Yesterday my stepdad displayed a present that somebody had left in the dining room, after he picked it up with a plastic bag, and asked if anybody had a clue what the two orange things in it were. I thought it was Rusty, the Golden, but it must have been Isaac, the half-and-halfer, because Isaac is the one who eats things.
My earplugs. Damn dog! My latest pair (I go through them pretty fast) had vanished the night before. We had a good laugh, and my plugs are now out of the dog’s reach.
This thread has me somewhere between hysterical laughter and financial panic.
ROTFLMAO*
This is too funny.Luckily for us,though,we’ve only had to go to the vet’s ONE time before we started locking the garbage pail in a cabinet. It seems that Rumpleteazer,our 4 y/o DSH mix kitty, is enamoured of those little red strings that come around packaged bologna slices.She would dig through the garbage to get them and then she would EAT the stupid things.We once had to take her to the vet to get one removed and after that,we locked up our garbage.
Nonetheless…I would do ANYTHING to save my precious kitty.She’s like my own child.
Arky, has your dog had a test for Addison’s? Losing weight, lethargic, urinating a lot, etc. sound very much like a possible case of Addison’s, which can be treated quite easily by the way. Did your vet run a blood panel? Look at the sodium/potassium ratio and if it is below 27, Addison’s is likely. A normal sodium/potassium ration is between 27-40 for a dog. Untreated, Addison’s will lead to shock and death, so I wanted to mention the possibility.
An ACTH stim test can also rule it out or confirm it.
I can’t estimate what the total cost for my cat Missy was in the last year of her life. I took her to the vets every other day for sub-Qs, and she had to have full blood panels run every other week. And the special diet, twice-daily meds and vitamins added up. And she was hospitalized once a month so they could put her on IVs to flush her system. A week before she died, she had surgery to remove a badly infected tooth.
I’d do it all over again, I was very fond of that cat.
I once had a mini-Eskimo that masticated/ate my expensive Kirby vacuum. He chewed up the cord and hose, and ate the cloth bag. The surgery to remove the Kirby bits from his innards was equal to the cost of the vacuum. Sadly, he died a year later due to a cardiac defect.
Yes, he had blood work done, and I do remember the vet mention potassium, I think, and that that stuff was normal. After his tooth extraction and cleaning, he’s perked up a bit. He’s o.k for a 15 year old dog, the vet said. Not perfect, but o.k.
Oh, and if any of y’all think I’m considering putting him down, I’m not, unless the vet tells me I should.
Arky, if you have a copy of the blood work, do a quick check of the sodium to potassium ratio. Both values can be “normal” but it is the ratio that is indicative of Addison’s disease. It is an often-missed diagnosis.
If you don’t keep copies of your dog’s blood work, start a file and get copies of all yor records, at least blood panels. It is important to have these records in the event of an emergency.
Anytime a dog is drinking and peeing too much, and bladder values are normal, I would suspect and adrenal problem and run an ACTH stim test for Addison’s or Cushing’s. It is an easy, non-invasive test. Just a thought.
Arky, your vet can’t tell you that you should put your dog down. Professional ethics don’t allow it. If you ask specifically about it, the vet can give you an honest opinion about what they’d do with their own dog in that situation. That’s it. Vets and veterinary support staff cannot just tell you, “It’s time to put your pet down.” Even when an animal is in obvious pain and has zero quality of life, we aren’t allowed to suggest euthanasia.
Well, I asked him straight up if he thought I should, and he said “oh, no, he’s not to that point yet”. If I have to take him in again, I’ll ask him again. It’s o.k. to answer the question, isn’t it?
Yeah, if a client brings the subject up, we can answer with total honesty. Of course, it’s a lot easier to say an animal’s not to that point yet when somebody else is dealing with the bladder and bowel incontinence, but I guess that’s really neither here nor there.
Personally, I think most of the symptoms you’ve described (weight loss, inappetance, weakness) as well as a host of others can be explained by advanced dental disease. Dental problems can also lead to elevations in liver and kidney enzymes as well as electrolytes. Often these values return to normal after dealing with the dental disease, because the elevations were the result of dehydration.
I guess I should clarify the first part of that last post. If a client asks, we can tell them what we’d personally do in the same situation. We cannot, however, tell them that it is or isn’t time to put Fluffy down. That has to be the owner’s decision.
Cases of obvious abuse and neglect are, of course, a little different.
I did the same thing a couple months ago, but kitty didn’t make it. What a heart-wrenching day – my three year old cat falls out of a tree 35 feet up, rushed to the vet with what looked like a broken pelvis or spine injury, rushed to the emergency vet in the next state to stabilize for emergency surgery, then a phone call at 4am letting me know that she had gone into cardiac arrest and had been brought back twice through CPR, then my having to make the decision not to give her CPR the next time she went down. Turns out she sustained a massive neurological injury from the fall (she hit another tree on the way down) and her systems were shutting down one by one. She didn’t last long after the phone call.
I had always wondered, after seeing a show on Animal Planet, if I would pay whatever it took to get my kitty better. I didn’t even think twice when the emergency vets asked for $1000 as a deposit (practically before they asked the cat’s name). What was terrible was getting the refund when I returned the next day to pick up her cage and collar.
