Our New Addition

[mobirdhunter]

Appears to be a much abused dog, apparently not happy

Makes me want to roll on my back, too...

[Quigley97]

Well it has been a rough past seven weeks. It started the second week of November. Jade started coughing and hacking this slimy clear liquid with some white foamy stuff mixed. Took her to our Vet and found out that he retired and his son bought the business and hired two vets, a man and a woman. First visit was with the woman. She went off on some tangent that Jade had Mega esophagus. she told us we would have to go to the emergency vet in Columbia, SC three hours away because there is no emergency vet in Horry County where we live. She is wrong, I transport injured birds for the Avian Conservation Center. There are two emergency vets in Horry County. I was not familiar with either and was hesitant as to which one to take her to. One of the vet techs handed us a pamphlet for Blue Pearl Vet Hospital in Awendaw and hour and half away. Off we went. They were fabulous, and after xrays and blood work we were told that she did not have megaesophagus. She was diagnosed with esophagitis and aspiration pneumonia. After week of treatment it all started all over again. Another trip to our local emergency vet and another week of treatment for the above diagnosis. Then it started all over again. We took her back to our vet and saw the male vet this time who is great. He felt that the treatment was not long enough. Prescribed two weeks of treatment along with one 20mg Prilosec a day.
I started to back track my steps and on the 27th of October I had purchased a new bag pf dog food and instead of purchasing the chicken and rice formula that we were using I grabbed a bag of beef and rice instead. All the years of breeding Labs that I had done my number one advice for owners was to NEVER change the dog's food. My daughter and wife decided to try some sensitive stomach food to see if it had any effect. Lo and behold the hacking started to lessen. That is when I realized that it may have been my fault all along that caused this problem. I broke the carnal rule. This past Monday during our follow up visit to our vet I ran this idea past him and he looked at me like "you should know better". He did recommend to up the dosage of Prilosec to 40mg per day account she does seem to produce an excess amount of stomach acid. Right now she seems to be back to her normal self with just a couple of coughs when she is excited. . Our vet told us to keep doing what we are doing with the sensitive stomach food and if she is still coughing in two weeks he wants to see her again. I am pretty sure we have everything taken care of and she will be fine. After all of the problems it seems that I caused she still thinks the sun rises and sets with me and still loves me, thank God.

[Mills]

Glad to hear she is ok. We had some issues with food when we had our lab.

[Big D]

My 10 year old lab as been on Pro Plan active dog since she was a pup. She sleeps 20 hours a day, and I'm not taking her off the Active stuff

[Dean Romig]

Gracie thrives on Pro-Plan too.





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[mobirdhunter]

It's so hard when our babies cannot tell us exactly what their symptoms are, and it seems that the Vets have to sort through everything, too.

Glad you figured this all out. I hope the problem is now completely taken care of and you can get back to developing that wonderful relationship you've already begun.

[Kevin McCormack]

With high-bred / high performance dogs you have to be ready for anything. The ultra-refinement of breeder's attempts to align the DNA loci as close to perfection as possible for optimum reproductive performance as well as that in the field can lead to some real nightmares.

My second Lab, a purebred black female whom I got at 7 weeks per "the norm", was fine up until the time she was 12-14 months old, at which time she started having epileptic-like seizures. We would be out training, retrieving dummies and working on hand signals, when she would suddenly go "off the grid" - shaking from side to side, unsteady on her feet, salivating excessively, then eventually flopping on the ground and shaking violently. She would slowly come out of these attacks confused and disoriented, staring at those around her, as she slowly struggled to recall who we were.

I took her to the vet who gave her phenobarbital as an adjunctive drug, that is, in the absence of any definitive diagnostic conclusion (she was not positively epidemic, etc.), would act as a screen or masking effect to whatever specific neurological disturbance she was experience. Basic testing battery had shown no classically distinct condition(s), so she was treated "idiopathically" as in affected by up to 75 distinctly different pathologic conditions, none of which could be positively singularly identified.

For the next 8 months or so I kept a log of when she had these onsets, what the physical conditions manifest were, and how long the duration of the episode lasted. I would report these findings to the vet every month; he continued to prescribe a phenobarbital compound throughout the periods of affectation.

At 2 yrs. of age we stopped the application of a phenobarbital compound as a "test period" of 3 months. At the end of that period she showed no more signs of periodic seisures or accompanying symptoms. They disappeared as suddenly as they had come.
It was a very strange and alarming experience.

"Cricket" lived until she was 12 years old and was a wonderful companion and a great retriever. She died on the way west to South Dakota on what was to be our last great venture together. I miss her severely to this very day.

[Double Lab]

Originally Posted by John Dallas

My 10 year old lab as been on Pro Plan active dog since she was a pup. She sleeps 20 hours a day, and I'm not taking her off the Active stuff

Same here John. My two 13 year old labs have been on PP active since they were both pups. They sleep most of the day but when called upon for action, they are raring to go. If it ain't broke, don't fix it.

Good to know you got that under control Tom. Labs are tough!