UPDATE - Worried mom - diarrhea, mucous, coughing

I think we grow in patience and the ability to love when we care for someone with special needs, whether they're human or animal, and I consider it a priviledge to have these special pets to love.

 
What a wonderful thought - and I have to agree
 
Prancer is still a bit dehydrated .... its all wait and see now I guess.   As for me, I'm keeping busy seeing if I can adjust my recipes a little or if I should just give up and go commercial food

Bump:
 
I'm concerned that this may be an indication of things to come and I'm wondering if I should put on her a lifetime diet for Pancreatatic dogs
BUN - 27 (High) - normal 7 - 27
Lipase - 1834 (High) - normal 200 - 1800
Creatinine - 1.0 (Normal) - Normal 0.5 - 1.8
If I calculate the BUN/Creatine ratio myself its 27

Any thoughts ?

I would say yes, the pancreatic diet is a good idea if you can do it.  I've know a couple of dogs that have had pancreatitis and my friends were both told that once they have this issue it usually comes back.  And, sometimes with each time it comes back it's more severe. 

Willow wasn't exactly diagnosed last week with pancreatitis.  But, her own vet suspects it was that.  And, she was completely in agreement that I should continue her on the i/d long term. 

It's really hard for them to control pancreatitis flare ups.  All they can do is fluids and pain meds and hope for the best.  So, anything at all you can do to prevent any future flare up's is only going to be for the best. 

I hope Prancer is still doing well. 
Lori

Thanks Lori, I tend to agree but wonder about the long term effects of a lifetime high carb / low protein / low fat diet.  
Are there any tests (other than normal bloodwork) which can be run to determine if a dog is prone to pancreatitis ?

JoAnnDe--
 
If, indeed this is/was pancreatitis, and you would like to have a restricted diet for Prancer, check out the pancreatic diet recipes on the B-Naturals site:
[linkhttp://b-naturals.com/Jul2004.php]http://b-naturals.com/Jul2004.php[/link]
 
My neighbor is currently managing her pancreatic dog by feeding Solid Gold Holistique Blendz and adding low fat fresh foods---mainly salmon, chicken and turkey, along with sweet potato.  She had her dog on i/d for four years revious to that, which stabilized the condition, but the dog became very uninterested in eating it after a time, so she made the switch under advisement from her vet. The key for her dog is to watch the fat intake---the Holistique Blend has a fat content of 6%.
 
Best of luck in whatever route you choose to go---How's Prancer feeling today?

Joannde,
 
What did the nutrition group say? 
 
50% meat is not 50% protein.  Much of it is water and other nutrients - so I don't think a reduced protein diet is needed.
 
May need less fat, tho.  Personally, I am finding it difficult to get 30% fat into a diet - so I'm not sure how you are doing that?   The fattiest meat that I find is 20% fat, and then I am adding veggies that reduce it further.
 
Another thought is that while it may be the level of fat, it also may be a particular food that is causing flare-ups?  Possible?

Prancer is doing ok - good looking poops, but as they pointed out in K9Kitchen vomiting and diarrhea/mucous aren't always present with pancreatitis.  She's a bit "blaa", resting alot, but once in awhile she'll grab a toy and go nuts on it which makes me feel better.
Both protein and fats stimulate the pancreas, so the diet should be low in both.  Monica's pancreatic diets are approx 20% kcals from protein, less than 10% from fat, and the remainder carbs.  
My diets were 50% kcals from protein, 30% from fat and 20% carbs - as you can see, quite different than what it seems she needed but in line with foods like Evo.   I was using 85% ground beef, chicken thighs (w/out skin), and ground turkey to get those levels.  Obviously I was keeping the carbs down (trying to do 1/6 or less by volume in grains and approx 25% by volume in veggies).
 
I'm SO afraid to introduce any other food other than the I/D - ever !  I'm worried that if there is a "next time" that it will be worse or even life threatening.  Bascially I'm afraid to take a risk at all.  (and the massive guilt I'm feeling isn't making things any better).
 
  
 

I am so glad to see that Prancer is doing better and that the i/d and the meds are helping her. She seems to be bouncing back slowly but surely.
 
I really feel that this was more a colitis bout than pancreatitis. The lipase value was out of normal range but not that much so and the vet did not say that it was high enough to be classified as acute pancreatitis event. Different things can lead to a slightly elevated lipase value, it seems. Since the BUN/Creatinine ratio was right at the extreme normal range, could this not be simply due to the dehydration (less urine making things more concentrated) ? Did the vet propose to retest the blood (and add perhaps an amylase check) in a little while to see if there is a change ?
 
I quite understand your worry and do not want to seem to dismiss your concern about a possible pancreatitis but... since the only thing your vet could show you about good diet is a bag of SD, I would not put too much trust in his pointed comments about home-cooked ones.
 
