A health success....no diarrhea and moved to RAW feeding

[jacksdad]

As some of you know Jack has been having issues with diarrhea for the better part of 2011. it started back in late march, beginning of April. I always felt it was related this is anti seizure medications, but the vets at the time just kept pointing to his blood work and saying "meds in safe theoretic range, must be something else". I am not a vet, but even so I felt strongly they were wrong. Two things in my mind supported that we at the very least needed to look CLOSELY at the medication. One, due to him having 1 seizure a week over the course of mid February to mid March lead to an increase in his medication dose. Not soon there after he started having diarrhea. at first we looked at things out of the ordinary he might have eaten. But as time went by this became less and less likely. At his worst he basically turned into a zombie personality wise, had difficulty standing, would randomly fall over, and basically had liquid diarrhea all the time. All text book symptoms of his medication being at too high a dose and level in his blood. Even though I continued to press and ask "could it be his meds"... I was told No, his blood work last month shows safe levels. Long story short I was able to get him another blood test, his levels in the blood were too high. Medication was reduced, symptoms cleared up for almost a month, then started up all over again. Even longer story short, I felt the medication was still the cause, the vet felt it was Inflammatory bowl diseases and wanted to put him through a $2000+ procedure to check for IBD. I went looking for a new vet because the second thing that in my mind supported my opinion was that when his medication was reduced and levels in his blood went down symptoms went away initially. later they would never go away but just become less acute.

Started with the new vet in late September. New vet agreed it was a bit early to go down the IBD route, that prolonged diarrhea could cause hardening of the blow tissue and show up on a ultra sound. New vet felt it was worth digging deeper into his epilepsy medication. So save you from an entire novel....after switching to a different variation of his medication, we came to the following conclusion.

1. even at low and safe levels Jack appears to be sensitive to the bromide in potassium bromide or sodium bromide. which are two variations of the "same" medication
2. he needed to have his nutrition improved. (I had been sort of "paralyzed" be even the remote possible issue of IBD and worried that any changes I had tried to improve his nutrition might be causing him issues so basically was feeding him cooked chicken and little else)

How we got him out of this. First we started with probiotic tablets twice a day for 8 weeks, I give him a weekly B12 shot (though this isn't forever) and then a month ago the vet said go to my nutrition plan that I had kept getting "scared" off of for various reasons. should have just followed my instincts on this one, live an learn.

With in a days of diving in and improving his nutrition Jack started clearing up. 1 month and 1 week later, he hasn't had a single case of diarrhea like we had been seeing.

Over the course of December I had been giving Jack a raw chicken wing or two during the week to see how he would do. Then this last Tuesday I started him on 100% raw (minus training treats of course). He is LOVING it, and with a signal incident where he came close to diarrhea, he has had those nice hard poops raw feeders always talk about. I might have moved a little fast with adding in some beef, he didn't have such a nice poop after that meal, but still no diarrhea. Right now meat wise he is eating raw chicken wings for breakfast and dinner and is getting about a 1/2 cup a day of veggies.

he has been off the probiotic tablets for a month and in place I give him some plain yogurt at least 3 times a week mixed with both honey or brewer's yeast or both.

While his diet over the course of the last month has expanded a bit more than I am listing out, I am hoping to expand it more so he gets more than just chicken and his veggies are also more varied.

Only down side to this all.....his seizures are back and in some ways worse. seizure wise, he had a really good run there for a little while. But his medication was too high and the side affects were horrible. talk about cure worse than the disease. My personal hope is by feeding him RAW I can better ensure he has the nutrition he needs and that may help him better tolerate the medications. Keep your finger crossed because we are about to find out. over the last 3 months he has averaged just a little over a week between seizures. We are doing a blood test tomorrow and it's possible we may have to increase his does back up. right now he is on the lowest dose he has ever been on. my gut says the level in his blood dropped too low.

If anyone is interested or needs to do some research, this site is the best I have found for epilepsy in dogs http://www.canine-epilepsy-guardian-ang ... efault.htm

getting his diarrhea resolved and him over to raw has been a big relief for me. I am sooo glad it's working out so far.

Funny story. first time I gave him a chicken wing. he looked in the bowl, back to me, sniffed, looked back to me, touched with is paw, looked back to me. it was almost like "WHAT THE HECK IS THIS" or "YOU EXPECT ME TO EAT WHAT???" now his is literally JUMPING with excitement when I drop the chicken wing into his bowl. Jack is ALL ABOUT the food. He LOVES to eat. But I have NEVER seen him this excited about eating anything. heck he even seems to enjoy his veggies all by them self.

Moral of the story....not a new one by any means but basically, don't be intimidated by "experts", they aren't perfect. Oh and do your own research too. Don't hesitate to get a second opinion and vet who will listen to your concerns. It's looking like I may have been right, but I had zoned in on the phenobarbital. The new vet did listen to me, but not to the point of just reinforcing or agreeing with me to earn a "paycheck". the new vet took in the evidence and symptoms and said...meds maybe, pheno...hummm maybe not. And looked closer at the bromide based medication.

[Nettle]

Brilliant news - so pleased to hear of your (Jack's) progress.

All of us need to beware of the vet/doctor that looks at test results and not at the patient.

Nobody knows our dogs the way we do.

And something I read in a translation of a 9th century herbal - possibly the first ever written in England - "When the patient does not improve, a good doctor changes the remedy: a bad doctor doubles the dose". Not always true, but often.

[Horace's Mum]

Great progress, long may it continue! Have you thought about trying him with herbal remedies? Many many people with epileptic dogs have had great success with using skullcap and valerian tablets, sometimes on their own and sometimes as an addition to enable them to reduce the meds or get a more effective result from the ones they are on. They are well known in this use.

