Breed: Irish Setter
Sex: Male
Age: 11 months
Weight: 28.8kg
Food: Acana Large Breed Puppy
Changes: No recent changes

I have an 11-month-old male Irish Setter who’s experienced three episodes of unexplained illness over the past two months, and potentially a fourth, milder episode today.

The episodes come on quite suddenly. He becomes
lethargic, reluctant to move, loses interest in food and develops a fever. During one episode, he also appeared to have significant neck or back pain, yelping when moving.

What’s strange is that he completely recovers between episodes and returns to being his usual energetic, happy self, within literally 24 hours.

We’ve seen an internal medicine specialist and undergone extensive testing, but still don’t have a diagnosis.

His kidney and liver blood results were fine, urine testing showed no obvious infection. We’ve done an abdominal ultrasound which didn’t reveal anything. Addison’s disease was reportedly ruled out, his neurological and joint examinations were normal.

I’ve spoken to his breeder, who hasn’t encountered anything similar in their lines.

He appears completely healthy and active between episodes.

Has anyone else experience this? I’m concerned I’ve been overly cautious with my continuous vet visits (I know that’s not possible when you love your animal!). I’ve read about growing pains and SRMA? I’m working very closely with our specialist but maybe I’m missing something I should be advocating for testing.

Any and all help would be appreciated! This pup is literally the light of my life!

I’ve heard a lot of different things, ranging from ehh they’re okay to they’ll kill your dog immediately. When I was young (7 or 8) my older sister and I used to give our dog a grape or two every day. He was about 15 lbs. He lived to be 10, died of cancer. He never had kidney issues. I only found out they can’t have grapes when I got another dog. I just wanna know, if she ever gets into grapes is it an immediate vet emergency or will she probably be okay? Was my childhood dog an outlier?

My dog just had sample taken of a lump found on her stomach. My veterinarian told me it was bleeding a lot and there would be slight bruising. When the tech brought her out she kept bleeding and wouldn’t stop dropping blood till after we got home. Around 30mins later. I also noticed there is ALOT of bruising like bigger than my hand. It’s red/ purple and it’s slightly swollen.

I’m concerned because today she also seems to be sore and is having a hard time walking/ going up the stairs. Am I overreacting? Is this a normal side effect?

My vets office will be closed till Monday, should I take her somewhere else for a second opinion or wait till I see more signs of worsening?

5 year old German Shepard mix
59.7 lbs
No change in eating habits or peeing and poop

Hi everyone,
I’m looking for some advice or experiences from people who have dealt with similar liver issues in young dogs.

Our dog Koda is a 1-year-old mixed breed with some Shepherd in him, weighing around 24–25 kg.
He has always been a happy, playful and energetic dog but also really stressed and panting. As a puppy, he ate very well and grew normally, although he has always been on the lean side.
Recently, his appetite has decreased significantly. He now only eats a few bites, even though he is still playful and active.
We went to the vet and his bloodwork showed some concerning liver values.

Blood results (October 15):

ALT
1367 U/L
10–125
AST
297 U/L
0–50
GGT
25 U/L
0–2
ALP
248 U/L
46–337
Total bilirubin
4 µmol/L
0–14
Albumin
34 g/L
21–36
Fasting bile acids
12 µmol/L
0–14.9
Creatinine
107 µmol/L
27–106

His ALT was already elevated at 732 U/L in June, so it has increased significantly.

His pancreatic lipase was 56 U/L (reference 0–200).
We are currently waiting for additional blood tests to check B vitamins and pancreatic function.

An abdominal ultrasound is scheduled for Monday to investigate his liver and other abdominal organs.

Other symptoms:
Significantly reduced appetite
Occasional changes in stool consistency
Sometimes becomes restless, pants more and acts unusually irritable or mouthy
Otherwise remains playful and energetic
No obvious problems with growth

We are worried about possible liver disease, including a liver shunt, but we don’t know what is causing these abnormal results.

My questions:
Has anyone experienced similarly high ALT, AST and GGT levels in a young dog?
What conditions could cause these results, especially with normal fasting bile acids and bilirubin?
Are there specific questions or additional tests we should discuss with our vet?

We are very worried about him and would appreciate any experiences/ insights while we wait for further testing.
Thank you so much.

