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Originally Posted by fifi223  Snickers Mom
I'm so sorry about your Snickers.
I've been writing on the "Sickness/Emergency" forum and I'm not sure how all these forums work together...no matter...
My almost 5 year old, 5 pound yorkie, Lillymae, was diagnosed with a liver shunt at age 6 months and the vet recommended that we treat her through diet with Hills KD formula. She's been just fine up until a month ago - no vomiting, shakes, pacing, etc. I took her to the vet when she started eating grass and vomiting clear mucus (once or twice in the a.m.) . He told me to start feeding her more often and make sure she eats late at night. That has not solved the problem. For about a month, she hasn't wanted to eat early but will usually eat around noon. Prior to this she would get me up around 6 a.m. running to her food bowl.
Yesterday evening she started pacing and paced for several hours.. she wouldn't play and wouldn't let me hold her. She did, however, walk about 1/2 mile in our usual place this morning. It's after 1 p.m. my time and she still hasn't eaten today.
I'm getting really worried and I want to take her to UT. I'm not really satisfied with my vets here.
I would like to get an appointment with Dr. Kirk at UT. Do you think I could make one or would I need a referral from my vet?
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You will have to get a referral from your vet. You might be able to make your own appointment time, but they definitely only take referrals in the small animal clinic. See
here.
If your dog was diagnosed with a shunt, I don't know if you would see Dr. Kirk...I know when we first went there, we went to surgery first when they suspected a possible liver shunt. After they ruled out a shunt with scintigraphy, they did a biopsy (which later came back positive for MVD) and then sent Snickers to Dr. Kirk in Internal Medicine, because he had a lot of unusual symptoms, GI problems and a slow heartbeat and the liver folks had suspected that one thing he may have could be Addison's Disease, so they wanted medicine to test for that.
If you do go to UT, don't worry, they will send you to the right person for your case, based on the information from your referring vet. The great thing about going to a teaching hospital like that is that there are so many different specialty departments that can draw upon each other for help if your dog ends up having multiple disorders like mine.
Have you been to the yahoo support group for liver shunt/MVD? If not, you may want to check it out. There is a lot of good information there for the specific conditions.
Here
Hope that helps and that you are able to get your dog the help she needs as soon as possible! They are really great at UT and have lots of experience with liver shunt dogs, so I think it would be a good place to go.