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Mystery Illness


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So Arnold has been refusing to eat for 2 days now and we took him to vet this afternoon and have no definite diagnosis of the cause. At this stage we are treating it as gastro (he has vomited a few times but no diarrhoea) and he is on antibiotics. He also has a lump on his shoulder that they did a skin scraping on and it came back with nothing but they want to treat it as a fungal thing and if it doesn't respond he will need to have a biopsy done on it.

He is drinking and has remained hydrated although he is definitely not his usual self. I'm concerned about him not eating for so long, he has lost over 1.5kg in the last couple of days and I've offered him just about everything to get him to eat and he won't touch anything :(

If he doesn't show interest in eating tomorrow I'm really going to start worrying.

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Obstruction was discussed but she is leaning towards gastro as he doesn't have a history of eating toys/objects and I haven't seen anything that has been chewed around the place. I guess if there is no improvement in a few days we will have to look more at that being a possibility.

I just feel so helpless and want to make him feel better.

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:( It is an awful feeling ...

There is no way I would leave him 'a few more days' without at least bloodtests and an xray to search for a twist, or a foreign body ....

They don't need to be a chewer.. just need, one time, to quickly gulp something like a part of a corncob, or a cork, or a thick leaf, bit of bone or plastic ( most of which will NOT show on normal Xray , but which are easily found with a barium follow thru.)

hoping it is just a gastritis ... :)

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Get a blood test done. Without wishing to alarm you, this is how Louis was when he went down with IMHA in May. He just suddenly stopped eating and became very lethargic. Gastro was initially suspected but a blood test quickly showed something much more serious. Louis went from apparently fine on a Thursday evening to suspected gastro on Friday evening to almost losing him on the Monday. I wouldn't wait a few days.

I hope Arnold does just have just a touch of gastro and soon picks up and stops worrying you :)

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Get a blood test done. Without wishing to alarm you, this is how Louis was when he went down with IMHA in May. He just suddenly stopped eating and became very lethargic. Gastro was initially suspected but a blood test quickly showed something much more serious. Louis went from apparently fine on a Thursday evening to suspected gastro on Friday evening to almost losing him on the Monday. I wouldn't wait a few days.

I hope Arnold does just have just a touch of gastro and soon picks up and stops worrying you :)

I was going to post the same thing, please get more tests asap.

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Some hopeful news, Arnold has eaten some breakfast this morning. I only gave him a small amount but he was enthusiastic about it (although he wouldn't eat my first offering but was happy to eat the dog roll). He also seems much more perky today, he is currently trying to hump his mother so things are obviously looking up :)

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I have some I/D from vet yesterday but he wouldn't touch it (not that I blame him). He was obviously hungry and I only gave him a small amount to see how he goes. If it stays down I'll give him some more at lunch time. We went to get BBQ chook last night but they had none left and it was too early to get one this morning so I was limited in what I had here to give him.

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Could he gave an obstruction or partial obstruction? Jolie stopped eating recently, and after several days she vomitted up a chewed up paddle pop stick!

I'd be suspicious of a partial or slow moving obstruction in the absence of other clues like abdominal pain, temperature, diarrhoea etc. If there's been a weight loss of 1.5kg over a few days I would suspect a lot of that to be fluid that is not being replaced.

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Glad to hear Arnold was brighter this morning, and hope he has continued to improve through the day :)

He is back to normal, has been annoying me and his mum all day :)

He had 3 small meals today and has done a 'normal' poo so everything seems to be in good working order. I'm so relieved as this was just another thing for me to deal with at a stressful time. I had the day off work to stay with him, thankfully my boss understands how much my dogs mean to me and is going to let me pay back the hours next week.

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