[SugarPie]

Tonight I had to take my 6 m.o., male, Cricket, to the hospital. He has been acting very, very strange for the past 2 months. Some signs were that he rubbing his ears with his paws like they were itchy, running his body around the couch, and becoming shaky every so often. Another concern of ours is that he's also had trouble gaining weight. His weight seems to go up and down every time the vet sees him.

The advice the vet gave me was to feed him by hand since that was the only way he seemed to want to eat, feeding him NutriCal and also giving him sugar water if he should become shaky. However, tonight Cricket came running into the room yelping and hollering. At first I thought he fell off the couch, which is rare because he can get up and down safely and has no issues or like has once happened before, my son who doesn't always look down when he's walking, might have went to close his door when he was standing there.

When I picked him up, he was whimpering in my arms but wanted down on the couch. A moment later he tried to stand up and kept slipping back down. I also began to notice at this point that he looked disoriented and vacant. I tried setting him down on the floor to see if he could walk there. He fell over but was able to get up after that and managed to make it to his dog bed where he started to look sleepy and unresponsive.

Minutes later, a family member pulled up into our driveway and usually, like most dogs, our dogs go running to the back door to say hello, but Cricket stayed in his dog bed, still lethargic and unresponsive. We decided to take him to the hospital and not to wait until the vet opened tomorrow.

At the hospital they told us that based on all the things we had told them about the nights events and the past couple of months and from all they saw of him in the examine room, it was most likely that he had liver shunts. They told us to find that out they would have to give him an x-ray to see the size of his liver but based on that, they could not know whether he had shunts unless they did blood work and gave him an ultra-sound.

When I asked how much the cost of all of this would be, they told us it would be $1,000 - $2,000 or more! There is simply no way we can pay for that. That's not including the cost of surgery (which they could not give us an exact price but said would also be in the thousands). I told them there was just nothing we could do. There are no funds there to cover that kind of thing. Instead, we were sent home with antibiotics, something called Lactulose and 2 cans of L/D dog food.

They did not give us much information as to whether this was going to be a cure or a temporary band-aid until we can pay for the cost of testing and surgery. What I am wondering is if any of you have had success with just the diet alone and have forgone the surgery. Is that even possible? What was your success (or failure) of forgoing surgery for the diet?

Any information would be greatly appreciated. Thank you.