Threshold: Bowdu’s July checkup

Tags

aging dogs, canine hypothyroidism, finances, glucosamine, ichon, senior dogs, vet

I dreaded the accounting on this one, but delaying it doesn’t make the expense go away. Bowdu’s last vet checkup was a heavy one, financial and psychological.

For Bowdu’s annual exam, I had an additional concern. Bowdu’s back legs — his back right leg, in particular — had been shaky for quite some time now. Last year, the vet said it indicative of muscle weakness, a symptom that often accompanies hypothyroidism. Bowdu’s energy levels remain consistent, so we maintained observational hover pattern.

Unfortunately, in the last couple months, his hind leg seems to have been giving him more trouble. The shaking, which was fairly sporadic in the past, is fairly constant now. One day a couple months ago, he started walking with a limp and keeping that back right foot raised. This wasn’t set off by any memorable trauma, and our routine has been fairly steady and low-impact, all around. He wasn’t expressing any audible pain, so I kept watch and waited it out. He returned to normal stride after a few days.

A few weeks ago, the same thing happened again. This time, however, he wasn’t so quick to bounce back. He is clearly not jumping as high as he used to. Getting up on the bed is a two-step process now, using his dog bed (placed on a cushion at the foot of the bed) to trampoline himself up to the human bed. He even allows me to lift him into the car — something that he usually makes an undignified stink about. On our off leash walks, he boycotts certain regular routes that we’ve hiked for years, and won’t follow closely. This is unusual, even for his Shibaness.

(Apologies for the vertical videography)

The second video, in particular, is Bowdu at his creakiest and slowest. [**Significant ETA: I just realized the second video is from the same day of his vet exam, which means his slow motion is actually a residual effect of the Acepromazine. The pace helps to show his funny gait though.] He is not a young dog anymore, but at nine years old, this is not what I would expect either. So we went off to the vet for as full a workup as we could manage without sedation (other than his acepromazine) …

• Office Call: senior semi-annual exam, $56 $50.40
• Total Body Function, $179 $161.10
• Urinalysis add-on, $61 $54.90
• Comfortis, 12 doses (20.1 ~ 40 pounds), $201.06
• Referral credit, ($56.00)
• TOTAL: $411.46*

* Prices reflect my 10% student discount, where applicable

The bloodwork came back just fine, and his thyroids continue to be well managed at his current dosage of 0.2mg of Soloxine, twice a day. The physical exam, however, was a shrieking, fur-flying, anal gland-releasing mess.

So much for his winning streak as a “good” patient. Bowdu was not having it this time. Suffice to say, I’m now looking forward to another estimated $500 examination, which will include sedation and X-rays, to get Bowdu’s back end issues properly diagnosed.

Based on Bowdu’s history and what I know of other Shibas with similar health profiles, I strongly suspect it’s an ACL injury. I don’t want to say much more without an official diagnosis. In the meantime, he’s been getting loaded up on liquid glucosamine supplements (which I’d stopped for a while, and more on that some other day) and he continues to get daily fish oil capsules. His weight is good, so there’s no change to his diet. We continue our regular walks, including our off leash hikes along less strenuous trails, which I think gives him the freedom to move at his own pace and comfort.

I have to trust that he knows his own body as intimately as nature allows. He won’t tax or purposely hurt himself. It’s only been a couple weeks since his visit and about 10 days since I started loading him with glucosamine, but he’s been noticeably improved. His situation is far from dire, but it will need to be addressed.

And this, too, is when I feel the pressure of maintaining an aging dog on a student’s budget. Even if his situation is “just” remedied with steady glucosamine supplements, I think I’m looking at about an additional $200 a year on nutraceutical expenses — which I’m ready and able to do. What I do now will have an impact on Bowdu long beyond my current budget situation.

The vet also mentioned an injectible solution called Ichon which is more expensive, but reportedly, more effective. Absorption is one of the biggest variables across tablet, liquid, and now injectible forms of glucosamine, so I’m going to have to do some research to figure out a solution that works best for us.

Getting ahead of ourselves though, especially since there hasn’t been an official diagnosis. Apparently, the supplements — and time, of course — are making a difference, so this is what’s in our future. Clearly, we’ve passed a life stage threshold of some sort. While Bowdu may not be as active as he was even a mere year ago, there’s a lot of life in him yet. Learning how to make the most of it is an ongoing, mutual process.

