Dog issues ..
 

So, about 6 months ago the dog collapsed whilst walking. Took her the vet after it happened a second time. All clear, she's a 7 year old GSD. Nothing they could find wrong with her.

Jump forward six month, no other collapsing, no other symptoms and she regularly comes walking in the hills with me for a good 5 / 6 miles. She runs up the hills and tries to chase the sheep.

Last weekend she ate about a quarter of a stick of butter she stole and within a few hours was shaking and cowering. No sickness or diarrhoea but she wouldn't eat or drink and just wanted to stay still.

Early Monday we took her the vet and they said she had a fast heart beat and wanted to get her bloods checked. £400 later, bloods are clear, scans are clear and after a night in the vet on a drip she's back to her old self.

Vet has now decided as they found nothing this time and because of the collapsing 6 months ago, she has potentially got an issue with her heart. They want to test it which totals £900.

The vet was very clear, they don't know what it is, they are guessing. The test will only be of use if they catch the heart issue happening (if it is one) and even with the 24 hour monitoring it's slim.

So .. what do I do?

Buy a puppy and start training it would be my solution, and I don't mean that in a horrible way but £1300 is an awful lot of money for some guess work. I love my dogs but at the end of the day they are just dogs.

Sorry.

Sorry ditchy but a lot of dog owners may disagree with your "they're just dogs" comment. Dogs mean a hell of a lot more to some people than others. They're a family member and to suggest putting it down and simply going out to buy a replacement is really insensitive!

Unfortunately I can't help you Pimmo but I do hope you are able to get it sorted in whatever way you feel is best. I do agree it is a lot of money for guess work but it all depends on your financial situation and what your dog means to you.

I had a similar with my 10 year old Bearded Collie ,one her back legs stopped working,
so off to the vets ,and could find nothing £180 bill, but I new something was not right so went to different vet for second opinion and it was trapped nerve, so medication and £220 bill ,she is back to normal, I do have dog insurance which paid up,
So try another vet or 2
hope it all works out, if i had to i would pay whatever the cost

Must be the week for dog issues.
Ours stole a carrier bag of sweets and ate the lot including plastic sherbert tubes. Never touched anything in all the five and a half years she's been with us so we are a little confused to why she did it.

Anyway, after a 3 hour op and £2500 later we got her back today.
Fortunately we have pet insurance so it's only cost us a £100.

Pimmo, what you do depends on how you value your dog, without a pet plan it's a tough decisssion to make. For me I'd have to draw the line at £1500 but that's me, others maybe higher or lower.

Nik

I agree with that, when our bobbie (rotti) had bone cancer in her shoulder joint, we thought it may have been a fracture of some sort or disclocated shoulder.
It probably would of cost around 2k mark, but as she was very fit and healthy I knew she had a good few more years in her so decided if it was the case then I'd pay it.
But unfortunately turned out to be bone cancer so we put her down for her sake.

Op. What I'm saying here is, if you think the dogs fine and has a good possibility of a future then I'd pay it considering the bigger picture.
Hope it goes well.

My son's 8yo White Alsation has just had to be put down, it was fitting every 30 minutes or so, the vet tried suppositories etc but he had to be put down in the end. Tests didn't show anything but the vet suspected a tumour. It's sad but pedigree dogs and cats don't usually see 10yo. :(

Does the dog show any signs of frothing around the nose or mouth? That can be a sign of heart problems. Also, excessive sneezing when laying on their backs.

We had a cat that got run over. Took it to the vets, ended up with a bill for about £1800.
Three months later his brother got run over, lost a leg. Cost about another £800.
The month in between I had a collapsed lung and was in hospital for a month. Fvcking expensive three months that was!

The first cat had to be put down about a year after being run over, the vet (we changed vets) said he never really recovered properly from the accident and our old vet should have put him down then.

I have always had GSDs and had 12/13 years out of them...

To the OP,i take it you dont have any kind of insurance?

Personally i would have the tests done... The money is always high with vets,i find some of there charges obscene!

But she is your responsibility ...Do the best for her...

Does she ever eat grass then throw up?

Ours does quite often and one time she really chucked up badly (it was like she was convulsing) then collapsed. She did it again a while after and went wobbly.

She's a black lab though.

I mentioned it to the vet, she said it wasn't a problem - certainly scared the bejeesus out of us at the time.

Please show me where I suggested putting it down?

The vet suggests he spends £900 with no definite positive outcome, which in my view is madness. In my eyes if it were one of my dogs and there was going to be 100% cure then by all means spend the money.

With a complaint like this who knows how long the dog will live or indeed after spending £900 it could just keel over the next day.

My advice is enjoy the dog while it's alive but start training a replacement.