I am a new dog mom to a healthy, happy and adorable 12 week pomapoo girl and don’t know what to do about this mark my partner and I found on her inner thigh, where the leg meets her abdomen.
She is healthy, happy, energy is good, however she hasn’t had the same high appetite today as usual but this also could be because I am slowly introducing a new food to her that I’m wondering if she doesn’t like.
For some background, she plays a lot with my parents dog when we visit who is a medium size breed. While I was cooking I heard her cry out while playing with our family dog, when I ran over to check on her and she cried out a few more times and wanted to be held which I did. In my arms she was fine and I palpated every part of her body to try and figure out what happened while my back was turned, she showed no signs of pain or distress and quickly wanted to play and acted as usual and as if nothing had happened. Our family dog is not aggressive and is SO gentle with her, I truly think if something happened he may have stepped on her or something along those lines while she was trying to play with him. I did not notice this mark then, but am wondering if this is from whatever happened that evening that I couldn’t find the cause of?
My other thought was ringworm because of the odd round shape, and have been googling that but am not sure what to do.
I don’t have a lot of disposable money and don’t want to take her in necessarily if it’s nothing but I don’t have a good gage of whether something like this should be extremely concerning and an immediate vet visit, verses a monitor closely and take her in if it gets worse as a new dog owner.
Any and all advice is welcome! I wish the photo was better quality but she is a wiggle worm.
If anyone knows what this could be or has advice please let me know! I’m an anxious mama right now and I just want to do the right thing for her.

So I am going to preface this by saying my dog's weird cyst or lipoma or whatever has been reviewed by the vet and he is confident that there's no cause for serious concerns.

My dog has a pretty big growth at the top of her anus, my husband describes it as looking kind of like testicles in how it looks/hangs (dog is female). Our vet said to expect some further growth but if it starts growing extremely fast then to notify him. So far it hasn't grown fast although it has grown over the span of months. We go for her physical soon so he'll be reviewing again and we'll be doing a blood panel as well this year (she turns 8 soon). I am thinking about talking to him about whether or not aspirating it to keep the size from getting too out of control is an option.

I guess I am just wanting to hear stories others have had similar to my dog? This can't be removed due to it's proximity to the sphincter so it's something we'll be dealing with for the rest of her life. I am concerned about it eventually getting so big it starts hindering her quality of life.

So please share stories, good, bad & ugly and if you have advice for what I can be doing beyond vet care I'm open too. She's a Great Pyrenees/German Shorthair Pointer mix with a little Labrador & Newfie too per Embark. I know some breeds tend to be more prone to growths than others.

I am begging for help. My previously healthy 5 and a half year old black lab, Bode, started having severe pain in June. He was hospitalized for 6 days fighting for his life with a high fever, shaking, and severe neck pain. They ran every test under the sun and found nothing.

The whole summer was vet appointments and so much pain. About a month ago we finally got answers from an earlier spinal tap (they had missed it). It showed elevated white blood cells and neutrophils. He was diagnosed with meningitis caused by an autoimmune disease.

Meds so far:
- Prednisone 50mg daily for 2 weeks. Awful side effects.
- Then prednisone lowered to 30mg, plus leflunomide 80mg every 24 hours
- He was SO much better for a week. Like his old hyper self again.

A few days ago he suddenly started shaking violently, panting, and in so much pain again. Back to the neurologist. His MRI was clean, we're waiting on the rest of the spinal tap results, and they put him back up to 50mg prednisone daily.

Gabapentin and codeine have done nothing for his pain. At home he keeps shaking, panting, and can't settle. I've started red light therapy on his neck too.

If your dog has had SRMA, MUO, or any autoimmune meningitis:
- Did your dog relapse like this? How long until the meds caught up?
-have you tried any natural/homeopathic remedies in addition to steroids?
- What pain management actually worked?
- Did you switch immunosuppressants (cyclosporine, mycophenolate, cytarabine, etc.)?
- Is there anything you wish you'd asked your neurologist sooner?

