Ditto, here, Al. Though probably the temps aren't quite so high (80's, here). But the humidity, ugh. We had enormous rains here the past week, everything saturated. I'm not breathing well (just standing up is an effort!) and the dogs are prostrate. Z'ev wouldn't even come outside with me when I had to put the battery back on the fence! But - the clan is still eating.

I was thinking more about the shot that Mary gave her (I vaguely remember our vet giving Kitty some sort of long acting NSAID. Though - if you were getting Prevacox into her while she was eating, she may have had some gastritis that precipitated the whole thing.

One of the disadvantages to living on the desert is that ground is so dry that a "good rain" just hits the ground and runs.  What does manage to settle somewhere is soaked up pretty quickly but it still evaporates when the sun comes out and everything "dries up" (up into the air!!)  Tuesday during one of our heavier showers the road out front was a running river, today it's dry and solid (if a bit rutted!)

I don't think it was the previcox,  Mary gave me 14 tablets in February and I still have 3 of those left.  At no time since then as I've given them to her as needed for pain has she ever shown any bad reaction to them.  

The two shots Mary gave her were:
CERENIA (maropitant citrate) to see if that would help with the upset stomach (if that's what it was)
Ostilox (meloxicam) for simple pain control

Just got off the phone with Mary and I'll take Sasha up there Monday afternoon and let her stay overnight for blood work / fecal / urine.

Of course, knowing this girl, she's going to make a miraculous recovery over the weekend and be running and playing like a puppy!!

ETA:  and of course this evening she's acting the ass!!  Didn't want to eat out her normal metal bowl so I put a half cup in a porcelain bowl and that disappeared so I gave her a bit more.  Now she's been in and out - three<??> times this evening, mostly just "watering" stuff.

And I either left the gate to the back part of the house open or someone figured out how to open it, so I have three dogs running (and playing) around outside!!!   ARGH!!!!!!!!!!!

Sasha's back in after playing in the pool a bit ... the other two will be back in a while.....

Yeh, well, Sky and Avalanche got a good hour run!  Now I'm calling it a night and going to bed!!

ETA: Fri AM What can I say, she's not 'normal' (nothing around me is normal!) But looks to be feeling a lot better than she has. Of course, I schedule a physical for her so she has to be cantankerous and act good. Took a walk around, watered everything she could find (I keep wondering why this one shrub she 'waters' is still alive!) and has eaten part of a bowl of food. Who knows, 'cause I sure don't ...

God, I need coffee!!!!

Sat AM "Nope, not hungry!" If we get nothing more out of this episode, she will have lost some weight - but this isn't the way I want her to lose it.

Other than not wanting anything to eat, yesterday was a good day. We went out for a decent walk, she watered everything in sight and presented me with a good "pile" (looked good, well formed but still öff color")

Last evening she ate about a cup of kibble then just gave up.

Sun
And today she's staying in her corner, came out to take a walk and again, lots of water and a nice "dump." Back inside, "Nope, I'm not gonna eat." and back into her corner. She's gotten up a time or two and been crying as she gets up. That really hurts since I don't know what's going on and obviously can't do anything about it.

I'm getting ready to take her to Mary's tomorrow - meaning I'm getting myself mentally ready for whatever Mary may find.

Best of wishes and positive thoughts for you both at the vet tomorrow. I continue to read your updates, wish I could be of some help to you, just wish you all the best.

Good luck. Fingers crossed she finds the issue and it's nothing more than a duh moment.

Sun 21:00
I knew she was going to do this to me!

"Hey dad, I wanna go out!", "Hey dad, can we go over there?", "How about over there?", "Can I go get some grass?" "NO!!"

"Watch your feet kitty, it's gonna get wet!"

Two trips around the trailer and she wanted back in - which is one more than she's been doing.

She headed for the water and then to her corner when we came in but then came out to aggravate the other two. If I saw nothing but what I'd seen then, I'd say she's fine ...

Mon AM
When I got up she was laying on the rug in the middle of the living room floor. I've got the dogs trained, they don't do anything until I get some coffee, so she just watched me ... came into the kitchen when I made coffee (now, that's normal!)
Took a walk around the trailer, watered some plants and produced a small but decent looking feces.
Now she's crashed by the water bowl (cool tile floor, it's getting warm quickly.)

Guess all I have to do to make her feel well is threaten her with a trip to Mary's .... argh!!!

Thanks for the good wishes, I hope that Mary can uncover something with the overnight visit.

Waiting to hear what she found. Hope all is well.

I haven't been sleeping well - no surprise there. So the trip to Alpine and back has me wrung out.

Dropped Sasha off at Mary's. I sorta got caught by surprise, I figured one night with tests today / tomorrow and then I'd bring her back tomorrow afternoon. Nope, Mary has her scheduled for the luxury suite for tonight and tomorrow night. When I asked why, she said just in case they might need to run further tests after a baseline today. Okay, I don't have a problem with that - like I said, it just caught me a little off guard.