[jacksdad]

I knew I shouldn't have posted this...soon as I did I just knew I was asking for trouble.

Jack spent the day at the vet hospital. Good news, wasn't diarrhea...bad news..we have no idea what was wrong with him. best guess is it's related to his seizures.

basically in a nutshell, he "turned off", just wanted to be held. any stimulus and he would twitch and spasm like he was about to go into a seizure. he even briefly "seized" up, just like when he goes into a seizure. vet thought he might have gotten some poison so off to the emergency vet we went. by the time we got there he had improved enough that the poison worry was pretty much eliminated.

so, he spent the day in the hospital getting blood work and observation. He is home now and resting and seems normal, or at least what passes for normal with Jack. something similar but not identical happened back in april/may of 2011. never got a definitive cause for that one either.

I swear, it's been 1 step forward, one step back the last several months.

[Nettle]

Biiig ))))))))))))HUGS(((((((((( to you, Jacksdad, and hope it's found to be something simple and easy to treat. It's such an unhappy time when our dog is ill and we can't tell why, but he has had a full workup so anything untoward should come to light.

Don't rule out a UTI - symptoms for this can be really strange sometimes.

Don't undervalue what progress you have made with him that he feels rough and sees his humans as comforters. That's great.

[JudyN]

Oh poor Jack I hope he's back to full health soon. ((((Hugs))))

[ClareMarsh]

Poor Jack , Ted says get well soon

[jacksdad]

Thanks everyone. he seems to be doing much, much better this morning. last night it was like I had grown a tumor he was that plastered to me all night.

Nettle, since we don't know what happened, in my mind nothing is off the table. I will keep UTI in mind. In my line of work I have long ago learned until you can 100% rule something in or out, it's possible. I apply that to Jack too.

The only thing that showed up of note that the emergency vet was a little concerned about was a liver value was up. my vet is going to look at this and compare it to past blood tests. we are hoping it is just the somewhat normal hit the liver takes when on phenobarbital. we are still waiting on his pheno blood test and that also does a liver check so there will be a better picture today. The emergency vet did suggest a liver bile test, which gives a much clearer picture of the current effect of pheno on the liver, but since we don't know for sure what caused yesterday's episode she was a hesitant to push for it due to concerns about false positive results. meaning if the liver was processing something else and just needed to run it's course, we wouldn't know how much of the results were a possible toxin or how much was the pheno.

I have talked to my vet about doing this test in the past, but she felt his does was so low and he was just barely into the theoretic range when you run the blood test to check blood levels that it wasn't necessary....but he has shown him self to be pretty sensitive to the medications even at low/safe levels. might be worth discussing again.

My manager was kind enough to give me one more day off to observe him. which is already working out to have been a good thing. I have noticed a few things in the last hour or so since waking up and so I will be calling the vet in a minute or two...just waiting for a reasonable time to not abuse the call anytime privileges since it the concerns don't have super urgent feel to them.

[Emmaloo]

Well done, Jack's Dad! My vet always says what I think is brilliant: "I'm the vet but you're the person who lives with your pet, so trust your instincts." (Or something like that....)

Sorry you had more issues just after celebrating your success. SO frustrating. But keep up the good work!

[minkee]

I'm so sorry to hear that Jack's gone and got himself in a pickle again, I was all set to write 'congratulations!' after reading the first post. Well the congratulations still stand, and I hope that you work all this out soon.

And something I read in a translation of a 9th century herbal - possibly the first ever written in England - "When the patient does not improve, a good doctor changes the remedy: a bad doctor doubles the dose". Not always true, but often.

What a great quote. I think you could also substitute 'trainer' for 'doctor' in there too. I love it when ancient things still make so much sense in the modern world. By which I mean the book, Nettle!

[Nettle]

By which I mean the book, Nettle!

[jacksdad]

So, a quick update.

The raw feeding continues to go very well. continue to NOT have diarrhea. So that is good.

he is still pretty "wiped out" from Monday, and shows signs of elevated stress levels. Which means he is HIGH "energy" on walks, but crashes when we get home. heck yesterday for him, he basically didn't get any exercise and he was out like a light with us at 10pm.

So I am doing my best to give extra distance from his triggers, and take walks in places he has low risk of running into his triggers for few days.

Tuesday he had some "hive" looking bumps on his muzzle and commissure, and his muzzle looked swollen. so that is what I was referencing above. by the time the vet got to us, they were gone. they came back just a little yesterday morning, but were gone by noon again. nothing this morning. though his muzzle is still just a little swollen. Vet left me with some benadryl, but we are holding off for now. So, it's looking like an extreme allergic reaction to something that was toxic to him. At least that is our best guess to date. but what is the questions. It might be something I am feeding him, it could be a bug/insect bite, something he ate on the walk, we just don't know.

The good news, he does seem to be getting better.

[jacksdad]

another update.

sometimes this afternoon his muzzle swelled up again and now has a rather large blister on it. Vet took a look and feels that whatever happened to him on Monday now looks to very possibly have been a insect or more likely a spider bite. we are giving him benadryl and keeping an eye on him.

[Emmaloo]

Wow, JD, it never rains but it pours! I'm so glad he's with you, though, getting such good care, the poor guy.

[Helen2009]

I'm glad raw is working for you Jacksdad.. I have to be careful with my girls diet.. she has cramping episodes, where he tummy goes very hard and she rocks. She's only ever done it a few times and some things that she eats can be triggers. Its horrible seeing them like that, and I have every sympathy for you and for Jack. Get well soon Jack and keep up the good work Dad!!