Jottings from Dr. Dodds’ Webinar on Canine Hypothyroidism

Tags

canine health, canine hypothyroidism, dr. dodds, hemopet, thyroids, vet, veterinary endocrinology

On Sunday evening, I attended a webinar on “[Canine] Thyroid Disease and Autoimmune Thyroiditis” presented by Dr. W. Jean Dodds, DVM and sponsored by the Danish-Swedish Farmdogs USA.

As a pet person who has already read Dr. Dodds’ book and slogged through other peer-reviewed publications on canine hypothyroidism as best as I could, the vast majority of this was repeat information. I paid attention and took notes anyway as if it was all new to me. Perhaps I would’ve gotten more mileage out of the talk and Q&A opportunity if I was a dog breeder, because she had a lot of really thorough information directed towards breeders on how to screen and select for thyroid disorders. Her open liaison with breeders, in my opinion, is quite invaluable and one thing that sets her apart as a public spokesperson for canine health issues.

I also appreciated some of the detailed observations she presented with pictorial examples, which went beyond the level of description in her book (most of her pictures were already in there). Some of her comments about barrel-chested and front-loaded hypothyroid dogs made a lot of sense to me, based on what I’ve come to understand about Bowdu’s form and the range of movement he’s capable of.

She also talked a little about natural thyroid options. It’s hard to find good information about natural thyroid therapy for canines, so I would have liked to hear more about that. I wouldn’t say she embraces the idea, but she does mention it as an option, and she was willing to name-drop a few brands with a couple caveats: 1) it’s much more critical to get the dosage right and monitor reactions, since natural thyroid supplies BOTH T3 and T4 (whereas synthetic pet meds on the shelf right now just supply T4), and 2) it’s more expensive, and would probably be prohibitively so for dogs that weigh more than 60 pounds. This was covered in her book as well.

She mentioned a new double-blind clinical trial that she just wrapped up with Drs. Linda Aronson and Nicholas Dodman at Tufts (they’ve collaborated before). Results should be forthcoming in a veterinary behavioral journal. Thyroid function and aggressive/aberrant behavior were under investigation. I await the publication of that study to see what new information is presented.

In response to a good question from a trainer, who asked how she can talk to pet owners about Hemopet/Hemolife without disparaging the work of her clients’ regular vets as inadequate, Dr. Dodds clarified her organization’s position as a clinical research laboratory that needs to collect its own samples for publication purposes, using its own procedures. Hemopet is not meant to replace the work of conventional vets or compete with the handful of commercial labs that handle the majority of diagnostic tests for North American vets. Dr. Dodds’ lab is open to discussing their interpretations with conventional vets, and this would be an ideal professional relationship for the pet owner. If any part of this process is blocked, however, it’s really up to the client to decide if it’s in their best interest to work with what they have, or to seek another vet.

In all this, she hinted at some of her criticisms of the current state of the veterinary establishment. The talk was interlaced with other non-specific commentary that made it clear she understood her marginalized position, but I thought she was quite discreet. She’s been a lot more diplomatic than some vets have been to or about her, in my experience! She professed her love for the veterinary field and believes strongly in her line of work and research, though she found several things lacking in veterinary education. True to her word, that’s been one area in which she’s been campaigning for a long time. At times this does involve a bit of self-promotion that borders on oversell. But I think once you acknowledge how many questions remain in the vast, open and interconnected fields of canine health, genetics, behavior, breeding practices, pet culture, etc., then a lot of that kind of laboratory territorialism falls by the wayside as petty turf wars — particularly disadvantageous to pet people who have no stakes in that establishment, like myself.

Should the opportunity arise again, I’d recommend participating in one of Dr. Dodds’ presentations or webinars if:

• You want a quick overview of how hypothyroidism affects canine health, and you’re not inclined to spend the same amount of money on her book.
• Your own vet is unhelpful, dismissive, talks down to you, or oversimplifies explanations about thyroid issues.
• You’re a dog breeder and want to understand the dynamics of thyroid health and testing for your own breeding goals.
• You are a holistically-minded trainer who appreciates how genetics, overall health, diet, and living environment can affect a dog’s behavior, and you have some specific questions you’d like to ask.

