Squirt has been sick for about 10 days now. 2 trips to the vet and no real answers other then she seems to have pneumonia.My vet set the xrays up to csu for an official opinion and we dis not hear back today. Unofficial second opinion was my uncle thinks she has masses in her lungs/or chest cavity, looking at the xrays on his phone. I will post the xrays to see if anyone else here has seen anything like it.

Started on the 20th where she decided to not eat and was lethargic and stiff. I could still coax her to eat. She is excessively drinking water and having accidents. Fast forward to this past sunday where mid day her breathing got really loud when her mouth was open and when it was closed it sounded like a hard sniff rather then normal breathing. Her energy level is way down. She will hardly eat. Went back to the vet yesterday when tehy did the xrays and more blood work. She has a slightly elevated wbc but otherwise everything was normal (again)Me and her got in a fight over her taking the antibiotics That we started yesterday. Im starting to think maybe she gave up and is dying.

This is the radiology report. Turns out even though she is only half sibe she has a problem that is seen more in sibes then any other breed. Actually to the extent that merck lists it as a sibe/northern breed problem.

I have no idea how to help, I can read the pages you put up and look at the pictures but in either case they mean nothing to me.

Story of my life I think, you take it one day at a time ... if Squirt wakes up tomorrow, you've got another day to get on with. There'll be good days and there'll be really screwed up days but until you're ready to let go there are more days.

Started prednisone today and got some appetite stimulator on top of the carprophen and the antibiotic. She seems a little better. She ate about half a pound of chicken and some frosted mini wheats today. First substantial amount of food since the 19th. Still will not eat any of the dog food. And she really does have a doggy buffett. At this rate it looks like it will be malnutrition that kills her, that and the chicken at the local grocery/hardware/fishing store is $16 a lb. She dis eat 2 big bites of hills rx puply food. My vet gave me a bunch of stuff that had expired within the last 2 months just to try and get her to eat.

Crazy how this really is a husky/northern breed issue and no one on the board has ever posted about it and my vet (has a husky and a half husky) had never heard of it. But it looks like she might be on prednisone for her whole life.

So Kye has Esinophillic Brochipneumapathy. I believe I did make a post about it years ago but good luck finding it. I initially chased it as a food allergy, which he is severely allergic to chicken, and then went through several other standard allergy treatments before getting to the bottom of it. It comes on fairly suddenly usually between the ages of 4 and 8. he was pushing 5ish when he was diagnosed. They will basically suffocate if not treated, and pred is the only treatment. they won't respond to other allergy meds or shots. At the time Kye was diagnosed (8 years ago) it was more prevalent in guard dog breeds like Rottweilers, not in Siberians. It took him about a week on the higher dose pred to start to feel and breathe better (and the pred will bring the appetite back full force), after that I lower the dose until we found our maintenance dose. You don't want them on a large dose long term or it will destroy their liver but Kye has successfully been on a low dose pred for the last 8 years and his liver counts always come back fine.

These are his x-rays from way back. the white whisps in the lung cavities are what give it away. They are just inflamed and packed full which is restricting the breathing and causing the cough and lethargy.





It's kinda interesting to go back and look. I forgot about the imbedded pellet we found still lodged in his ribs when we were searching for his breathing issues.

@twisterii I only found it mentioned once, here

All I can say is "Interesting ..."

Xrays look very similar. Squirt is doing much better we are doing 1 more week of antibiotics for the pneumonia and repeating xrays in 3 weeks. We are leaning at that it is ebp based on the findings in the xrays that while she didnt get really sick this has happened before. Today was the last dose of prednisone at 2x per day going to 1xper day for awhile if not indefinitely. But 3 vets didn't see it and were perplexed. Luckily we were able to send it out. It isnt very common.

@Lostmaniac  Well???
You've been too quiet, how's the pup doing???

Ive been playing mediator between dogs and kids for the last 3 days. Squirt is almost back to normal. She started with this weird periodic shivering. Dispite the foot of snow overnight i dont think shes cold. Looked up prednisone side effects and shivering can be one of them.

There are a lot of oddball side effects to pred you may see crop up. The hardest for us was when Kye's stomach started to drop and he got pot bellied. Really difficult to tell if he's at a proper weight now since all the muscles around his middle have basically melted and his stomach just sags. We didn't have too many issues with anger, but it was a possible side effect. He was a chow hound pre-pred and it did get worse. Keeping as low of a dose as manageable helps. I only dose him once a day. To find my maintenance dose I basically dropped his dose down once a week until I started to notice his cough was coming back then stepped back up to the dose where he didn't have that and that is what he's been at for a long time. During allergy season I will up him some because he has seasonal allergies that will cause the EBP to flair much harder at times. Catching what it was at first was hard but once we got him sorted he's lived a totally normal life with it. Long-term pred use is always iffy but that's where trying to find the lowest dose that retains life quality is important. His hips are going to fail him long before his lungs or liver will at this point.

So far just seeing a little bit of i dont want to call it food aggression but she was always gentle about taking things, even when it was  unwanted intercepting McDonald's chicken nuggets between the bag and my mouth while driving and now she will get my fingers. And still shivering but its getting less often.

@TwisterII @JENN  going to relay what you have experienced with this because she has never seen it and my uncle has also never seen it. My uncle recommended what radiology said about doing the swab but thats a trip to csu respiratory clinic at the vet school. Thats both expensive and a hotel room.