Maybe that’s true for some vets but it is NOT true for my former vet,Dr.Marcum. In Oct 2001, we had an incident happen where Rumpleteazer(she of the bologna string eating)came into indirect contact with an outside cat.Because of the indirect contact(she was inside and he was outside with a screen window inbetween),one of our other cats,Precious,became severely agitated.And I mean SEVERELY agitated.She began to attack anyone and anything that came near her. We figured she was just reacting to the other cat’s scent or something,so for her safety as well as the safety of our other two cats,we seperated everybody.After three hours,Rumpleteazer and Buttercup(who was only like 16 wks old at the time)were calm enough to be around each other and were given the run of the house.Precious was another matter.We kept her isolated with her own food and water and litterbox with frequent contact from either CG or I throughout the weekend(it happened on a Fri night).On Mon,when she was still extremely agitated,we corralled her and took her to the vet,who found nothing physically wrong with her.He suggested we not to a blood panel because that wouldn’t tell him anything he didn’t already know.He said it was most likely extreme territorial agression and prescibe kitty Valium. We also chalked it up to territorial agression because she had a very dominant personality a nd it wouldn’t have been the first time in the two and a half years we’d had her she’d shown aggression to people or other animals.We agreed to try the Valium and see if it calmed her down.When we got home,we gave her some wet food(a treat since all our kitties eat is dry crunchies)and her dose of Valium–1/2 pill. We waited all day(we’d gone first thing that morning at around 8 am).It didn’t calm her down.If a nything it wigged her out even more and she became so agitated and aggressive it was almost impossible to leave the room after visiting her.CG and I sat down a nd talked about it for a few hours and then we also talked to the vet.The vet said we could either spend $$$$ on behavioral therapist which might or might work or put her down.He suggested that putting her down was really the best option because (according to him)99% of the time behavior therapy didn’t work with cats. CG and I talked about this some more and in the end,we decided to put her down.It was tough getting her into the carrier for that last trip and she knew something was wrong.I held her in my arms as the vet tech(the vet couldn’t be bothered apparently)slipped the needle into a vein in her hind leg and she cussed a blue streak before she slipped off to sleep.After that I spent probably an hour(thank god it was almost closing time!)holding her and telling her how much I loved her and how sorry I was for having to do such a mean thing.The vet wouldn’t even let us take her home to bury in our backyard. He said we had have her ‘properly disposed of’. I found out later that being ‘properly disposed of’ meant that she’d be tossed into a van with a bunch of other dead,sometimes rotting,carcasses to be taken to a facility where they’d be incinerated.
After that, I no longer trusted Dr.Marcus and have since found a wonderful vet whom I adore.
A year ago, my Big Kitty had an intestinal obstruction. Fortunately, he did not need surgery, but he did spend a weekend at the vet’s on laxatives and sub-qs (also getting two enemas, which I was more than happy to let the vet handle).
$750 later, he was healthy again. It was an easy decision though: Spend the money, the cat definitely lives. Don’t spend the money, he definitely dies. Cut and dried, no real decision to be made. The money had to be spent.
However, that same cat has taken to peeing on my bed because he’s mad that I won’t let him outside all the time. :mad:
Winnowill–if it had been a cut and dried decision with Precious,we would have done everything in our power to save her but according to the vet,there was nothing to be done except put her to sleep.
That damned vet is the reason I tell everybody I know NOT to go to him because he is unfit to be a vet.
Our 5 yr. old Pit/Sheltie, was diagnosed with Addison’s Disease 3 mths ago. A trip to the emergency vet, on the weekend, (in the middle of the night, of course) kept for 2 days.She was then transported to her regular vet. 5 days later, a lot of tears, $1400.00, she came home. She is back to her old self, but has to be on med’s for the rest of her life. Would I do it again? In a heart beat! Our pets are part of the family.
IDBB, I amend my statement to read “an ethical vet can’t tell you to put your pet down.” As I see you’ve learned the hard way, some vets are more ethical and professional than others. It’s just a damn shame you got one towards the low end of the spectrum.
There could have been any number of things wrong with that cat; territory aggression tops the list, but I’m also thinking brain tumor, rabies, feline leukemia or infectious peritonitis leading to neurologic complications, electrolyte imbalance, God only knows.
You’ve already seen the wrong way to deal with the situation. The right way would have been to tell you that territory issues top his list, but there could be other, serious problems with the cat. A chem panel and films probably won’t show anything, but it might, and we can certainly do them if you want. We can also get you contact info for behaviorists, although we’ve not seen good success rates for cats. Or, if you just can’t live like this, we can help you try to move her to another home. Since she appears to be physically healthy, I’d try moving her to a home where she can be the only cat before I resorted to euthanasia.
This thread has kept me laughing tonight. Except for the shitty vet part. We also fired a vet, for pushing unnecessary hip surgeries (long story for another day).
Taj, my female doberman/shepard cross (we think) once ate an entire pair of panyhose whole. Yep, 3 feet of nylon. But she puked it right back up.
This is the same dog who was digging in my mom’s rose garden a few years ago (she knew it was a no-no, that’s what made it fun) when she had a massive heart attack. My brother found her head down in the hole she was digging. Yep, she dug her own grave. Funny now, and I was even able to smile at the time.
One of our Newfs just ate a chicken. A whole chicken. Bones and all. Touch and go there for a few days, but she’s fine. Go figure.
