[debkopo]

I purchased a female Yorkie just last July from "Le Chic Pet Boutique". This was my very first puppy and unfortunately did not know all the right questions to ask before making my purchase. Of course we fell in love with her the moment we saw her, she was just a little over 1 pound. Little did we know that her being that small was going to become so expensive.
Within one week we were at the vet, she was diagnosed with a upper respiratory infection.
Within another month the vomiting started, within a couple of months she was vomiting anywhere from 3-4 times a week. We never had problems with diarrehea though. I had brought her in to the vet a few times to make sure she wasn't dehydrating or anything and they gave us some medicine to help calm her tummy.
We also had an episode in August which was two months after we got her, where she went in to this...I'm not sure how to explain it, but it was like a fit. She would walk in circles, she was acting very odd, could not focus on anything and could not sit still. This went on for about an hour. We just thought maybe she played to hard with my daughter's puppy that day and due to her size she just got warn out.
Within another month she had another fit, again I thought she just played to hard. Then in September she was just laying on my lap, I got up to go and do something so I put her down on the floor. She just dropped down and went in to convulsions, she was having a seizure. Now I knew there was something wrong.
I contacted the vet and the lady at the front desk told me that there was really nothing they could do and I should just start journaling if she has any more seizures. Well I immediately got on the internet and started researching all of the symptoms our little baby had and I found this wonderful article by Dr Karen Tobias. She was researching liver shunts in Yorkies and everything that I was reading was what we were going through with our little Honey. I immediately contacted the vet and made an appointment for that afternoon. I had printed off the study by Dr Karen Tobias and brought with me and I requested that they start testing Honey right away.
They first ran complete blood count test on her and found that something was not rightand had me set up another appointment to have a Bile Acid test done on her, plus xrays. The Bile Acid test was consistent with a shunt, but there was still one more test that need to be done before they could be sure.
We then set an appointment at the University of Minnesota to get a second opinion. They put Honey on a special diet (KD prescription dog food) and put her on Lactulose hoping that we could get her to gain some weight before surgery, because she was just so small.
In December we brought Honey in for surgery, they needed to open her up and preform a Portogram first, this is where they inject a radioopaque dye into a vein from her intestines allowing the abnormal vein to be seen. I was informed that if they found that it was a internal shunt they would have to just close her back up, because the surgery is very risky, but if it was external they would place an ameroid ring around the shunt. The exteranl shunt is more common in yorkies supposedly.
We were very fortunate, it was an external shunt that was found so they were able to use the ameroid ring. We had to keep her on the special diet for a couple of months after the surgery, but in January we brought Honey in for another Bile Acid Test and everything came back looking good. We just took her off her diet last week and she seems to be doing just fine. I think she is up to 3 pounds now and fiesty as ever.
This is a very costly surgery, but I would do it again if I had to. Sorry to say, but the woman we purchased her from...well like I said earlier she didn't care two hoots about our little one. Back in September when I initially contacted her and I requested a refund on our puppy, I didn't request anything for the vet bills. She came back at me and said no she would not refund the money but we could send her back and she would give us a new puppy. There was no way, we already were very attached, we had her for 3 months already, we had gone through so much with her and had already spent so much on vet bills trying to make our baby healthly.

Good Luck with your little sweetie! I pray that it is not a liver shunt and it is just something minor that can be corrected without surgery.