We have a 12 year old French Bulldog who up until a couple of weeks ago has been pretty healthy. Around March 16th, she stopped having much of an appetite. This carried on for almost five days and we became concerned enough to schedule a vet visit early the next week. Of course, the Friday before her vet visit her appetite returned and she was pretty much back to normal. As a precaution however, we keep the vet visit so could explain the problem and see if there is anything the vet can diagnose.
The vet takes some blood for tests and schedules an ultrasound for Wednesday. The ultrasound doesn't show any problems. So, all is good. Before we leave, we explain that she appears to be in regular discomfort in her hips and back; arthritis and/or dysplasia it appears. The vet prescribes an antacid for her stomach issues and an anti-inflammatory (rimadyl) for her back.
We go home, administer the drugs and she hasn't been the same since. For a week solid, she hasn't been able to hold down food or water. We have been dropping her off at the vet every day for IV fluids. For that first week, whenever you try to give her food it is regurgitated back up. She wants to eat and drink, but she just can't keep it down.
Another ultrasound was done along with an x-ray of her esophagus. Neither identified any problems. All bloodwork has returned normal.
So after a week with no food and only IV fluids, we were able to give her a few tablespoons of a special canned dog food this past Friday. It seems to be staying down and she is having regular bowel movements again (although somewhat uncontrolled). The vet tried the food on Saturday and it came back up. We were able to feed her 6 tablespoons throughout the day today that appeared to stay down until she tried to drink from her water bowl. The drinking from the water bowl always seems to trigger vomiting.
So, at this point everyone is stumped. We will likely try an endoscopy on Monday. No one wants to put her under
anesthesia, but there are no other ideas on how to diagnose the problem.
I would like to appeal to the Bunker vets for any thoughts or ideas on what might be the problem, questions we should be asking, anything we can do to improve her condition.
Thanks for reading all of this. We would be incredibly grateful for any helpful feedback or guidance.
This post was edited on 4/5 9:53 PM by Meddle
The vet takes some blood for tests and schedules an ultrasound for Wednesday. The ultrasound doesn't show any problems. So, all is good. Before we leave, we explain that she appears to be in regular discomfort in her hips and back; arthritis and/or dysplasia it appears. The vet prescribes an antacid for her stomach issues and an anti-inflammatory (rimadyl) for her back.
We go home, administer the drugs and she hasn't been the same since. For a week solid, she hasn't been able to hold down food or water. We have been dropping her off at the vet every day for IV fluids. For that first week, whenever you try to give her food it is regurgitated back up. She wants to eat and drink, but she just can't keep it down.
Another ultrasound was done along with an x-ray of her esophagus. Neither identified any problems. All bloodwork has returned normal.
So after a week with no food and only IV fluids, we were able to give her a few tablespoons of a special canned dog food this past Friday. It seems to be staying down and she is having regular bowel movements again (although somewhat uncontrolled). The vet tried the food on Saturday and it came back up. We were able to feed her 6 tablespoons throughout the day today that appeared to stay down until she tried to drink from her water bowl. The drinking from the water bowl always seems to trigger vomiting.
So, at this point everyone is stumped. We will likely try an endoscopy on Monday. No one wants to put her under
anesthesia, but there are no other ideas on how to diagnose the problem.
I would like to appeal to the Bunker vets for any thoughts or ideas on what might be the problem, questions we should be asking, anything we can do to improve her condition.
Thanks for reading all of this. We would be incredibly grateful for any helpful feedback or guidance.
This post was edited on 4/5 9:53 PM by Meddle
