Hello! My Emma - now age 8 - had surgery to repair a liver shunt when she was 2 yrs old. Surgical repair was done by Dr. John Berg at tufts University at the Foster Hospital for Small Animals. We had repeated blood work done at my vet's office and then x-rays, ultrasounds, and finally the scintigraphy (sp?) done to finally determine that she actually had a shunt. Here is my advice: skip the ultrasound and go right for the more expensive scintigraphy. Why? We had 2 ultra sounds and they kept saying no shunt. But Emma got sicker and sicker - failure to thrive. It seems that with an ultrasound the dog is not really put under anesthesia - so if said dog does not stay perfectly still - the shunt won't show. We had their "expert" do the ultrasound.
Anyway, had we just went ahead and insisted on the scintigraphy ( that is the procedure where the dye is injected before the film is taken), we would have found it right away! That would have saved us the cost $$ of the 2 ultrasounds - money we could have used toward the scintigraphy. It took people on this wonderful forum to explain this all to me. The scintigraphy at the time was about $300. the ultrasounds were about $150 each. The shunt was found and it was then surgically repaired. Not cheap though. But it saved my Emma's life and she is thriving just fine now. Thanks to St. Francis and the wonderful staff and vets at Tufts, especially Dr. Berg. I am from Massachusetts and do not know about texas. Please join Crazy Yorky Ladies on Facebook as well as other yorky sites there; You may be able to find someone in Texas who has had this done and perhaps either on this site or there some funding help. Not sure.