Yorkie throwing up blood
 

I am curious if anyone out there has experienced something similar. My yorkie is a 2 year old female and she has always been healthy until yesterday. She started drinking unusual amounts of water on Saturday, peeing every hour. The trend continued on Sunday, Monday and Tuesday with nothing else unusual going on. Then Wednesday morning she threw up what looked like food from the day before and she refused to eat all day long but did drink lots of water.

On Thursday morning she threw up something brownish which seemed to be dried blood. She was not walking well and only managed to stand long enough to pee. I immediately took her to the vet.

They x-rayed her but could not see any signs of obstruction or any other internal issues. The white blood count, red blood count and platelets were fine as well. She did not have a fever.
They did say that she was dehydrated so they kept her for the day and administered IV fluids until the evening.
They will get the rest of the lab results tomorrow for kidney and liver function.
When I picked her up from the vet tonight, they did say that her blood was very thick and milky and they suspect that she might have a very high fat content in her blood, which if confirmed by the test results tomorrow, could mean pancreatitis.

She's been sleeping ever since I brought her home (so the past 3 hours), took her outside to pee but she could barely walk 3-4 steps, even stepped in her own pee which she never does.:eek:

Tomorrow morning I am taking her back for another round of IV to thin her blood out and get some of that fat moving. I will also get the remaining results in the morning.

She weighs the same as last year, 7 pounds, she looks quite skinny.
She is a picky eater and I am pretty sure I made mistakes with her diet.
She likes cooked food that we eat (soups with veggies in them, or boiled and baked meat). She also likes apples and carrots. Dehydrated chicken breast or bison or bacon. Her favorite is liverwurst.
She has never been on regular dried dog food. I also don't give her raw meet. Everything she eats has to be organic and I stay away from cereals (though she had an occasional pasta left over maybe once every month).

The doctor thinks that she's either not capable of processing fat due to a genetic issue or that the ratio of fat and proteins in her diet is way too high. She proposed feeding her 1 part boiled chicken breast with 3 parts white rice as her main meal in the future.

What is your take on all this? I will get back tomorrow with more updates of her status and blood results. But I am curious if my story sounds familiar to anyone out there.

Poor baby. I hope she gets to feeling better.

Oh dear. I am sorry to hear. My Yorkie, Pao just had pancreatitis few months back. He spent a total of 5 days between vets and ER. It has been a lot of worries ever since. Pancreatitis can reoccur and diet change is usually important. Pao did start with small portions of boiled skinless boneless chicken breast and rice for the first few days and gradually changed to Royal Canin Gastro Low Fat Food only available through the vet. Dogs who has had pancreatitis cannot have a lot of fat in their food, protein has to be moderate and fiber has to be low to moderate as well. I am not a nutritionist, just learnt from that experience and is still learning.

I still have to be careful with his diet....he just had hemorrhagic gastroenteritis last week and a nausea 2 nights ago...I hope your vet will help you out and continue to give you good advice.

Thanks Potter. Do you think the hemorrhagic gastroenteritis have anything to do with the pancreatitis or maybe is it caused by the new food prescribed by the vet?

I hope she gets better. When not feeding a good quality dog food you need to be feeding a recipe from a vet nutritionist with supplements like at balanceit.com or you could be doing harm to them. Hopefully this is not what happened here and it's something that she can get better from. When she is better though you need to look at how and what your feeding. They didn't give you any medicine or anything? I'm not sure I would have left with just fluids if she is having a hard time walking and such.

Yes, the vet mentioned to me the balanceit website. I will look into it. But now I will have to take into consideration that she might need a low fat diet for a long time so I hope I can find some recepies for her specific condition. As long as it's clean, organic food, without pesticides, chemicals, fillers etc. I would feed it to her. I just have to figure out the balance.

They did give her antibiotics (preventatively) and some medicine for stomach irritation but no pain killers. They did not give me anything to take home and they said no water and no food allowed.