Bowdu’s annual thyroid test — glad that’s out of the way

Tags

acepromazine, anxiety, basket muzzles, canine hypothyroidism, dog muzzles, thundershirt, vet

Whenever I post pictures of Bowdu in a muzzle, he gets invited to photo pools for muzzled pets, which honestly creeps me out… Not sure if the addition of Bowdu’s “corset” just adds to the flames, but you know what? As long as you freaky furries keep your paws on your side of the screen, I’ll just carry on with business as usual here.

Anyway, this is how we suited up Bowdu for his vet visit on Wednesday morning. His basket muzzle is hanging a little loose, and it was cinched up tight when we got closer to the vet. I had the Thundershirt on him during our walk around the block, and he didn’t seem to think anything of it. The Acepromazine had started to kick in, but I’d only administered it about 80 minutes before the examination (the instructions recommended dosing him one to two hours before showtime). Note to self for future reference: Bowdu needs closer to two hours for the sedative to reach maximum effect.

Between the suit, the mask, and the drugs, we were able to draw another round of blood without having to completely put him under. It’s not a pretty solution overall, but if this is what it takes to get the job done once a year, then hell — I’m satisfied. It’s hard to tell what really helped the situation. Maybe all of it. I had my doubts about the Thundershirt, but since we have it now, we’ll probably use it again. Besides, Bowdu did let a vet tech physically pick him up, which he’s never submitted quietly to before!

The biggest advantage of the Thundershirt was that it very clearly flagged him as a “special care” dog and abbreviated my need to offer handling suggestions. A couple of the techs actually appeared to move more delicately and speak soothingly around him because they saw the Thundershirt and immediately understood its implications. Or perhaps it’s just a natural reaction to the absurdity of dogs in clothing.

Bowdu’s never going to be comfortable at the vet, no matter how much cheese, bacon, or pasture-fed dehydrated goat liver he gets while he’s there. He willingly enters the lobby and partakes of their hypoallergenic cookies, as we’ve done dozens of times during our “fun” visits throughout the year, but the instant he’s taken into an exam room, he knows the stakes are different. He’s really too wily to be fooled.

Wednesday’s vet bill:

• Office call, $56
• DHPP vaccine (3 year booster), $24.50 (after student discount)
• Bloodwork: total body function, $169
• TOTAL: $249.50

Thyroid numbers (blood drawn approximately 9 hours after his last dose of 0.2 mg Soloxine which he gets 2x a day, twelve hours apart):

• Free T4 (ng/dL): 1.6 (reference range 0.6 ~ 3.7)
• Free T4 (pmol/L): 20.6 (ref. range 7.7 ~ 47.6)
• T4 (ug/dL): 1.7 (ref. range 1.0 ~ 4.0)

Health update: allergies under control

Tags

allergies, canine atopic dermatitis, canine hypothyroidism, grooming, hot spots, skin care, supplements

This is a quick log of Bowdu’s dermal health, and to compare his summer allergies with almost the exact same time last year…

I’m happy to report that there’s not much to report.

24 July 2011

This year…

• Raw and home-cooked meals make up at least 50% of his diet.
• He’s on thyroid support (Soloxine).
• He gets more daily nutritional supplements (in addition to the ones we were already using last year) like yucca, grass/pollen combatants, Vitamin E, etc.
• He’s NOT on any prescription allergy drugs (though he’s been getting OTC antihistamines 1 – 2x a day).
• He’s NOT in a cone.
• He’s not licking his paw pads.
• He’s still licking the same spots on his front “wrists” and the top of his back toes, though the spots are a lot smaller.
• He still hates getting topical ointments rubbed on his parts, unless he’s in the car.
• His paws are wiped down after every walk through grass and dirt.
• He’s less smelly and his skin is less greasy.
• He’s gotten 3 or 4 baths since the beginning of summer, purpose not being to drench him but to wash away allergens and loosen some undercoat.
• He’s been brushed a lot less, though I will manually remove fur as I pet him, and I’m doing a lot more sweeping.

In summary, he’s doing really well, and is infinitely more manageable this year. The pictures show that he’s not in perfect condition, but again, compared to last year… wow.

However, August has typically been his worst month. He’s also due for another thyroid check, so I’m still holding my breath until we get through the dog days.

I’ll have another update on Bowpi’s skin breakout later. She does appear to be getting better, but progress on her has been a lot slower than anticipated.

LINK/VIDEOS: Dr. Karen Becker interviews Dr. Jean Dodds

Tags

allergies, canine hypothyroidism, health tests, hemopet, rabies challenge fund, vet, veterinary endocrinology

from Youtube channel MercolaHealthyPets

Does your vet read your pet blog?

