SchnauzerMax

I’d ring them and describe it and see what the vet says. Max had something similar. It turned out to be absorbing sutures that weren’t behaving as described. If I remember correctly, they had to remove them like the old style ones. Post surgery consults should be free unless they have to do something unexpected and major.

Gastrointestinal disorders can be associated with stargazing and licking their lips.  Someone on another Schnauzer Facebook page posted this link 
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4204840/

I don’t know if they are connected but lip smacking is considered to be a reaction to nausea or pain. 

She was a special little madam and will be missed. 

Insurance is a gamble.

If you pay your premiums and don’t get anything back, you feel it’s wasted money.

But....

We have had a a couple of catastrophic illnesses (2 emergency once offs and one long term chronic) and even with rapidly increasing premiums, we are still tens of thousands of dollars better off. And yes, I do mean tens of thousands better off.

We could NEVER save enough to cover those costs by putting money away in a bank account.

if you don’t get to claim against your insurance, you should be happy, you have a healthy dog. 

He sounds like he has vision problems. It may have absolutely nothing to do with a coccidia infection. 

Max did all those sorts of things. Running into poles, not being able to judge distances when jumping on and off the sofa etc. He was diagnosed with SARDS which meant he had gone from 100 to 0 sight in about 2 months and we didn’t realise the severity of his vision loss.

You might need a eye specialist examination because with Max, our local vet thought something was wrong but was uncertain as to what exactly.

We use kangaroo mince (human grade) mixed with Vets all Natural Mix. It’s a mix of rolled oats and other stuff that you soak and add to the meat in a specific ratio to mimic their diet in the wild.. Kangaroo because  Max got pancreatitis while we were trying out other  commercial diets that were supposedly good for diabetic dogs and hence everything else has too much fat or is so tasteless that he would not eat it - which is dangerous for a diabetic dog. You could use whatever meat you think appropriate.

From memory, normal stitches are 10 days to 2 weeks to be removed. So, if they are still in evidence then, ask your vet. 

On 12/06/2019 at 6:54 PM, teddybeans said:

My boy ended up getting more than a handful of teeth pulled as the X-ray showed bone loss and it had to go.  Including the molars.

 

He is doing well well after surgery, almost like nothing happened.

 

im curious about how the stitches work, vet says it will desolve over time.  How do they desolve, they look pretty thick to me.

With most dogs, they just dissolve. With my Max, they didn’t and had to be removed.

Just keep checking his mouth and if they don’t dissolve, take him back to the vets.

I forgot to add - always read the fine print and know what you are covered for.

If you are going to get insurance, do it as soon as you get your puppy. Otherwise anything diagnosed before insurance is a pre-existing condition and not covered. 

We have had a couple of serious health scares where the insurance meant we could cope financially - emergency doggie open heart surgery and diabetic ketoacidosis (different dogs). 

We could not have put enough money away each month to cover either of the above. So look at it as an emergency life saver not as something you have to get your money’s worth from.

To much tripe. Should be a treat. Not everyday.

Could be pancreatitis. A blood test at the vets will prove it / rule it out.

On 01/03/2019 at 11:26 PM, Loving my Oldies said:

What’s a UX designer?

 

Hard to understand why you are assuming at the start of your research that there is a problem?  

User Experience a kind of web developer.

2 hours ago, Zena's mum said:

Wow. That’s difficult. I had no idea really. How old is your fur friend? Is he not interested in food? The dog I was looking after was hungry all the time. Really hungry. I found that difficult as he was only allowed his two meals a day. All measured and just vet prescribed biscuits as he doesn’t digest the raw food. It’s such a difficult life. 

Sorry to hear that you are going through a bad situation.

Max is 7.5 years old. The total lack of appetite was due to the pancreatitis, but he is a fussy eater. He refuses to eat Hills Prescription Diet which is what the vet wants him to eat. It smells disgusting to me, so I can’t blame him. We have discovered he loves kangaroo so fingers crossed...

Winston Churchill was quoted as saying “when going through hell, keep going”.

So true.

10 hours ago, Zena's mum said:

I just recently had my first experience dog sitting a diabetic dog too. I had him for a full week. A week  of morning and evening injections. It certainly is very daunting. Pretty easy as you say but secretly I was happy to see him go home. I hated dealing with it. Totally out of my comfort zone. He is type 2 bought on by bad diet. I feel sorry for the poor dog and his family too but they have learnt a valuable lesson.

 

Schnauzer Max - I don’t know much about diabetes in dogs and didn’t even realise they can get type 1. Must be hard for you.

Zena’s Mum,

yes it is hard. We thought he had more bladder stones but it turned out to be diabetes. 

Diabetes complicates any other disease or illness. 

He was diagnosed in April and it still isn’t under control. He developed pancreatitis a month ago and that in conjunction with diabetes is life threateningly scary. A diabetic dog that won’t eat ends up in intensive care in hospital on a drip with glucose in one port and insulin in the other. 

My understanding of diabetes in dogs is that a large proportion are type 1 diabetics I.e. autoimmune induced rather than diet. 

My Max is diabetic - type 1.

The more carbohydrate you feed, the more insulin you will need. 

High blood sugar is dangerous, really low blood sugar is just as dangerous.

A rebuttal to the original study 

https://www.dogsfirst.ie/raw-chicken-does-not-cause-paralysis-in-dogs/

Interestingly, looking at the paper, the significance is with the bacteria Campylobacter, not feeding raw. They don't mention what the control group was fed and they appear to have thrown out results for small dogs basically because it would have made the results less significant. 

Also, as far as I can see, the design is more correlational than proving cause i.e. campylobacter infection is more common in dogs with APN, and campylobacter infection can be caused by contaminated raw meat. Just because events occur together does not prove one event causes another. 

UTI?

He's gorgeous isn't he?

Minis and giants are very similar in nature barring size (obviously). Our experience of all 3 sizes is that all 3 are stubborn in nature but standards are often a bit softer. 

There are different types of bladder stones. struvite (calcium oxalate?) stones cannot be dissolved. Complete blockage of the uretha is deadly. you cannot tell the type of stone without pathology. I would not be mucking around with this.

Dissolvable stitches don't always dissolve completely. I was told it depends on the individual dog. When my mini schnauzer Max was desexed, he had dissolvable stitches and they didn't entirely dissolve. The remnants worked their way out over a couple of months. The vet did snip one and pull it out because it was irritating him. If he ever needs surgery and stitches again, we will ask for the non-dissolvable ones.

Max has just cost us over $5000 for emergency surgery for bladder stones. There's not a lot of options when they are peeing blood

But for Remy, the most I have had to pay was $350 for xrays because he ate a box of staples - he was fine because he chewed them very carefully and we gave him lots of soft food afterwards to help things 'pass'.

So I guess it evens out in the end.