She is is sooo thirsty though. I put a sip of water in a bowl and she walked 15 feet to get to it. That is amazing, considering that she would not walk otherwise.

After two days of being on IV fluids, I took my dog to the ER for the weekend. They said her blood results are off the chart, with values 30 times as high as normal for the enzymes and they said she would need at least 7 more days on IV and even then she would have a low chance of survival because she was in such a bad shape. They gave me an estimate I could not afford 10 thousand dollars (I already paid 800 for the past two days that I didn't have), so I had to make the difficult choice of letting her go. She was only 2, not sure how she got in such a bad shape and such a bad case of pancreatitis, even the vet said that she has rarely seen so high numbers in any dogs. I am not trying to justify my choice, it was really hard to sign that paper, but my family comes first and can't starve my kids because my dog had a genetic disorder I did not know about. The vet basically said that her blood fats was so high that no diet can justify such high numbers. She was not able to process the fat and it all added up.

That estamate dosent sound right. You can be pre disposed to pancreatitus but I don't think it's an actual genetic disorder but even if it was she did chose to have it either. This is so sad.

I am so sorry you lost your baby. So unfortunate and so scary.

so very sorry for the loss of your little baby.

How tragic. I am so sorry she was put down. Wish you could've had more time with her.

I'm so very sorry for your loss.

I'm so sorry, I wish they had been able to do more, but at least she's out of her pain. Human foods, even soups, can be way too high in fat for a dog and since dogs have different nutritional requirements, it's hard to give an adequate canine diet without special guidance from a canine dietitian. Also, Yorkies are really susceptible, to pancreatitis and such foods as bacon and liverwurst should be avoided. I've given dogs liverwurst before when I wanted them to take a pill, but it's so high in fat it really shouldn't be given as a food. Again, I'm really sorry this happened to you, it's scary how fast they can go downhill.

I have read this post so many times since you posted it, I want to make some comments but I have held off, first off....perhaps in the future you may not want to get another pup until your children are grown and it is more affordable to have a pup? I can't tell you how much your comment "my family comes first" literally makes me shake and my heart race....wasn't your pup part of your family? Also, these little pups are so vulnerable, I believe you waited 5-6 days before seeking medical care, I want to point out for others who may come along that it is very important to get your pups to the vet ASAP when they become ill, these pups are vulnerable once ill and can go down so fast....

OP I'm so sorry for the loss of your pup, it is heartbreaking, I'm sure you did the best you could and thought under the circumstances.....these pups come with a life long dependency on us for a lifetime of love and care....

I am very sorry for your loss -$10K sounds like an awfull lot of money-money many would not have.


This is why we highly recommend pet insurance. These days as opposed to 30 or more years ago, vet medicine has made huge strides, and now owners do have choices when their dog becomes ill. Unfortunately many choices are quite expensive, some prohibitively so. But with pet insurance coverage those options become available to you. If the cost of $30-$40 a month for pet insurance is beyond your means, you need to seriously consider if you can afford any pet at all.


Many of us also do yearly bloodwork, co-inciding with the yearly exam. If done, it might have caught the problem much earlier on, where treatment options might not have been so expensive.


But now you know, we do have threads a stickey here about the cost of owning a pet; it is a good read, to get a handle on likely costs. Just go to our library and browse through it.

I would hope that anyone considering obtaining a pup would read this thread and pay particular attention to the above posts.

I have had a hard time thinking about a response to this thread. It makes me sick to my stomach to know that an animal has suffered and this poor young pup did indeed suffer.

Please know there are always options. Please know that these are tiny beings and they sometimes require very expensive care. If you cannot afford to provide that, yes, I would rather see a pup euthanized than letting the suffering go on; but honestly it should not have to come to that. Even if it means surrendering the pup to someone who can and/or will find a way to provide. Bottom line on this one, it was just too late by the time she got appropriate vet care. No one will ever know if she could have survived.....it is simply tragic.

Thank you all for your encouragement. I definitely made a mistake by not feeding the correct diet to the dog (because I introduced human food) but I did take her to the vet within an hour of her vomiting blood.