Tags

canine health journal, canine hypothyroidism, pet blogging, vet

I finished reading Dr. W. Jean Dodds and Diane Laverdure’s book, The Canine Thyroid Epidemic, and have some thoughts that may or may not appear later as a full review. One immediate reaction is that I was surprised by how the book offers just as much information specific to hypothyroid dogs as it does for general pet care. This is in accordance with the nature of the disease, given that thyroid problems impact a broad range of bodily systems. So the authors stress that one key to accurate diagnosis and management is to keep a detailed canine health journal.

Basically, they suggest that you spend about half an hour every week briefly documenting the condition of your dog so you get a baseline for what is normal and what changes according to seasons and according to age:

• Hair/fur: overall feel, shedding cycles, thinning areas
• Skin: including scabs, discoloration, oil production, smell
• Eyes: including opacity, discharge, redness
• Ears: color, wax buildup, cleaning schedule, odors
• Teeth and gums: gums, loose teeth, brushing schedule
• Weight
• Urine: frequency, color, unusual accidents in home
• Stool: frequency, color, consistency
• Appetite: including notes on new food, if applicable
• Water intake: increased thirst without temperature or activity changes could be indicative of internal problems
• Energy levels
• Reproductive health: heat cycles and related issues (for unaltered pets)

Maybe you can even add — Nose: respiration, moisture, color changes (i.e. snow nose). Finally, with the ubiquity of digital photo devices, a couple clear pictures offering a good shot of face, body, and any necessary close-ups (eyes, paws, etc.) should be easy to dump into the file.

More details about what is considered normal is offered in the book (46-48). I am not providing extensive quotes out of respect for their copyright. At any rate, you should already have a sense for what is “normal” for your dog and your breed.

Photo taken 10 May 2011: Bowpi’s teary eyes on a particularly windy day.

A health journal is not exactly a revolutionary concept, but it’s an important part of caring for any living creature that I hadn’t really considered as compulsory. Yet, as I mentioned in one of my very first posts, charting Bowdu’s health concerns was a motive for starting this blog, and for continuing to maintain it as consistently as I have. As redundant as my posts became during the summer months (“Yup, Bowdu’s feet still inflamed.” “Yup, he’s still in the cone.” “Bowpi’s slept 18 hours today, just as she did yesterday and the day before…”), I’m actually already looking forward to the month of July just to see if I can make any favorable comparisons between last year and this year, after all we’ve done.

Another motive was to contribute to and to organize some of this health and breed information, since it was hard for me to find reliable and accessible sources on the specific issues that mattered to me. Even though I don’t subscribe to the Google-knows-all approach to research, the internet has a strange way of bringing together like-minded people who are fixated on very specific issues.

Which leads me to the idea that a canine health journal could potentially be a novel concept by bridging patient-client relationships through this portable, universally-accessible medium. The Internet-savvy vets that I know have more than a website — they have blogs, they’re on Facebook, and they’re sending e-mail as mass newsletters and as client-specific communication. They’re using new media to establish a different kind of rapport with their clients. But this only seems to cover the human side of business affairs.

Now, I imagine that for some dogs that are far too nervous to be properly examined by a vet (like my Shiba), or for some conditions where behavioral information would assist with diagnostics (or at least help suggest the kinds of treatment that would be most helpful), a canine health blog would be extremely helpful supplementary material. If they were at all interested in scanning a record of their patient in more “natural” settings, well, most pet blogs I know start from home. What could be more natural than that?

Bowdu and Bowpi lose what we call "Shiba/Basenji Pride" when they're nervous -- their upright curly tails droop and sag down.

I’ve never considered inviting my vet to be a potential member of my reading audience. If anything, half of the stuff I’ve filed under my blog’s vet tag has been my bitching about the practices at the Very Corporate Abomination of a clinic that treated Bowdu before our current vet, whom I’m maintaining a guarded optimism about. This blog has, at times, been a repository for my frustrated, antiveterinaryestablishmentarian shit talk. But if I had any intention of handing these public links over to my vet, I’d probably file them differently so that they’d be more useful. Maybe everything relevant would go under something like http://mywebsite.com/dog-name/health-journal (and with WordPress, you can even password-protect certain pages, though I’m not sure how this works with other blogging platforms). At any rate, if the vet is really curious about where I’m coming from, they’re free to page through the main blog itself.

