Hey Tania,
Yep, I'm a familiar name. I just haven't been on either site in a long time. I seem to go in spurts..
I'm just like you, my dh and I call Deegan & Trooper our boys too! We don't have children and don't plan to so they are defintely our babies. While my friends are urning for a baby, I'm urning for another puppy! LOL
As for the Exocrine Pancreatic Insufficiency (EPI), it's the inability of the pancreas to secrete the necessary digestive enzymes, to digest starches, digest fats, digest protein. When the enzymes are not available to help digest nutrients, the nutrients cannot be used by the body. The body in essence starts to starve. Therefore, due to the lack of proper digestion of nutrients, exocrine pancreatic insufficiency is usually accompanied by structural and functional changes in the tissue lining of the small intestine that further impairs nutrient absorption called small intestinal bacterial overgrowth (SIBO). Basically if the body isn't digesting the proper nutrients, the dog begins to lose weight at an astronomical rate. Deegan was a healthy 8lbs, and in 2 weeks he was down to 5lbs! He was having diarrehea, lethargic sometimes, but sometimes not... It took 4 appointments of going to the vets to have tests run to determine what he had. And once we finally were sure of it, the vets advice was pretty much useless, yet costing me $100 a month for the meds they recommended that weren't the proper meds to begin with!
After doing some of my own research and finding and joining the
k9-EPIGLOBAL@yahoogroups.com I found an alternative to enzymes at a much cheaper cost. The vets enzymes would cost me $100/mth, but buying enzymes in bulk from Enzyme Diane it's only cost me $160 for 1kilo which has lasted me 17 months so far and I still have a bit left! Plus he has to be on a special food too, Iam's Intestinal - Low Residue.
I have an EPI pamphlet that I want to post for everyone, but can't seem to figure it out so if anyone is interested, just pm me your email and I can email it to you. I might even start a thread on here and just copy the text just to help get the word out a bit more. This disease seems to strike German Shepherds most often, but in rare cases other breed might get it as well.
As for the allergies, I don't know much about them except that soem people chose lamb over chicken. If the sypmtoms just began not too long ago it could be an allergy from the eviroment too, especially since it's spring right now and allergies are at their all time worst this year. Or you could search for a yahoo group for canine allergies too maybe. ?? Just a suggestion...
Anyways, I hope that you figure it out for Sparky. Keep me posted and if you have any questions about EPI just let me know. I'm happy to get the word out so more people, especially vets so that it doens't take as long as it did for Deegan to get diagnosed.
Have a great day to you all!