I had briefly mentioned Chewy's latest problem which was Mom induced on Harley's thread. I want to keep Harley's thread for Harley, so I decided to start one here for my other problem child.
For those of you who don't know, I adopted Chewy from a breed rescue about 3 1/2 years ago. He will be 10 in June. To give you a short summary of his medical issues, severe dry eye which has destroyed about 70% of his vision. The eye vet figures he was never treated for it before he went into rescue. The 1st time she saw Chewy, her comment was, "This little boy is blind due to severe corneal scarring, he may have about 10-15% of his vision. With a different round of eye meds, & a lot of work over about 4 months, we have managed to recover about 30% of his vision, but that will probably be the best it ever is. He gets around absolutely fine. In fact, when the rescue group member brought Chewy, along with a couple of other pups to my house for a "meet & greet", to help me decide who I wanted to adopt. Chewy was the only pup who went exploring all around the house, checking things out, not fearful in the least, basically acting like, "This is a pretty cool place. I might like this to be my forever home."
Chewy was diagnosed with severe allergies to a number of things through skin testing & has been on allergy shots for about 9 months. This came about because of dry, itchy skin, along with thinning hair, & hair loss along his back. I was basically overwrought that I had my 3rd Cushpup on my hands because Chew is also a chowhound, & has problems with inappropriate urination in the house. After going to my derm vet who I absolutely adore, he told me that he was convinced the problem was allergies, not Cushing's. This is what led to the skin testing & allergy shots. The derm vet did suggest that all of Chewy's basic labwork be repeated at the end of last year, paying close attention to the values that might indicate Cushing's, including the alk phos, ALT, cholesterol, etc. Most of us know what these values are. All of these results were normal, along with a normal UC:CR that I had done in the Spring of last year, so no Cushing's! I just wish I could say that Chewy has regrown some of his hair. He has lost about 40% of the hair on that beautiful Lhasa tail, & every time I look at his tail, I feel like crying.
The UA that was done last spring did show struvite crystals in his urine, so he was put on the Royal Canin urinary SO formula food for 3 months. A repeat UA was clean. The routine labwork at the end of the year, again, showed struvite crystals. My GP vet did not put him on a prescription diet then, but wanted a follow-up UA done in 30 days. The recheck has actually been 2 months, got the results back on Saturday. Struvite crystals are still present. Since this is now the 3rd urine in less than a year that has crystals, poor Chewy is no on the Urinary SO diet permanently. I thought the canned food just looked nasty, but I'll get over it. All I can say is the prescription food is probably much cheaper than paying for surgery to remove bladder stones on Chewy.
If I ever own a healthy dog, I wouldn't know what to do. I love them anyway, & wouldn't know what I'd do without them.
Debbie