Granted, there’s a lot of fluff in most pet blogs, much of it irrelevant to a vet’s concerns. I wouldn’t expect any vet to spend their professional time reading this crap. After all this time, I’m still too self-conscious about being a “Crazy dog lady with a blog for her widdle poochies” to invite most of my friends to read this, let alone my vet. But I know that if mine did, they would see a very different side of the Bows that is not always apparent in the clinic. I bet this is true for a lot of dogs. And I’m willing to hold out for the possibility that all this effort could sometimes aid in a more accurate, cooperative diagnosis.

Photo taken 29 January 2011. “Is he ever relaxed?” asked one of my vets while she was trying to befriend Bowdu who was backed into a corner. Why, yes, and he often shows us his belly of his own accord — but there is no way he will let a stranger get this kind of view, even if the missing fur on his belly is the reason for our concern!

Some health updates: night terrors and allergy prevention

Tags

allergies, anxiety, azmira, canine hypothyroidism, cortisol, dessicated thyroid, homeopathy, soloxine, tremors, yucca

Photo taken 4 May 2011

Shortly after joining the Yahoo group for hypothyroid pets, another Shiba owner introduced herself to the list with the following anecdote (reposted with author’s permission with slight edits for clarity):

I have a five year old Shiba Inu who was just diagnosed as Hypothyroid. The reason we had her tested was due to “night terrors”. She has not slept through the night for 3 weeks. The first week she scratched at my face all night and panted so bad it was dripping all over my face. Nothing calmed her until dawn came. I used to crate her when she would get worked up over storms, but it wasn’t even storming. I tried to crate her but the anxiety increased. We tried to crate her in another room with a radio but she broke a tooth off at the gum line so crating is out. We do have a Kennel-aire now with the 1″ diameter wire so she can’t get her teeth on it. She goes in that during the day but I will still come home to a crate wet with drool. We tried Clomipramine at 25mg (she weighs 17lb) but that did nothing at night. While we were waiting for the thyroid results, which took 10 days, she has been on Reconcile [fluoxetine hydrochloride, aka Prozac] that helped a bit but seeing her on Prozac was SO SAD. She is now slowly being taken off that. It was horrible having her on it. She was on 8mg once a day which caused severe constipation.

NOW that we have her thyroid results she is on Pala-Tech 0.1mg twice a day. She still pants on and off through the night but she can’t make it through the night without going out to pee. I pull her water bowl up at 7pm and take her out at 9pm before bed. Is this due to the Pala-Tech? Will this go away? I need SLEEP. It’s been weeks. I also have to sleep downstairs with her because this night time fear all started when she heard bats in the attic and they were coming in the house. Bats are gone and we haven’t heard them for weeks now.

Of course, I jumped right on that one. I felt a particular sense of urgency to respond because Bowdu was going through a simultaneous bout of consecutive nights of “night terrors,” as she so aptly described it.

From April 21st to April 27th, Bowdu did not sleep through an entire night.

April 21, 7 AM (about half an hour before my alarm clock): Bowdu jumped up onto my side of the bed to hover over my head, back legs quaking.

April 22, 6 AM: Same thing. I groggily let him out in the backyard to relieve himself, thinking this might help. When he came back, he was still shaking so I held him and tried vainly to doze until my alarm went off.

April 23: An especially rough night. I was looking at a 14-hour day across the Bay, and already went to bed far too late. Bowdu jumped up into bed at 2:30 AM, shaking for no discernible reason. This time I desperately did not want to deal with it, so I flounced off to the front room with earplugs stuffed into my ears and closed the door, hoping the Doggy Daddy could be awakened from his winterbear-slumber. Instead, Bowdu pushed open my door and climbed onto the futon, trembling so hard that I could not fall asleep.

This lasted for three hours.

Finally at 5:30 AM, I reached over and dragged him from the edge of the futon over to the wall next to me, where I pressed my body against him and the pillow propped up against the wall. I basically sandwiched him between a bunch of soft things. And then miraculously, maybe because he was finally exhausted or because I had inadvertently unlocked the secret of the “squeeze machine”, he stopped shaking. Bodies aligned, we got about an hour’s worth of sleep.

