IBS or IBD diagnosis?

[Scoobstersmom]

Would like to hear from anyone that has a dog diagnosed with IBS or IBD. What were your dog’s symptoms and how old was s/he when they started? How long did it take to get a diagnosis, and how was the diagnosis made? Did your dog have biopsies? What is your dog’s treatment plan? Is it effective? How often does your dog have flare-ups? What diet do you have him/her on?


Thanks in advance for your time. I know it's a lot of questions. My yorkie is possibly on the road to one of these diagnoses.


Diana

[EarthAngel]

Bentley was diagnosed with IBS or IBD...the vet said the only way to tell for sure is through a biopsy which one he has. My vet had put him on prednisone and has gradually gotten him to one 1/4 of a 5mg. tablet every other day. He has been doing well with it.

He is eating Nutro and so far so good. He was miserable with having the rankest diarrhea
at all hours of the day and night. This is my experience and I hope you get relief for yours.

[Scoobstersmom]

Dyan,


Thanks for your post and sharing information about Bentley. I am glad to hear he is doing so well. How old is he and how long ago was he diagnosed? Does he have any side effects from the prednisone?


Our little guy is young - only 2 to 3 years old - a rescue that we adopted last November. He has had a lot of issues with vomiting but not so much diarrhea. He is also very high strung and has a lot of anxiety issues especially with thunderstorms and we've been having them a lot lately. Our vet thinks some of his tummy troubles are from anxiety, but he has been a hot mess for the past three weeks. Once he vomits, he refuses to eat for days. Not one bite. The last two weeks she has given him a small dose injection of DEX, which has turned him around immediately and lasts for about five days, then it starts all over again. We've had him tested for pancreatitis, some kind of vitamin deficiency, and had an ultrasound and everything is negative so she is thinking IBS or IBD.


We are kicking around the idea of the biopsies, but our vet would prefer starting him on daily Budesonide to see if that fixes the problem. Since Budesonide is a steroid, I am a little hesitant to start him on it without a real diagnosis, but she says that the reason is good enough. He won't eat without it. Sigh.


Diana

[EarthAngel]

Diana, Bentley didn't have the vomiting and as far as eating...his food is gone before you walk away. He turned 6 in March. The diarrhea was the main thing that was going on for almost a year until a new vet saw him this spring and diagnosed him. He gets worked up when there is thunder but isn't bad.

The only side effect I notice is he drinks a bit more. We tried to get him off the prednisone and within a couple days he was exhibiting the same symptoms as before so started him back on right away.

I hope someone else can offer more info so we can know different treatments. I don't like the idea Bentley is on a steroid but thankfully it is a very small amount.

[Scoobstersmom]

Dyan,


That's what's odd about our Ranger. He has always been a chow hound. Literally gobbles his food faster than we can put it down for him. Until three weeks ago. He has had a few bouts of diarrhea, but he eats Primal raw, which makes tiny, hard stools so as long as he manages to eat there is rarely diarrhea. The DEX shot the vet has given him the last two weeks lasts about five days, so we've been in this cycle. Wake up on the weekend, throw up, refuse to eat, miserable, finally get to the vet on Monday, get the shot, he does great all week, and then starts right back at it on the weekend. Last weekend being a holiday, he got sick Saturday morning and stopped eating. Between Saturday and Tuesday morning, he ate the equivalent of about one meal in three days. Very scary. Took him in Tuesday morning, got the shot and by noon he was gobbling everything in sight and acted like he was starving. We started the Budesonide last night. I could not get through another weekend like that. Now I am up and anxiously waiting for HIM to get up so I can see if he will eat or vomit. I still hate the thought of him having to take a steroid to eat. We are going to try to get him over this hump and off the steroids within a month. If it doesn't work, we will do the biopsies to at least make sure he has a real need to stay on them.


Diana

[Maximo]

Dyan, I am glad Bentley is doing well.