I hope that you will be able to find peace of mind about the fact that your food caused this (which it most probably did not). I have no advice about going back to commercial food or tweaking your recipe a bit but I just want to offer what little reassurance I can.

Thanks Thalie - it does make me feel better.   I can only hope that I'm preparing for naught .... I'd rather waste my time learning then to have to use that knowledge !
My vet didn't say he wanted to retest her, but I'm going to have it done anyway.  I'm also thinking that I'll see if I can get a consult with a specialist and make an appt if s/he thinks it should be explored further.
Whatever it is I'll work through it, as soon as I learn HOW to do that.   Right now I'm fishing for reassurance that she'll be ok and that even if she is a pancreatic dog that she can live a fun and wonderful LONG life !
I had come to believe that she had an iron stomach since I was constantly switching between foods without issue ... guess I learned my lesson !!!

Joanne -- the amount of protein to feed is always a huge discussion item -- ME?  I'm the weirdo -- I feed very low protein -- if my home cooking ever hits 33% it's a HIGH week.  But remember -- I've had geriatric dogs for MANY years.
 
You mentioned Prissy in your PM to me.  Prissy had MEGA pancreatitis when she was 3.  And it recurred twice more (age 8 and 13) and she DID live to be 21.  But the first time she had pancreatitis the vet handed ME a homecooked diet and told me to make it!! Regular vet (shoot -- there weren't holistic vets back in 1976 and this guy was mostly a cow doctor!)
 
I've had the odd week when the fat was too much too -- in fact, Billy's blood test in April was too high in lipase and it was because I had to 'substitute' something and I overshot it. 
 
But gosh darn it -- your dog does NOT have "pancreatitis" -- right??  The vet said the values were too high -- and quite honestly it feels to me like scare tactics.  grrrrr
 
You have a BUNCH of good TCVM vets over there where you are -- there are 2 in Tampa, one in Zephyrhills and another in Tarpon Springs (in fact, I know another of the vets that just joined the one in Tarpon Springs and she was one of Billy's vets when he was at UF last summer -- she worked directly under Dr. Xie).
 
Go to the Chi Institute website and put in your zip code and see who's relatively close to you.  They'll have excellent diet advice (and they aren't gonna tell you to buy a bag!!). 
 
We ALL have to learn when we first home cook -- I'd like to see anyone go take a blood test the night after they gorge on Hagen Daz or potato chips!!  That doesn't make it a pattern. 
 
The vet did a blood test but did the vet do a fecal?  If not why not?  I suspect since you got such a reaming it was because the vet wants to be able to blame the home cooked diet for something. 
 
You might want to at least check out the Dog Owners and Breeders Symposium up at UF --
[linkhttp://conferences.dce.ufl.edu/dog/]http://conferences.dce.ufl.edu/dog/[/link]
 
This year only it's the first weekend in August.  But it would give you access to the vets up there and make you feel more comfortable in any event.  (They are doing a vaccine update in the morning -- I CAN NOT WAIT!!!!)
 
I can't blame you for thinking of going up for a consult, but honestly -- I'd try a good holistic vet FIRST.   And trust me -- they'll send you to UF in a hurry if they think it's needed (and you could consult with Dr. Xie there as well). 
 
We all have to learn -- and that doesn't mean you shouldn't home cook -- it just means you need to adjust it to help Prancer. 
 
If this was acute pancreatitis you would have had a dog who was unbelievably more ill on your hands -- pancreatitis is simply an inflamed pancreas and I wouldn't jump all the way to life-long pancreatitis yet.
 
Just to give you some comparison -- when Pris first developed pancreatitis my best friend and I had been walking our dogs and somehow her dog snagged a KFC box from the gutter and was chomping on a very very overcooked chicken bone. 
 
Me being Ms. Shy ... I'm on my knees with my hand halfway down Mandy's throat in half a heartbeat to try to keep her from swallowing bone chips. 
 
MEANWHILE as my back is turned MY DOG is up to her ears in the rest of the box, including this nice big chunk of deep fried chicken skin!
 
aaaarrruuughhhhhhhhh
 
WE thot we prevented anything 'bad' - and yet Pris woke me up about 3:00 a.m. and scared the tar out of me.  She was wobbling on her feet and as I followed her out of the bedroom she was throwing up BLOOD and having bloody diarreha all over the place (at the same time).  OMG ... she was SO sick.  To this day it makes my blood run cold to think of how sick she was. 
 
WE thought immediately that she'd swallowed chicken bone and had perforated something (bleeding from BOTH ends that way ugh).  Vet thot the same and told me to give her a couple of tablespoons of mineral oil.
 
Wrong guess and probably the worst thing we could do.  The extra 'oil' just exacerbated what turned out to be pancreatitis.  It might have been that chicken skin more than anything. 
 
