[gaijingirl]

Hi everyone,
Thanks so much again for your thoughts and prayers and advice. We really appreciate it!
Snickers is home now, and so far, seems to be feeling better. Nothing terribly concerning (or different from last week) showed up on the x-ray and so they opted not to do another new ultrasound. They said that once they gave him pain meds his fever went down pretty quick, so it seems his fever was probably pain induced, from what they could tell. Apparently after the fever went down and he stopped feeling so dopey all the drugs, he was wreaking quite the havoc on the ICU. They said he was quite "rambunctious" and the nurses had to watch him like a hawk the whole time because he kept playing with the tubes from his catheter and getting all wrapped up in them. Sounds like the normal, crazy Snickers I know!

They put him on a whole bunch of meds: He'll continue the Metronidazole until next Wednesday, has 6 days of Clavamox, 3 days of Metoclopramide, a week of Famotdine and 3 days of Fenbendazole with 3 more days to be repeated in 3 weeks. He'll start taking Tylosin next Thursday.

I asked Dr. Kirk about the probiotic and she said the reason she didn't want him on it now was because he had an "open gut". She had also known of cases, although rare, where a dog was given a probiotic when they already had an overgrowth of bacteria or infection and the probiotic had the opposite affect than intended, and then they had an even bigger problem to deal with. I think she wants him to start on a probiotic when he starts taking Tylosin.

Snickers is going to be on Hill's l/d for some time until he is more stable and then Dr. Kirk said she will formulate a special diet for him, if home-cooking is something I am still interested in. I'm not a super huge fan of commercial dog food, but my husband thinks the more "consistent" diet is a better choice. He thinks there is less variables when it comes from a can, I guess. He seems to like the l/d a lot, but I think he likes most anything that isn't crunchy kibble. I still prefer to know what is going into my dog’s food for sure.
Right now we have also cut out all treats. I was giving vegetables or boiled chicken as treats before, but we are cutting out all variables for a little while, until he has been stable with no problems for a few months. Eventually he should be able to have some cooked veggies or cheerios for treats.

The only one good thing that came out of all this chronic illness was that we were able to diagnose the MVD probably a lot earlier than we might have otherwise. They said his problems don’t appear to be related to primary liver disease, but his clinical signs may be increased with having MVD as a cofactor. I’m glad that we at least were able to catch the MVD at a young age so that we are aware of it and can start managing it now. Maybe we can prevent some future problems because of that.


So, I guess, for now, we just have to wait and see how it goes. Hopefully they have diagnosed everything now and there is nothing else we are unaware of. I think they felt he had a lot of unusual things going on and it wasn’t easy to say for sure that would be all, but at this point, they are hoping they have the needed diagnoses to take care of the problem. If he does happen to get sick again, the next thing they will suggest will be endoscopy and biopsy of the intestines. So, praying this works, because we will all be happy of Snickers can stay away from the doctor and any major tests and procedures!

(This picture is him on the way home from the hospital...he really does feel better than he looks by this point!)