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Originally Posted by Yorkieluv  I'm so sorry to hear this...When my yorkie had his vaccines as a pup, he had a very hard time after them...At the time, we did not know about his liver problems...But we did later find out that he has liver shunt/mvd
An extrahepatic portosystemic shunt does require surgery in order for your pup to live a good normal life...If he recovers 100% without aquired shunting and he doesn't have secondary MVD, then he will be able to stop special diet and medications within a few months after surgery...
I'm confused as to why your dog was sent i/d if your vet suspects liver problems. Usually, they send you home with l/d which is specifically for the liver. Read the ingredients of the i/d and make sure it doesn't contain any meat products like chicken or pork or organ meats like liver...Those are high in protein and he should be on low non-animal protein right now until they figure all this out.
The lactulose is super important. Do not miss a dose of that, and it's best to give it directly after meals. His stool needs to be soft, not firm...
I know it seems overwhelming right now, but let's see what the results of the bile acid test are...Take it one step at a time...If it turns out that your baby has a portosystemic shunt, then surgery needs to be done. If it turns out that your baby has microvascular dysplasia (HMD/MVD), then he can live a normal life with his special diet, lactulose, and supplements like milk thistle and denosyl (sam-e).
Usually liver compromised dogs like Royal Canin Hepatic LS 14 much better than Hill's products like the i/d, k/d, l/d, etc. It seems to be more palatable. If your vet doesn't carry it, you can always get a prescription for it from your regular vet and get it at another vet's office or at Banfield....
How old is your little Cody?? |
i/d contains turkey and pork liver... I think she gave it to us because she was thinking it would be a good bland food since he's been throwing up. We'll call tomorrow and see if she can switch him to a food that doesn't have meat protein in it if she's so worried about his liver enzymes. He's ignoring it anyway... says we're shoving too many things down his throat when he just wants to sleep.
as for how old he is, we really don't know. The animal hospital where we got him from says 2 months, the one where he got his shots at last week says 3 months, and the vet we saw today (we weren't impressed last week) says 4 months and that we can consider neutering anytime (and we thought we had a baby!) and that the blood work he got done today would be enough for that.
I'll try to explain all of this to my parents but my guess is that if he needs surgery then we won't be keeping him. They wanted to look into options so that the decision would be made before we were in the vets office finding out that he needs surgery (we already let the vet know that there would be a decision to be made and she gave us some suggestions on rescue networks)