Diana, sorry to hear Ranger is having problems. YT member BabyGirl Rosie has had success home cooking for Rosie, who has IBD. Here is one of her posts: http://www.yorkietalk.com/forums/4155088-post16.html

Sending well wishes for Ranger.

[Wylie's Mom]

Originally Posted by Scoobstersmom

Dyan,


That's what's odd about our Ranger. He has always been a chow hound. Literally gobbles his food faster than we can put it down for him. Until three weeks ago. He has had a few bouts of diarrhea, but he eats Primal raw, which makes tiny, hard stools so as long as he manages to eat there is rarely diarrhea. The DEX shot the vet has given him the last two weeks lasts about five days, so we've been in this cycle. Wake up on the weekend, throw up, refuse to eat, miserable, finally get to the vet on Monday, get the shot, he does great all week, and then starts right back at it on the weekend. Last weekend being a holiday, he got sick Saturday morning and stopped eating. Between Saturday and Tuesday morning, he ate the equivalent of about one meal in three days. Very scary. Took him in Tuesday morning, got the shot and by noon he was gobbling everything in sight and acted like he was starving. We started the Budesonide last night. I could not get through another weekend like that. Now I am up and anxiously waiting for HIM to get up so I can see if he will eat or vomit. I still hate the thought of him having to take a steroid to eat. We are going to try to get him over this hump and off the steroids within a month. If it doesn't work, we will do the biopsies to at least make sure he has a real need to stay on them.


Diana

Hmmmm...poor little man...this all sounds so frustrating all around! Odd that he was just fine up until just a few weeks ago....? Makes me wonder if this is just some long-lasting GI bug / gastritis.

Just a thought...any chance of GERD going on here...? http://www.yorkietalk.com/forums/die...wallowing.html

[Scoobstersmom]

Thanks, Maximo. Is there any way you could post that whole thread instead of just the one post? I am apparently Yorkie Talk challenged, but it looks like it would be an interesting thread to read.


Wylie's mom, nope I don't think it's GERD. At first we did, when his symptoms were milder but the medications didn't change anything at all. Prior to the past few weeks, he has had some intermittent symptoms (primarily occasional vomiting and inappetance, but some yucky stools with that slimy covering on them) but nothing this severe. They sort of came and went but nothing that red flagged my radar screen in a major way. We have been working with our regular vet the whole time, and finally got him on Primal frozen patties which he has done the best on for about six months until very recently.


I see you're from Phoenix, so just as an aside, he came from the parking lot of the dog pound in Sunnyside. Gross place. I was there dropping off some leftover supplies after I lost my last yorkie, and a couple pulled up and parked right next to me - there to surrender him. They said he grew too big. Argh. We got to talking and he got surrendered all right that day, but right into the backseat of my car. After I got him home, I realized that he had been poorly cared for. He was malnourished, covered with ticks, had not been neutered, wasn't toilet trained, had no inside manners at all, and had been left as an outside dog. He also has severe anxiety, probably from being left outside alone all the time. Severe storm anxiety, afraid of the car and afraid of almost everything.


In the nine months we've had him, he has made a lot of progress but one thing we're still struggling with is the storm anxiety. His tummy symptoms really kicked in around July, when the summer monsoons hit, and have continued to get more severe. He has been a hot mess for the last three weeks or so and we are all miserable here because of it. He's seen three vets in the past three weeks, and they all think that it is, if not completely, at least partially caused by the stress from the storm anxiety. And we've certainly had plenty of thunder lately, which really sets him off. He shakes, pants, paces and even vomits and it sometimes takes him hours to calm down once the storm stops.


