Poor little Snickers.:(
He is so very lucky to have you for his mommy.
I hope he is soon on the road to recovery.
I'll keep him and you in my prayers.
Please keep us posted.

Many times antibiotics are given then 2-4 hours later, double doses of live human probiotics are given to get the diarrhea under control and repopulate the intestines with normal flora to aid digestion (which should help curb the vomiting). Also flooding the system with probiotics can make it harder for the bad bacteria to remain in the system, as it helps to flush it out by taking up all the living space forcing the bad out. (if that makes sense)

In effect, with the good bacteria taking up space on the intestinal lining, the bad bacteria has no where to attach and gets pushed out. The antibiotics will kill all bacteria, so repopulation with good bacteria (probiotics) is needed on a regular basis to counteract the action of the antibiotics during treatment.

Update on Snickers? I hope he's feeling better.

How is Snickers doing?

I was very touched by your story. Your little guys is very lucky to have you. I can only say that I pray that all goes well with Snickers. And to all the responders I want to say - Thank you - I learned a lot. Very informative!

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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Fifi, I think you need to start another thread and ask about taking Lillymae to UT. If not, then I do think you should try calling UT to see if you can go ahead and make an appointment with Dr. Kirk. I'd call first thing Monday morning.

I am going to have Lillymae and you in my thoughts, please post an update if you get an appointment or not. I can tell you are worried, I hope all goes well.

Hi everyone,
Thanks so much again for your thoughts and prayers and advice. We really appreciate it!
Snickers is home now, and so far, seems to be feeling better. Nothing terribly concerning (or different from last week) showed up on the x-ray and so they opted not to do another new ultrasound. They said that once they gave him pain meds his fever went down pretty quick, so it seems his fever was probably pain induced, from what they could tell. Apparently after the fever went down and he stopped feeling so dopey all the drugs, he was wreaking quite the havoc on the ICU. They said he was quite "rambunctious" and the nurses had to watch him like a hawk the whole time because he kept playing with the tubes from his catheter and getting all wrapped up in them. Sounds like the normal, crazy Snickers I know!

They put him on a whole bunch of meds: He'll continue the Metronidazole until next Wednesday, has 6 days of Clavamox, 3 days of Metoclopramide, a week of Famotdine and 3 days of Fenbendazole with 3 more days to be repeated in 3 weeks. He'll start taking Tylosin next Thursday.

I asked Dr. Kirk about the probiotic and she said the reason she didn't want him on it now was because he had an "open gut". She had also known of cases, although rare, where a dog was given a probiotic when they already had an overgrowth of bacteria or infection and the probiotic had the opposite affect than intended, and then they had an even bigger problem to deal with. I think she wants him to start on a probiotic when he starts taking Tylosin.

Snickers is going to be on Hill's l/d for some time until he is more stable and then Dr. Kirk said she will formulate a special diet for him, if home-cooking is something I am still interested in. I'm not a super huge fan of commercial dog food, but my husband thinks the more "consistent" diet is a better choice. He thinks there is less variables when it comes from a can, I guess. He seems to like the l/d a lot, but I think he likes most anything that isn't crunchy kibble. I still prefer to know what is going into my dog’s food for sure.
Right now we have also cut out all treats. I was giving vegetables or boiled chicken as treats before, but we are cutting out all variables for a little while, until he has been stable with no problems for a few months. Eventually he should be able to have some cooked veggies or cheerios for treats.

The only one good thing that came out of all this chronic illness was that we were able to diagnose the MVD probably a lot earlier than we might have otherwise. They said his problems don’t appear to be related to primary liver disease, but his clinical signs may be increased with having MVD as a cofactor. I’m glad that we at least were able to catch the MVD at a young age so that we are aware of it and can start managing it now. Maybe we can prevent some future problems because of that.


So, I guess, for now, we just have to wait and see how it goes. Hopefully they have diagnosed everything now and there is nothing else we are unaware of. I think they felt he had a lot of unusual things going on and it wasn’t easy to say for sure that would be all, but at this point, they are hoping they have the needed diagnoses to take care of the problem. If he does happen to get sick again, the next thing they will suggest will be endoscopy and biopsy of the intestines. So, praying this works, because we will all be happy of Snickers can stay away from the doctor and any major tests and procedures!

(This picture is him on the way home from the hospital...he really does feel better than he looks by this point!)

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.

So happy to hear that little Snickers is doing better! :) Thank you for the update!

If he misses getting a treat now and then, perhaps you could keep a couple of little pieces of the L/D in a baggy in the fridge to give to him?? I do that with a little IBD foster I have. He gets bits of his prescription food and does not know the difference. He just likes that he gets a treat!

Hope things continue to go well...Snickers is a cutie pie! He is so lucky to have his parents who clearly love him SO much! :)

Your little Snickers is such a little cutie pie.
Glad to hear that he is home and doing better.
I will continue to keep him in my prayers.
Please keep us posted.

I'm so glad you let us know how Snickers is doing. He is a doll baby and one lucky little dog to have you and your husband. UT sounds fabulous.

You all have really made me feel so great reading your comments...it's so awesome to be able to connect with other dog people who understand what it's like to be so attached to an animal and care for them so much, that you are willing to do anything to make sure they live the happiest and healthiest lives possible. Some people don't understand it, but I value life so much...especially the life of a little dog who has done so much for me.

I told my mom on the phone the other day that I would rather live outside in a cardboard box with my dog, than in my nice, warm house without him. (Although, I don't know how he would feel about that...he is not a big fan of rain or cold weather).

In regards to treats, he doesn't really need them, except for the fact that I was trying to work on training with him and he is in the S.T.A.R puppy class and Canine Good Citizen...so it's kind of nice to have them just to work on his skills for that. I did find some info on the Yahoo Liver Shunt/MVD support group about how to bake the canned l/d to make it into pieces that could more easily be used for treats, so I may try that. If not, I'll just use the food as is, because he seems to quite like it.