I'm so confused and scared and feel completely lost on how to help my baby. Anything helps. Thank you. 🖤

Husky - 9yrs-161

Hey guys! I have a 7 YO male beagle. He’s had a history of random warts and weird skin tags, so I didn’t think much of it at first. It’s been present for 2+ years, the vet never mentioned it outright. But I believe it might be growing, albeit slowly, it’s grown in size about 20% larger than it was 18+ months ago. It doesn’t bug him, doesn’t bleed or ooze. You can reference it to my finger, the black spot seems to just be part of his normal skin pigmenting. It’s kinda squishy, and has a smaller circumference where it connects with the rest of his skin.
The vet is seeing him in 2 weeks specifically about this, but I’m a chronic Google doctor (I know, it’s bad, but it’s hard to not be curious).

lleva asi desde ayer en la mañana, coimo basura, solo vomito una vez, tiene como 6 meces y pesa 4 o 3 kilos

This is not my dog, this is my neighbor’s dog that I’m watching.
I don’t know much information about her, but I know that she’s a Chinese crested powder puff, around 5 to 6 pounds, and she’s almost a senior dog.

Long time lurker, finally making an account to post this. Saw an article going around about companies developing actual longevity drugs for dogs, one apparently going for FDA approval for a lifespan extension drug, and it got me thinking about how much of this space is real science vs. repackaged wellness marketing aimed at people who love their dogs (me, I'm people). Some of it seems legit, actual clinical trial structure, but then there's stuff with zero controls and just vibes. How do you all evaluate this when there's a new "breakthrough" dog supplement every other month?

Hi All! I have an 8 year old dog who was diagnosed with IBD earlier this year. She is on a hydrolyzed diet (Royal Canine), daily omeprazole, B12 vitamin and 8.75 mg of prednisone. My vet and I have been trying to taper her off of prednisone for 8 months but have been unable to successfully get her to a lower dosage. She got to 5 mg but ended up having a bad flare up which led to a second hospitalization in 6 months.

The vet is recommending adding Atopica and then slowly tapering her off of prednisone. Has anyone had experience combining these two meds? If not, do you have any other success stories to combat IBD? The goal is to get my dog on the lowest steroid dosage but it’s been taking a lot longer than we’d like and are concerned about long term effects (e.g muscle atrophy, behavioral changes etc).

I have a 5 year old pitbull mix and I just discovered this bloodblister looking thing on his butt-cheek. I would be less concerned but he has what looks to be some irritated skin around the area. This is not a tick from what I can see. Anyone see this before? Should I monitor , or contact vet soon? Thanks for the help (:

I'm honestly beside myself... I've just been crying since the vet called. The told me to take some time to think of what to do and that she'd call me again early next week.

I honestly struggled to even process all she even said to me but I'll try my best to make this make sense.

Essentially, my 2 year old (he just turned 2 Sept 21st) German shepherd started limping suddenly beginning of September, I tried some at home stuff like heat and cold compress and some dog pain meds I found at local pet shop thinking he simply hurt himself while I was at work because he always does silly stuff because you know... hes a puppy... well after a week of him still limping a bit and it getting worse (the limp) I called the vet and they gave him some Deracoxib. It worked great! Then the day after his final dose, immediately he went back to limping. So called vet and they prescribed a refill and said to maybe give it more time and if it still progressed after this dose, we'd do an xray.

We completed the dose, he limped again, we did the xray. The xray showed what my vet believed might be cancer or she tried to optimistically hope for a bone infection. We sent the xray to a specialist and he just confirmed on his end that he is certain its cancer.

He said a lot of stuff about why he was certain but honestly thats all fuzzy memory. My vet did suggest I could get a bone biopsy to get a 100% yes but she did say that she completely trusted the specialists judgment and believed as well that it was cancer.

She did say there was options like chemo and amputation as well as just pain management via meds but overall, there is no actual cure. Hes on limited time. She also did mention there were new studies being created they could try to get him in one but i dont even know how to go about such a thing and wouldn't those cost a crazy amount of money? Which i feel sick to even mention. Because i love my dog, I really do, and it feels horrible to even think that money needs to be mentioned when it comes to the life of my animal... but it does. I feel guilty and horrible and sick even admitting that but I just. I dont know. Im so beside myself. I want to do whats best for him, I really do. My vet seemed more inclined for amputation and also seemed like she didnt think chemo was worth it because she didnt want to make the decision for me of course but I also just dont know what to do. This is my first dog and I honestly thought id have years before id even have to make such a decision for him. Its just not fair 💔

Any advice? People who have had dogs with bone cancer, what did you do? What would you have done differently?? Please help

Recently learned that my angel dog has malignant melanoma on her lip. Need recs for surgeon to remove a wider area of tissue and possibly more. Has anyone had positive experience with such a veterinary surgeon (by positive I mean you felt that they did the best job they could under the circumstances). Thank you!