In the past three weeks or so since things got so much worse, he has seen our regular vet three times, a relief vet in her office once, was seen in the emergency clinic at ARECA, was worked up by the internal medicine department at ARECA, and had a high resolution ultrasound at ARECA as well. He's had a Super Chem, a SPEC cPL for pancreatitis, tested for B vitamin deficiency, had some other GI panel blood test, tested for addisons, checked for Giardia and other parasites, had a full tick panel and the ultrasound. Oh, and he was also tested for Valley Fever. He has had a course of metronidazole, sucralfate, cerenia, ondanestron. Nothing has been found to explain the occasional vomiting and complete inappetance and none of the medications have made a difference. He was also prescribed Xanax for the storm anxiety, which does help but makes me nervous giving it to him so he's only had it a couple of times. Finally he was given an injection of a small dose of Dexamethasone, and it turned everything around. Within hours he was eating again, and ate like a little piggy with no vomiting for five days, then it started all over again over the holiday weekend. We were up at our cabin on the rim and he was fine Friday and woke up Saturday morning, vomited once, and refused any food from that point on. From Saturday morning through Tuesday morning, he ate about the equivalent of what he normally eats for one meal. We were in phone and email contact with our vet during that time, but since he seemed bright and active and was drinking well, we decided to let it go until Tuesday. Tuesday morning he had another small injection of DEX, and by noon he was eating again.


Our options at this point are to open him up and do the biopsies or have him scoped for them, or to try the trial of the Budesomide. After consulting with the IM dept at ARECA our vet is recommending we try the Budesomide and try to get him through this last little bit of the monsoon season and see where he stands then and whether we can wean him off the steroids before trying anything more invasive. We agreed to try it because we knew the shot was about to wear off today and he'd be back to square one, but I am not really comfortable with having him on daily steroids with no real diagnosis.


I should change my name to Frustrated about now! Sorry this is so long, but I wanted to explain everything we've done so far. If you have any other suggestions, I would love to hear them. This poor little guy has already been through so much and we just want to see him enjoying his dinners again!


Diana

[Maximo]

Diana, here is the link to the whole thread:
http://www.yorkietalk.com/forums/gen...l-disease.html

Here is a list of other threads on YT that might be of interest to you:
https://www.google.com/search?q=York...yorkietalk.com

I'm so glad you were in the right place at the right time to take Ranger into your loving care. Poor boy really had a rough start.

[Scoobstersmom]

Thanks for posting those threads, Maximo.


I like to think my lil Scooby brought Ranger to me. We had just lost Scooby at age 16 after a long and chronic illness, so I was heart broken and traumatized. I had no intention of getting another dog, much less another yorkie. I'm actually a toy poodle person and have a lovely pair of poodles. The yorkies are my husband's dogs. Anyway, there I was at that shelter, and there he was. And I just couldn't let him go on into the dog pound. Those people made me so mad it was all I could do to be civil enough to manage to get him into my car! They said he had grown too big. All 12 pounds of him. And even worse they must have been starving him to keep him down to 12 pounds. He was already adult and over 2 when we adopted him but he has grown in nine months into a 14 pounder!


Diana

[Maximo]

I can imagine how difficult it was for you to maintain your composure with these people. You were meant to be there for Ranger.

[107barney]

Daisy has IBD - dx at age 6. She's turning 15 this week. She's been managed very well with a lowered protein, higher fiber diet. I'd take the dog off the raw food and go to home cooked with higher fiber. Mine eats sweet potatoes as part of her diet. I would consider a consult with Dr Remillard at petdiets and let her make a diet for probable IBD. You may not need to even do biopsies or scopes if the right diet could really help. I really feel for your situation but know you'll do what's needed. Feel free to PM if you want to chat.

[Lovetodream88]

Mine was diagnosed a little over a year ago. It is realated to food allergies. Callie was throwing up and had diarrhea. She went in twice in the same month and had to get IV fluids. Since it kept happening and with her history of allergies our vet suspected and called it IBD. She said the only real way to 100% diagnose it was a biopsy but that it really wasn't nessisary. She said the best food was the Royal Canin hypoallergenic and Callie is really picky about size of her kibble so she told me that they have a small breed version and Callie has been on that since. It has worked great and she loves it. I also went ahead and did Dr.Dobbs food allergy test even though it's not proven and it has been right so far. I did my own food trails and they match up to what the test says are her problems. Oh and Callie is 8.