She was at the vet at death's door for a week.  On my way out he handed me this recipe (it's on Prissy's page [linkhttp://www.critturs.com/prissy.html]http://www.critturs.com/prissy.html[/link] -- and no I don't sell anything, it's just a site to help behavior and health problems for dogs).
 
Pretty much rice and hamburger (mostly rice) with a bit of garlic powder and an egg.  Probably about 15% meat.  And that was long before I knew you could give veggies to a dog!
 
Long happy life?  Oh yeah.  (she's been gone now like 13 years and I STILL tear up every single time I think of her -- I still miss her so much -- Billy is a 'heart dog' but NO buddy will ever ever ever ever replace my Pris). 
 
It's simply a matter of learning what trips this dogs trigger.  I don't mean that to sound bad -- but all dogs who do have pancreatic issues will have specifics that yank their chain.  Prissy's was pecans. 
 
That dog LOVED pecans or nuts of any kind.  And they're high fat and darned near impossible for them to digest under normal circumstances.  But that little bugger would steal a pecan if she could.  And ONE would spin her into an episode. 
 
I used a pre-digestive enzyme in her food (very much like Prozyme) and I cooked for her darned near forever. 
 
Many years later back when double and triple couponing was "big" I got several $2 coupons for Purina One (this was back when that was supposed to be THE ultimate and 'best' food money could buy) -- so on triple coupon day I was able to get her a bag of it (and this was back when we were SOOOOO broke).
 
Darned stuff not only caused calcium oxylate crystals (because it was too high protein for her) but it also had too much fat and spun her into a pancreatic episode. 
 
Me?  I was just trying too hard.  So I went back to cooking for her.
 
True story -- back then I thot "adding veggies" to her food meant adding something like peas and carrots (I had not a clue what the cal/phos ratio was, nor that both of those are 'bad' ratios *grin*). 
 
Soooooooooooooo, Prissy looked at me when I put down her bowl and gave me this "You POOR silly human!" look -- and she proceeded to nose the peas out of the left side of her bowl and the little square bits of carrot out the right.  Yes -- when I picked up her bowl there was this 'ring' of veggies -- perfectly formed with the green on the left and orange on the right!!  Long before I knew you should mash them and make them more digestible AND eatable.
 
You'll do fine because you are teachable.  And remember -- a 2 second slurp out of a puddle can cause gut bacteria to form which can cause exactly what you're seeng. 
 
AND if it was/is pancreatitis -- you've caught it VERY early.  Good for you!!

I should have made it more clear that I typically do about 25%-33% meat and the rest veggie.  I rarely use grains (only when it's too rich otherwise).  And because I have a dog with a need for a higher protein content than I'm typically comfortable with -- that's the ONLY reason I'm feeding a higher protein now than I have historically done.  Time will tell if I rue this.
 
That's not to say I'm giving anyone a hard time -- I just tend not to agree that high protein is the way to go.  But I'm not going to say the vet was right -- absolutely not.  And I don't like the strongarm tactics either -- with ME that would have backfired in a BIG way and I'd be looking for a new vet!

Callie, you are a Godsend !   Thank you.
 
Prissy certainly was special - and she's still here, every day she lives on through you and your talking about her and all of us learning from your experiences together.  I laughed out loud when I read about the peas and carrots.    I'm still crying from reading her page - I have a feeling I'll be crying for some time after that.
 
I'm checking out the TCVM doctors - I do like the look of the clinic in Tarpon Springs   
 
I'm struggling trying to figure out the best way to manage all this going forward.  I'm mighty afraid to introduce anything different in her food - what if it ends up to be "too much" and she ends up with full blown pancreatitis ?   I wish I could find info on what happens to lipase in the bloodwork after eating .... although she did vomit her breakfast I noticed it was mostly the veggies and sweet potatos in her vomit - the meat seemed to have already passed through her stomach and not much of it came up.   Part of me has to wonder if the Bully Stick, or giardia, is the real culprit and if perhaps I just didn't give her body enough time on the chicken/rice before going back to her regular meals.     Alas, I'll never know --- and I feel like anything I change now is "an experiment" and I don't want my baby to be a "lab rat" (no offense to rats !  its a figure of speech).
 
Thanks for the post and the PM - we'll be talking soon.  And thank you again for sharing Prissy's story.
 
 

I hope whatever the problem is you get it solved and cleared up very soon.  Give Prancer a kiss on the top of her head for me.

JoAnn--Are the veggies and sweet potatos in whole pieces?  Willow absolutely cannot eat pieces of veggies.  They have to be in a pate type of consistency and even then depending she might not handle them. 

Hi Lori - the rice gets way overcooked with lots of extra water, any fruits or veggies get pureed (gotta love submersible blenders !).   The turnip greens in the meal she vomited did however have pieces of the greens (I had made the recipe before I got the submersible blender) -- so you may be onto something.