, fillers etc. I would feed it to her. I just have to figure out the balance.

They did give her antibiotics (preventatively) and some medicine for stomach irritation but no pain killers. They did not give me anything to take home and they said no water and no food allowed.

She is is sooo thirsty though. I put a sip of water in a bowl and she walked 15 feet to get to it. That is amazing, considering that she would not walk otherwise.

[cristinaberger]

After two days of being on IV fluids, I took my dog to the ER for the weekend. They said her blood results are off the chart, with values 30 times as high as normal for the enzymes and they said she would need at least 7 more days on IV and even then she would have a low chance of survival because she was in such a bad shape. They gave me an estimate I could not afford 10 thousand dollars (I already paid 800 for the past two days that I didn't have), so I had to make the difficult choice of letting her go. She was only 2, not sure how she got in such a bad shape and such a bad case of pancreatitis, even the vet said that she has rarely seen so high numbers in any dogs. I am not trying to justify my choice, it was really hard to sign that paper, but my family comes first and can't starve my kids because my dog had a genetic disorder I did not know about. The vet basically said that her blood fats was so high that no diet can justify such high numbers. She was not able to process the fat and it all added up.

[Lovetodream88]

Originally Posted by cristinaberger

After two days of being on IV fluids, I took my dog to the ER for the weekend. They said her blood results are off the chart, with values 30 times as high as normal for the enzymes and they said she would need at least 7 more days on IV and even then she would have a low chance of survival because she was in such a bad shape. They gave me an estimate I could not afford 10 thousand dollars (I already paid 800 for the past two days that I didn't have), so I had to make the difficult choice of letting her go. She was only 2, not sure how she got in such a bad shape and such a bad case of pancreatitis, even the vet said that she has rarely seen so high numbers in any dogs. I am not trying to justify my choice, it was really hard to sign that paper, but my family comes first and can't starve my kids because my dog had a genetic disorder I did not know about. The vet basically said that her blood fats was so high that no diet can justify such high numbers. She was not able to process the fat and it all added up.

That estamate dosent sound right. You can be pre disposed to pancreatitus but I don't think it's an actual genetic disorder but even if it was she did chose to have it either. This is so sad.

[Doodlebug]

I am so sorry you lost your baby. So unfortunate and so scary.

[matese]

so very sorry for the loss of your little baby.

[Wylie's Mom]

Originally Posted by cristinaberger

After two days of being on IV fluids, I took my dog to the ER for the weekend. They said her blood results are off the chart, with values 30 times as high as normal for the enzymes and they said she would need at least 7 more days on IV and even then she would have a low chance of survival because she was in such a bad shape. They gave me an estimate I could not afford 10 thousand dollars (I already paid 800 for the past two days that I didn't have), so I had to make the difficult choice of letting her go. She was only 2, not sure how she got in such a bad shape and such a bad case of pancreatitis, even the vet said that she has rarely seen so high numbers in any dogs. I am not trying to justify my choice, it was really hard to sign that paper, but my family comes first and can't starve my kids because my dog had a genetic disorder I did not know about. The vet basically said that her blood fats was so high that no diet can justify such high numbers. She was not able to process the fat and it all added up.

How tragic. I am so sorry she was put down. Wish you could've had more time with her.

[Nichelle02]

I'm so very sorry for your loss.

[Nancy1999]

Originally Posted by cristinaberger

After two days of being on IV fluids, I took my dog to the ER for the weekend. They said her blood results are off the chart, with values 30 times as high as normal for the enzymes and they said she would need at least 7 more days on IV and even then she would have a low chance of survival because she was in such a bad shape. They gave me an estimate I could not afford 10 thousand dollars (I already paid 800 for the past two days that I didn't have), so I had to make the difficult choice of letting her go. She was only 2, not sure how she got in such a bad shape and such a bad case of pancreatitis, even the vet said that she has rarely seen so high numbers in any dogs. I am not trying to justify my choice, it was really hard to sign that paper, but my family comes first and can't starve my kids because my dog had a genetic disorder I did not know about. The vet basically said that her blood fats was so high that no diet can justify such high numbers. She was not able to process the fat and it all added up.

I'm so sorry, I wish they had been able to do more, but at least she's out of her pain. Human foods, even soups, can be way too high in fat for a dog and since dogs have different nutritional requirements, it's hard to give an adequate canine diet without special guidance from a canine dietitian. Also, Yorkies are really susceptible, to pancreatitis and such foods as bacon and liverwurst should be avoided. I've given dogs liverwurst before when I wanted them to take a pill, but it's so high in fat it really shouldn't be given as a food. Again, I'm really sorry this happened to you, it's scary how fast they can go downhill.

[lynzy420]

Originally Posted by cristinaberger

After two days of being on IV fluids, I took my dog to the ER for the weekend. They said her blood results are off the chart, with values 30 times as high as normal for the enzymes and they said she would need at least 7 more days on IV and even then she would have a low chance of survival because she was in such a bad shape. They gave me an estimate I could not afford 10 thousand dollars (I already paid 800 for the past two days that I didn't have), so I had to make the difficult choice of letting her go. She was only 2, not sure how she got in such a bad shape and such a bad case of pancreatitis, even the vet said that she has rarely seen so high numbers in any dogs. I am not trying to justify my choice, it was really hard to sign that paper, but my family comes first and can't starve my kids because my dog had a genetic disorder I did not know about. The vet basically said that her blood fats was so high that no diet can justify such high numbers. She was not able to process the fat and it all added up.

I have read this post so many times since you posted it, I want to make some comments but I have held off, first off....perhaps in the future you may not want to get another pup until your children are grown and it is more affordable to have a pup? I can't tell you how much your comment "my family comes first" literally makes me shake and my heart race....wasn't your pup part of your family? Also, these little pups are so vulnerable, I believe you waited 5-6 days before seeking medical care, I want to point out for others who may come along that it is very important to get your pups to the vet ASAP when they become ill, these pups are vulnerable once ill and can go down so fast....

OP I'm so sorry for the loss of your pup, it is heartbreaking, I'm sure you did the best you could and thought under the circumstances.....these pups come with a life long dependency on us for a lifetime of love and care....

[gemy]

I am very sorry for your loss -$10K sounds like an awfull lot of money-money many would not have.


This is why we highly recommend pet insurance. These days as opposed to 30 or more years ago, vet medicine has made huge strides, and now owners do have choices when their dog becomes ill. Unfortunately many choices are quite expensive, some prohibitively so. But with pet insurance coverage those options become available to you. If the cost of $30-$40 a month for pet insurance is beyond your means, you need to seriously consider if you can afford any pet at all.


Many of us also do yearly bloodwork, co-inciding with the yearly exam. If done, it might have caught the problem much earlier on, where treatment options might not have been so expensive.


But now you know, we do have threads a stickey here about the cost of owning a pet; it is a good read, to get a handle on likely costs. Just go to our library and browse through it.