[Chrisdeelynn]

I posted on here about 3 weeks ago concerning my Biewer Yorkie spinning in circles. We treated him with an anti-fungal and antibiotic and attributed it to an ear infection since it seemed to clear up and the circling stopped.

Everything has been fine until this past weekend. My boyfriend and I traveled up to see my mom in Georgia (we live in FL). Merlin seemed fine as he loves going on car rides and seemed to love every minute of traveling and got plenty of naps and lots of breaks on the way. The second day we were there Merlin started to have fly biting seizures (focal point seizures). They lasted about 5-10 seconds. He had 3 at the house and 1 on the way to the hospital.

When we got to the emergency animal hospital, the vet there told us that it was most likely a liver shunt. His bedside manner was lacking to say the least. He was talking about how the surgeries are not always successful and that the majority of these dogs usually end up getting euthanized shortly after. I was balling crying. I told him to just go ahead and do the bloodwork that he suggested so we know for sure if thats it or not. (I do have a small amount of knowledge about this due to reading up on them when we were having the previous health issues.)

After the bloodwork came back, he told us that his white blood cell count was abnormally high. He suggested that Merlin stay there for 5 days and that he get chemotherapy asap because he had juvenile leukemia. I would have done this but we were all getting a bad vibe from this place as we were overhearing other peoples issues in the waiting room and all the doctors were suggesting their dogs stay 5 days. The doc there didn't let me see any of his bloodwork paperwork until after they released him too. Which i thought was really strange.

I elected to take Merlin home and get him to his regular vet. We left for FL and made an appointment for the following day. They did bloodwork and a bile acid test. I just got his bloodwork back today and his white blood cell count is off the charts high. His bile acid test is extremely high too. My doctor suggested that we take him to an internal medicine specialist. We are taking him to University of Florida tomorrow morning.

As much as i don't want to jump to conclusions, right now we are looking at a possibility of Merlin having Leukemia and a liver shunt.

I put him on a low protein diet, but that's about all i can do right now until we know whats going on for sure.

Any input or experiences with either would be great thanks.