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Originally Posted by Khimaira  Our 3yr old Yorkie has pancreatitis and I was hoping to get some more information on what he has and how to prevent it in the future.
This morning he was given subcutaneous fluids at the vets, to help flush him out and treat dehydration, and he'll get fluids tomorrow and possibly Friday as well. He's also on antibiotics and painkillers. The Vets advised a very lean diet of chicken and rice/mashed potatoes until he's better. He's getting home-made chicken and rice soup for the next week or so.
I have a few questions and concerns- the biggest one right now is what exactly pancreatitis is. My understanding was that its an inflammation of the pancreas due to an overload of fats, in this case prime rib scraps (lesson learned, he won't be getting that again), and that once his system is a flushed he'll be fine so long as we don't feed him really fatty foods.
Some of the forum posts I've seen make it sound like it's chronic and easily triggered again, like its never really going to go away and has to be constantly managed.
We were already planning on changing his diet, and obviously we're going to be keeping a closer eye on his fat intake but I guess I'm unsure of HOW much we need to be doing. Is this something that's likely to happen again, do we need to be watching for it all the time? What kind of preventative measures do we need to be taking? Should we switch his wet food, do we need to consider keeping him on a home-made diet?
Any advice, or resources, or suggestions would be appreciated. |
Hello. Our dog Barney has had two episodes of life-threatening pancreatitis and it is very scary indeed. We have Barney on a very low fat diet that we home cook. I would advise talking to a vet nutritionist (preferably a board certified one) if you would like to properly home cook for your dog. I also wanted to mention that although a fatty meal or higher fat diet is implicated in pancreatitis, it is not the only thing that can trigger it. We had a member on here whose dog has pancreatitis when her husband dropped a pea on the floor. Also, pancreatitis can smolder for a very long time. So, you do not want to jump too quickly into regular dog food. Your vet's advice was the same as our vet nutritionist - chicken and rice. We fed Barney 50% chicken and 50% rice for several weeks in smaller sized meals and then had the diet balanced by our vet and added veggies for fiber, water, and a sense of fullness for Barney.
Good luck!