Archive for August 24th, 2017

Day 35 – Never A Dull Moment

Thursday, August 24th, 2017

So about a week ago, Nina was barfy and off her food. Took her to work and did some bloodwork, on examination she was quite tender in her abdomen near her pancreas. Bloodwork showed pancreatitis. She is considerably better today thanks to medication and a low fat diet. But she’s going for an ultrasound next week just to make sure everything looks OK (I was planning a screening ultrasound anyway, since she is 10 years old). X-rays today looked fine, and her spine is in very good shape for a very active 10 year old long-bodied dog (just one area with some mild degenerative changes, but nothing serious). Whaddaya know? Keeping them lean and fit throughout their lives actually helps! In addition to a prescription low fat diet, she’s on gabapentin (for pain), Galliprant (for inflammation and pain), famotidine (for acid reduction) and Cerenia (for nausea, it also has a mild pain management aspect as a positive “side effect”). She’s also getting Gas-X (simethicone) as needed for gas. Better living through chemistry! She is much more comfortable and seems to be feeling quite good.

And then, just to keep the rollercoaster rolling, we are running progesterone on Zhora weekly because she resorbed the last litter (one cause of resorption can be inadequate progesterone, since progesterone is needed to maintain the pregnancy). This week was our first check. Her progesterone on Tuesday was 9.6. You normally want it over 10, and over 20 or even higher is not unusual (although, some dogs, as I have learned this week from friends who weighed in to help me, do just fine with lower levels, so “normal” can vary). As this is the prime risk period for resorption (they cannot resorb as a general rule once the fetuses’ bones have calcified, which happens around day 45, although they can still lose the pregnancy), I was quite worried.

So I emailed the results to Dr Gray, and Kelly (her technician) called me back and said to recheck in a couple of days. They also said that the gold standard for progesterone testing was IDEXX (we used Antech), but I decided to take the recheck sample to their office, as they run progesterone in-house and they are familiar with their machine (plus, that way I’ve paid them for the consult too, so I don’t feel guilty). Well today’s sample was 11 ng/mL on their machine. So she’s fine per Dr Gray (who kindly commented on the results while she was on vacation), recheck in a week. PHEW!

Just for reference: they can supplement plummeting progesterone with an equine product called Regu-Mate. Regu-Mate is a synthetic progesterone that works the same way as natural in the dog’s body, but it doesn’t show up on blood tests, so you can see where the dog’s natural progesterone would have gone. You don’t normally supplement unless the progesterone drops below 5 ng/mL. Supplementing does mean that there’s a 50/50 chance that the bitch won’t go into natural labor and you may need to C-section her (of course, that can happen anyway!).

So, at this point all is well, she is definitely looking round. She is still not eating well in the morning, but is more a Lady Who Brunches just now.