That was the worst of it. Bowdu continued to jump up onto the bed trembling at 7 AM, 4 AM, and 7 AM again for the next few days, but the terrors eventually subsided. Unlike the other Shiba above, he did not drool, but the other behaviors sounded all too familiar — all that panting, pacing, trembling, which I’ve documented just recently.

I am not familiar with any of the drugs that the other Shiba owner gave her pet (except for Prozac, which is more extreme than what I think is necessary for Bowdu). We both got one “new” suggestion from the Hypothyroid pet list to check out our pets’ cortisol levels and to supplement with T3 drugs (Triiodothyronine) instead of just T4 (Levothyroxine), which is what we’ve been doing.

I am not ready to go this route, and need to look into it a little more, especially as I recall the peer-reviewed literature recommending against T3 therapy for a variety of reasons related mainly to sourcing (i.e., bovine vs. porcine hormones) that I have to fact check before I report back here. At any rate, I know there is some preference for this kind of dessicated thyroid therapy since it’s available from animal sources. Could the trade-off be standardization of production and quality control (including published research that does not make a distinction between bovine or porcine sources for natural thyroid extracts)? Though Soloxine is synthetic, honestly, it has worked very well for Bowdu for a good run so far, and I’m not willing to risk upsetting the balance until I know exactly what I’m doing or until I have veterinary approval.

At any rate, it’s a reminder to take online veterinary health advice with caution, and follow up with your own diligent research. Even if I don’t understand everything that I’m told/given, I will at least evaluate my sources. (The academic in me revolts against the very idea of citing Wikipedia as a source, but if you read between the lines of the entry on dessicated thyroid extracts, you get a hint of the contested nature of this terrain in both human and animal health.)

In other news, last week I ran into another Shiba owner whom I had never met before. She was with a handsome red male named Fuji. After brief introductions, one of her first questions was, “Does your Shiba have allergies?”

So I referred her to this blog…

I can’t remember how old Fuji is, but I seem to recall that he was quite young for a Shiba who’s already undergone the rigmarole of steroid pills, Atopica, allergy testing, and now allergy shots. I didn’t get a good look at his fur or his skin. It was rather hot that day, and Fuji was hanging out under the shade while the Two Bows were pushing ahead in the opposite direction. Fuji’s person commented that Bowdu appeared in good shape for a Shiba who was supposedly prone to allergies. All I can say to that is knock on wood. In the past couple of weeks, both Bows have been licking themselves and scratching their muzzles more often, though there is no visible change to their skin. We’re trying to get a jump on preventative therapy this year, so I’ve already been dosing Bowdu with OTC allergy pills about every other day or when plant activity seems especially profuse. I’m also busting out the baby wipes after every dog park run. I also need to pick up some more local honey from the community garden down the street (great for homemade facial masks, too!).

We’re also trying the above combination of Azmira Holistic herbal extracts. I dropped about $40 on two vials of Yucca Intensive and Aller’G Grass and Pollen mix (which contains a pungent mixture of eyebright herb, bayberry root bark, goldenseal root, calamus root, stinging nettle leaf, and grain alcohol). A couple other different kinds of Aller’G extracts are available through this company, and they recommend using them in combination with several other products, but given how expensive these remedies are, I’d rather try a bit at a time and see if I can notice any improvement over time.

The last 2 fl. oz vial of Yucca Intensive lasted nearly a year (only Bowdu was getting this natural anti-inflammatory supplement). So presumably the 1 oz. vial of Aller’G Grass and Pollen will last long enough for me to assess its efficacy. Both Bows are getting a few drops several times a day, mixed with a little bit of all natural apple juice. It’s a new treat they’re quite happy to lap up.

New book on canine hypothyroidism

Tags

canine hypothyroidism, dog reference books, dogwise, hemopet, thyroids

I’ve never used one-click purchasing on Amazon before until I was alerted to this:

Dodds, W. Jean and Diane Laverdure. The Canine Thyroid Epidemic: Answers You Need for Your Dog. Wenatchee, WI: Dogwise, 2011.

Purchase from the publisher, Dogwise or on Amazon.com.

I’m aware that this is not a peer-reviewed veterinary publisher, and I’m not sure how I feel about the alarmist word “epidemic” in the title… Nevertheless, I’m sure I’ll make good use of this resource. As will the average pet owner trying to figure out what’s going on with their hypothyroid dog.

Scaredy dog

Tags

anxiety, canine body language, canine hypothyroidism, fear, shaking dog, shivering, tremors

This is fairly new behavior, as of this year (since the end of last summer, around when Bowdu started his thyroid meds).

