[envrobear]

Lil Bear is a 6 year old shunt suvivor thankfully she has a small shunt and has not required surgery yet. I was lucky that I was working at the vet when I noticed her pee orange and she was sleepy and vomiting she was maybe 2 months old at the time. My vet also put her on the low protein food. The vet said to try the diet first since she wasn't wanting to do the surgery. Luckly lil bear is doing fine now. She doesn't get anything over 18% protein at the max treat wise and if it is between 12 and 18% it's one every couple of days. It takes a lot of diligence finding food and treats safe for her and chewys too. A lot of chewys are high protein!!! We can tell when she has had a bit too much protein cause she will get an orange tint in her pee so we give only her food and nothing else for a week atleast.
If you have a finiky(sp) eater like lil bear and don't want to give your baby icky wet food, natures recipie has a semi-moist food that lil bear gobbles up. Petco has it and it has all the nutrition they need.

Also look on Yahoo or any search engine for liver shunt and yorkie, I know at one point there was a college...I think LSU collecting data on liver shunt pups and trying to find an alternative to surgery for the ones that have bad liver shunts....lil bears is on the small side we believe. Also if you live near a vet college call and talk to them, we live near University of Florida which has an excellent vet college where you can find info.

I hope this helps. I know how scary it is, but you can manage and your pup will be ok...I know everyone on yorkietalk is hoping things turn out fine and your are led to the right choice.