Poor Avalanche, he's been wandering around the Jeep - I guess he's waiting for Sasha to get out.

I want a nap but if I take a nap now it's gonna be a bad night for sleep. Blast but I'm tired.

I've been reading and it looks like it might be kidney issues ... but the reading I've been doing also tends to stress that they don't "come and go" like Sasha's have been ... oh well, I'll stop trying to second guess and wait to see what Mary has to say.

Maybe it's not coming and going, Al, perhaps she just has better days than others? I'm dealing with that, with Mishka, I can't figure out if her issue is always there, just not as bad, or if it's coming and going. She just had another episode so it's not the flea med. Anyways, Sasha's weekend sounds very promising! I'm relieved for you there. How was she on the drive over?

She's an excellent traveler, she's either standing watching everything or just crashed out until we get somewhere.

just dawned on me, my pitapata says she's been with me for 6 1/2 years - and this is the first time that I can remember that we haven't gone to sleep under the same roof.

Since the "worse" are really bad - I've seriously looked and wondered if she was going to make it through the night - and the better are like she's a normal pup, I think it's more of a "comes and goes."

ETA Tuesday AM
Entirely too quiet in this house last night.  Avalanche and Sky were both huddled in their corners - Sky eventually moved to her crate.  After Avalanche got tired of waiting for Sasha to get out of the Jeep, he kinda moped around - even the 'evening play time' 'tween these two was short lived.

ETA: Tuesday noon
Just got off the phone with Mary, about the only item of even moderate concern on the tests (and I forget the name of it), the normal high for kidneys would have been 1.8 and Sasha's was 2.2 Mary's not convinced that the Previcox we've been giving her for pain might not have caused that elevation.

No worms / heartworms or parasites; abdominal re-x-ray continues to show something around the liver / kidneys that could be nothing more than a slightly enlarged liver node. At the moment not worth an exploratory.

In other words - there's no specific reason that Mary can see that Sasha isn't feeling well.

She's going to keep her again overnight. We'll see what we will see ...

Call from Mary "I think Sasha's ready to go home, she's being 'Sasha' and very vocal about it."

Methinks Sasha's getting bored being 'locked down' and even though the folks at the vets are really good she's probably wondering what's going on - "Where is my family?"

I'll follow up later - Mary has noted that she's using a diet for sensitive stomachs (Science Diet which I really don't like, mostly because it's sold at the vet for a atrocious price) and a probiotic and Sasha hasn't indicated any problems there. Looks like I need to very carefully monitor what she's getting into here.

One dog wants in, I need to wake up and get my butt in gear ....

And this is the later.  

Blood work drawn this morning, I believe, show no difference than it had.  Mary's comment was that Sasha hadn't thrown up while she was there, her stool was a little loose but a long way from diarrhea and she definitely 'being Sasha' and ready to go home!

Sasha was a little anxious as we were driving home - well, it is 1.5 hours and while she travels well, she does seem to get bored.  Paced in the back of the Jeep and tucked her head under my elbow (resting on the console) a couple of times.

Got home, she said "Hi!" to the others, downed about a gallon of water (not really ) and headed to her spot under my feet at the computer - even though I wasn't there yet.

I fed her the Hills Science Diet Sensitive Stomach & Skin dry dog food they'd been feeding her at the Vets, she looked at me like "What, this?" but then ate all of the cup I'd given her.  Went for a walk and she was feeling fine, dropped two different piles and then looked like she wanted to go a third but nothing ever appeared.  Both piles of feces were good but a little on the soft side.

Following up on Mary's comment about Sasha just being Sasha - yeh, you know what happens when you take your car to the mechanic, right?

I'm thinking video might be necessary. If she isn't going to do it when you need her to then maybe video will at least let Mary know you aren't imagining it.

I'm pretty comfortable that Mary has seen enough to know that it's not a figment of my imagination.
Sasha's limped around the office a time or two and it's been obvious - at times - that she doesn't want to put much weight on her left front foot. That combined with what she saw in the x-rays and a strong whimper when they lifted her to the x-ray table - well, I think we're good there.

She didn't throw up while there, but then she doesn't always throw up here. It's a real hit and miss operation. They've boarded her fro me a time or two when I've had to go to the VA so they know she likes her food - but she was more nibbling on it then really eating it like she normally does.

Mary did comment that she wasn't moving as quickly as she did in the past - but I think we both put that down to 'old age' (really not *that* old) and the arthritis.

Depending on the early days of a dog they really can get old before their time sometimes. Kenzi is only 9 but she doesn't want to jog with me anymore. She used to would do a mile. Now she lags. If she lays too long she can barely get up and will limp until she works the kinks out. I suspect she came from a home with kids that wanted to ride her or have her pull them around a lot at too young of an age. She was a city dog too so walking and running on pavement early on as well.