Video taken 9 April 2011 (Apologies for the angle)

You might say this is just a scared dog, and dogs just get scared every now and then. But this has happened more than occasionally (at least once a month, sometimes two or three times), and Bowdu’s reactions often seem disproportionate to the magnitude of the apparent cause.

This was about 4 or 5 PM on a Saturday. That day was a bit windy, and the trees in the backyard had been rustling all afternoon. In addition, a low-flying plane had been circling for about an hour. I’m pretty sure it was the latter that pushed him overboard. Or under the table, as it were.

Buzzing objects in the sky must seem unusual and inexplicable to him. I can understand why Bowdu would find it unsettling.

It’s not the first time planes or helicopters have been abuzz in our neighborhood, though. And in his youth, Bowdu has never reacted so intensely to mere wind. Hell, he’s been through typhoons in Taiwan without so much as a whimper. We’ve been to Bay Area dog parks where we’ve just sat around watching airplanes take off and land. So I’m not sure why he’s now become so sensitive to atmospheric disturbances, over three years after we’ve moved into this house.

Bowpi, meanwhile, was snoring on the futon, dead to the world and to Bowdu’s anxiety.

I previously wondered if these episodes might have something to do with his fluctuating thyroxine levels, since these episodes typically occurred at night. They stopped for a while, then resumed sporadically. More recently, there have been a few shaking episodes during the daytime, as well.

Photo taken 13 March 2011

The Doggy Daddy’s approach is to let him have free run of the house. Let him pace as he pleases (he has no crate), let him hide under desks if that makes him feel more comfortable, let him go to the backyard to check out whatever is upsetting him if he wants to, but just leave him be, and don’t coddle him. Resume activity around the house as if nothing is out of the ordinary, and interact with him as normal.

Since most of my activity in the house is situated within the study den, and Bowdu comes to me for attention — assurance — I’m not sure what — I find it hard to proceed as normal during his nervous fits. I try to put him up on the futon or hold him like a human thunder shirt, because otherwise it’s really distracting having him walking under and out from the end table while I’m trying to work! I talk normally and occasionally to him. It doesn’t seem to make any difference in easing his shaking.

That particular episode lasted over an hour. After the plane stopped buzzing overhead, he eventually returned to normal.

Perhaps his threshold for the unfamiliar has just changed over the years, and has little to do with hormones, synthetic or otherwise. People’s personalities change; why shouldn’t dog personalities be volatile and susceptible to new triggers, as well?

LINKS: Breeder sites on hypothyroidism

Tags

basenji, breeders, canine hypothyroidism, health tests, orthopedic foundation for animals, rhodesian ridgebacks, shetland sheepdogs, thyroids

Photo taken 1 March 2011

I first heard about canine hypothyroidism from Basenji people. With a current rank of #29 on the the list of breeds at risk for thyroid disease according to statistics compiled by the Orthopedic Foundation for Animals, and #35 according to Michigan State University, Basenji breeders had reason to be concerned. No, they don’t top the list, nor is that an enviable position to be in (that honor goes to the English Setter). But if even one out of every 10 dogs was showing abnormalities in a condition that could be screened, seems like it’s worth the test to me.

So it looks like responsible breeders were and have long been testing thyroids. And breeder websites have been where I have found some of the most informative, publicly-accessible information on hypothyroidism and canine thyroid health. Here are some of the links that I have found to be helpful.

Apu’s Basenjis: Basenji Health
– Karen Christensen, who provided the article on Apu’s page, also wrote up an article for the New York-based Rip Van Wrinkle Basenji club magazine, The Wrinkler. A .pdf is available here.

sinbajé basenjis: Thyroid Problems of the Basenji Dog.
– As far as breeder sites go, this is one of the most well done that I’ve seen, hitting a perfect mix of personal and professional, providing a ton of great information without cluttered design.

Revodana Ridgebacks: Talking About Thyroid: Everything you didn’t know you needed to know
– via a breeder of Rhodesian Ridgebacks. The article is directed primarily at breeders, but also useful in differentiating all the different available tests.

Moonstruck Meadows: Canine Health Testing: OFA Thyroid Tests
– via a breeder of Shetland Sheepdogs, what to look for in proof that a breeder has done proper testing on a dog.

I’m sure there are more out there, but this is enough for now.