I never invested in pet insurance because I can afford couple of thousand of dollars for emergencies but never thought that she will be so seriously ill that she will need thousands of dollars. At the moment he died, I had already spent a thousand, so I had to make a choice between spending 2 more at the ER just for the weekend and then continuing at the vet on Monday for another week of IV or letting her go. Bringing her home was not an option because she was in so much pain that the painkiller would have only lasted 6 hours and she could not take anything orally and keep it down.

Basically after the first 48 hours she was going down, instead of getting better and that was a very bad sign.

I don't understand how she went from being so active to dieing the next day. Her blood work was so off the chart (the LIP values) that the vet said she must have had some genetic disorder where she just couldn't process that fat at all. Her being just 2.5 years old, she said that the diet I gave her still does not justify her numbers being so high (30 times over the normal for amylase etc).

My husband who never wanted a pet and I had to convince him of having this one, now says that he does want another pet in the future. I am not sure at all that I do want one. I am mad at myself because I researched for a whole week what kind of food is best to dogs in general (as in no chemicals, fillers etc) but I never looked at what is best for yorkies in particular. I only discovered this forum when searching for yorkies and pancreatitis on google, but it was too late.

Her white blood cells, red blood cells results were normal, no fever, no diarrhea. Vomiting was the only symptom. I doubt that the vet would have caught this at a regular annual exam without doing any detailed blood test for liver function etc.

If I do get a pet in the future, I will definitely make sure to talk to a pet nutritionist and do a detailed blood exam every year. I also shied away from vets because I was against vaccination, so I didn't want to be pestered about that by going there. Unfortunately, I could not find a holistic vet in my area.

She taught me several important lessons throughout her short life. It is painful that it had to end this way, time will heal everything. If not time, the cemetery will.

Best wishes to you and your family. I am sorry...a very hard lesson indeed.

For me, I chose not to have any dogs while raising my son. I was fortunate to have friends who had been through a lot with sick pups so I was very aware of what can happen. My son wanted a dog, but it was not until he was in high school that I finally got one. It was then that I had the time...and the money for emergencies. I was just lucky that I learned from others lessons.....thank you for sharing your story here because it very well may help another person(s) and dog(s).

I am sorry for this all the way around....for you and your family and for your pup who clearly suffered. Very painful lesson indeed.

I'm sorry that you had to put your baby down. That is a very difficult decision to make. I lost my Bijou to an unknown illness almost 6 years ago. I couldn't afford a vet. There were some scholarships, and because of that, we were able to narrow down that he had a gastro-issue, but by the time the funds were approved, it was to late. So I have been in your shoes.
One thing I have learned in this forum, less is more. The less information you give, the safer you'll be. I personally waited till I finished college, and could afford a pet emergency. I never want to go through that again, and I never want to see a animal go through that again.
Hugs to you in your time of sorrow.

I'm so sorry you had to go through this, I think losing a beloved pet is one of the hardest things we ever have to go through. I know much has been written about over-vaccination, and we've had many threads here discussing vaccination protocols, so that a pet owner can work with their vet and find the best answers for her dogs. Please don't believe that no vaccinations ever is the answer. If they have no immunity to any of this, even going to the hospital, may expose them to diseases that could kill them. I don't want to lecture you and I know you thought you were making informed choices, but it just scares me to death when a person says they don't believe in any vaccinations.

I'm sorry if I came of harsh in my other post I am just sad for any dog in that situation. In the future though vets are very important as are vaccines. Puppy shots and one year boosters are a must then after that you can chose not to give anymore except rabies which is against the law not to give. You also need to do yearly blood work not just to check there health but to get them heartworm prevention, heart worm meds should be given yearly. I know you think you were doing things healthy but in the end that ended up not working out. Vets are very important in owning a dog.

I am very sorry your dog was ill and put to sleep. Some vaccinations are absolutely necessary for the good of dogs, and rabies vaccination is required by law. You don't need to go to a holistic vet to determine which vaccinations will be given.