At this point I'm going with a VERY upset stomach, if that crunchy thing she got a couple of weeks ago was a dead mouse or the like she may have contracted something from that (but surprised that it didn't show in blood/feces which didn't come until later<?>) Second day home and she's asking to go out, drinking and eating, more or less, as normal. Mary did introduce some probiotics into her diet - something I've never done before - as well as the 'sensitive stomach' diet. Is she 100%, nope but I'd say more like 80% the normal dog she was. Give me a hard time when I'm in the kitchen, comes out of her corner if I rattle anything plastic and she wants to go out if I pick up a leash. She's not enthused about longer walks yet, we're still stuck with a couple of times around the trailer and she's ready to go in but she has walked further out on those trips so I think we can step her up, but I'm also taking it at her desired level - she wants to go in and we go in.

Personally, I'm of the opinion that she just wanted a vacation!

I swear, if this dog doesn't kill herself, I'm gonna help!!!  << absolutely facetious >>

I went into town yesterday (18 miles) took Sky with me, left Avalanche on the lead off the porch and Sasha inside, like normal.  

Came home and was working on the computer when I saw Sasha pick something up off the floor (let's say about 2 hours after I got home and 7ish from when I left.)  She was chewing on the remains of a small box of raisins (you know, the size you send to school with your kid) Now we all know that grapes and raisin are forbidden except in very small quantities (and I don't even do those small quantities)

Did some fast research on what to do, gave her about 30ml of H2O2 ( ... Hydrogen Peroxide) which did nothing more than make her gag, nothing came up.  

Fast forward 12 hours - called Mary, who wasn't in so I talked with her son (he's the big animal vet to her small animal)  He did some looking and decided that there probably weren't enough raisins there to cause more than an upset stomach but to watch her for the next day or two.  Primarily looking for a lessening of urine flow.  She woke me up this AM with breath that was really rank - had a chemical smell to it but other than that, she's acting perfectly fine.

So here we go again ... watching her like a hawk for the next few days.  I swear ....

Hopefully it'll end up being something minor.

I remember when one of our dogs got up on the kitchen counter and ate an entire slice of Claim Jumper 7 Layer Chocolate Cake (if you're not familiar, Claim Jumper is known for huge portions. One slice is huge (unless your a chocolate fiend like I am, in which case, it's an appetizer... but I digress).

Like you, I was worried so I called the vet and googled etc. Didn't even phase the dog.

Best wishes.

24 hours out - no problems with the yellow river! My god that girl can piss!!!!

Feces looked dark but not tarry - but I've never had to try to guess what color Raisin feces would be ...

Setting with fingers crossed but she doesn't look like she's suffering and Zach (Mary's son) said I should expect bad things quickly if there were going to be any.

How about you send me a piece of that cake, sounds like something I could get right into - if the dogs didn't get it first!

My experience with raisins and dogs/children: like corn, what goes in is same as what goes out :p

Other than my nerves, it doesn't look like we're any the worse for wear. The dark feces was about the only indication that everything wasn't normal.

Amy I haven't seen anything that even resembles a raisin in her feces, not that I examine it all *that* closely.

I will not pay any attention to this - according to my Pitapata, it's our "666" day. 6 years, 6 months and 6 days!

aljones wrote:

I will not pay any attention to this - according to my Pitapata, it's our "666" day.  6 years, 6 months and 6 days!

I had some visitors this morning - three peccary (javelina) decided to lay in the shade out behind my place.  Since Avalanche was having a fit - he wanted to go play - I decided to fire a couple of shots over them and help them wander on.  I've seen the scars on one dog who went out to "play" and it wasn't nice - he's lucky he survived, javelina's can be vicious when they feel threatened.

We're getting enough people down here now that they don't feel particularly threatened by people but they weigh in at about the same as Avalanche and right now I don't need any more vet bills!!

We are figuring once the inlaws get settled, and we get relocated to go to their place to hunt some javelinas. Haven't done much hog hunting. Cousin had dogs to hunt the hogs around here. They are definitely no joke.

When I lived south of Houston we had a plethora of wild hogs - European Hogs who had gone feral. I'd be inclined to say that if you put a 'little' javelina (at 50 pounds) into a match with a wild hog at 100+ the hog would lose!

A wild hog is definitely not a joke, I've seen them destroy a field of maize (sorghum) in a week, looked like the farmer just plowed and disked it. A javelina on the other hand is more apt to tear up a small area while it's looking for food / water.

But I'd rather have a hog pissed at me than a javelina! I can't outrun either one, never could have but a javelina's in it for the fight and it's tusks will tear a man or dog to pieces!!