I work with my regular vet to determine which vaccination schedule I am comfortable with.

Regarding food, I see a lot of people whose intentions are good, but their dislike or fear of commercial dog food ends up causing great harm. The same applies to vet care. Good intentions that lead to poor choices in care because of fear of something being "unnatural" or "unholistic."

People who homecook for their dogs or who choose not to use 'conventional' health care need to be particularly vigilant in having their dogs tested regularly to make sure all body systems are working properly. I'm not opposed to homecooking or home remedies (I do a little myself), but they require extra care and consideration.

Not sharing all the info makes it harder for people to help and it will also make people fill in the blanks. I'm very sad you can't enjoy this message bored and trust it like a lot of us.

I am sorry for your loss of Bijou.

Regarding less information being safer in this forum: I disagree if the person is seeking information that may help save a dog's life or improve quality of life. A complete picture may reveal vital info, something that someone else has experienced with their pups.

If a person only wants support, it is perfectly okay not to share. I don't share everything about my dogs.

None of us is perfect or all knowing. Everyone makes mistakes. I've made some whoppers from lack of knowledge.

I am very thankful for this forum and its members who have taught me so much -- even when it was a little painful to hear. If it benefits my pups or future pups, I am more than willing to take it.

I'm sorry, I wasn't trying to offend, I was simply implying or replying to lynzy. I felt that lynzy came across a little brash toward the OP. Especially while the OP is grieving the loss of her baby. No harm no foul.

MaWilliams, no offense taken, and no apology necessary.

I am so so sorry for the loss of this pup. Who could have known that it would have turned out this way. There are many people on this site that could have afforded to take this pup into their care including a rescue but I didn't see where she asked for it or that this was offered before that final decision was made. She probably didn't know that it was an option and I'll bet her vet never discussed it with her. Just like no one here could have predicted that this was the route the OP was taking. Maybe it was her vets recommendation that the pup be put to rest. IDK I just wish there was a better way to guide pet owners (not that I'm the one qualified to do it) in a pups time of need. Maybe we should have assigned people that deal strictly with the "Sick and Injured" or maybe something that pops up in bold on the thread so this never happens again. This one just breaks my heart and I truly feel for the pup and the OP. Wish more could have been done that's all. Maybe as yorkie owners we can all discuss this situation with our vets and offer help where we can. Like I said IDK!

I'm sorry to learn about your recent experience resulting in the loss of your baby. That is very difficult for me to read so I can't imagine what it must've been like for you to experience.


Reading some of these posts is very tiresome for me as they can be construed as judgmental and ignorant. For example, insurance is not a guarantee of coverage. I have worked in insurance for many, many years and know this better than anyone.


Also, as much as animals are a part of the family, I do not agree that their welfare should ever be more important than humans.


Despite the above, however, I hope that this experience and the comments from some here have given you new perspective on what needs to be considered should you decide to get another pet. Though, it is probably too early for you to consider this right now anyway...


Thoughts with you x

I am sorry for the loss of your little one. What a very tragic lesson to learn in that using Google to make health decisions regarding the care of beloved pets is not a reliable source in their care. It seems that if there was an actual genetic disease it would have been caught much earlier if the decision to follow the latest all "natural" no vaccines which in turn lead to avoiding the vet who might have caught an issue that could have been genetic. Feeding a balanced diet formulated by a qualified Vet Nutritionist that would have required basic blood panel. To me it seems that if there was an actual genetic disease it would have been caught much earlier if the decision would not have made that resulted in the expert (Vet) bringing up the need to vaccinate. There is a lot of misinformation that needs to be weeded through and if you chose to follow some of these self proclaimed experts regarding not vaccinating with basic vaccines or feeding a well balanced diet without actual veterinary advice sometimes there is no turning back.

Wow! That was brutal. Remind me to look you up if I am ever grieving, that way I can even feel worse about myself. Kudos!