No, nothing at all.

Top ten signs of heart issues and she has none of them.


I've no issues with spending money on the dog, £900 is fine for a reason, but would you spend £900 on your car on the off chance there is going to be a big end failure? :Suspiciou

No signs of a failure, just the mechanic can't find the reason for your lights flickering.. which only happened twice.

If you are asking me, no.
If you asked my wife, then she would do anything for our six year old golden retriever.
We have a thirteen year old jack Russell cross pointer, he is becoming increasingly dappy and has taken to crapping in the living room lately, so he can do one, and our nine year old jack Russell is a yappy annoying little ******* that suffers from little man syndrome, so he could do one as well.

Pim, get her tested for £900, if it's within your reach. They're not just the dogs, they're much more than that. She has been as meaningful as a family member to you all her life. Give her the care she deserves.

I was told by my vet himself to get my cat put down after her accident, rather than paying for x-rays and further investigations/treatment. They didn't know whether she was hit or had some other grave issue. I opted in to go with further expense of treatment, and now the cat is alive and kicking. Even if your dog shows a terminal deadly condition as a result of that £900 treatment, you will gain a satisfaction that you did what you could; till her end, and looked after her.

I wouldn't get new puppy to replace my much loved dog yet; that's because she's dying. No way I'm going to divide my attention, and no way I'd devaluate/dismiss my dying animal companion like that because he/she is breathing its last. If it was a working dog, I might have to get a new one and start training it for work. But I wouldn't do that to my domestic dog.

IMO.

Sounds to me like you should get another vets opinion. Yes you could spend the money for the heart test and get no result either way. I agree, that spending money on your dog is the right thing to do, if there is an answer/result. I have also spent fortunes over the years on various issues with my dogs.
However, like you say your dog was acting differently after eating the butter, that might point to a reaction rather that heart issue, same for the higher heart rate.
Like I say though get a second opinion as one vet will say a heart rate is too fast and another will say its normal. What was the heart rate?

Some of us think of our dogs like we would our kids (can't have kids so our dog get treated like it is lol) ,,,would you just leave your child to suffer or would you try finding out what was wrong ? ,,, if it turned out your child was terminal would you just start banging the mrs and tell her we will just get another one ? ,,,, I do understand some people don't see dogs like others but they still have to understand that some of us see them as family so they can't just be replaced ;)

Now your just being silly, make up any dumb ass scenarios you like, I deal with reality and facts.:thumb:

Sorry to hear you can't have kids, it's a shame decent folk have problems like this and some that have no business being parents seem to be able to knock them out at will. Life can be cruel sometimes.

My opinion has nothing to do with how one person values their dog more than another, it is purely based on the fact that this £900 outlay comes with zero guarantee of a positive outcome, quite the reverse in fact. Having already spent £400 on tests for no result, why on earth would one spend a further £900 for more of the same.

I would be seeking a second opinion from a specialist vet or one that at least had a very good reputation for solving problems of a similar nature, get them to look at the original test results as well as possibly doing a few more targeted ones.

I think as in all professions you have good and bad, you also have those that pray on the emotions of others at a difficult time.

If my dog had some mystery illness that had only manifested it'self 2/3 times in it's lifetime I would spend the first £400 trying to discover what had happened and if it was solvable, but beyond that for guess work then no, I would see how the dog got on over the coming months and take it from there.

Also I like my dogs to overlap, I put a hell of a lot of work into training them and find it significantly easier if you use the existing dog to help in that process, once it reaches 4/5 yrs old it's still young enough to play with the new comer and show it the ropes, also they are good company for each other which reduces the dogs dependence on the family, hence my suggestion of getting a puppy.

Who knows how long any dog will last, but with a dog that exhibits health problems at this stage in it's life then there is a distinct possibility that the odds are stacked against it.

I don't like to be without a dog so I would prepare for the worst case scenario, this also has the benefit of the existing dog having company in it's hour of need.

I would seek a second opinion Pimmo (not the NSR version). If the dog is showing no signs of what the vet suggests then it's reasonable to wonder why the vet is suggesting it in the first place.

FWIW, one of our cats (15) is on her way out - crapping all over the house, refusing to eat, drastic loss of body weight, frequent vomiting. Bugger all the vet can do about old age.

Similar to SJ and Ditchy - love our dog to bits and spent a lot of time training her (so she's very easy to look after) but she is just a dog and has her own place in the family.

Those that spoil their dogs or get too attached to them end up with PITA pets that are too restrictive - my sister's mates won't let her and her husband bring the dog to their houses because he completely takes over and whines all night for example.

And what's with all the people that totally convert their cars for them, cover the same cars in "I love (insert breed name)" and seem to let it completely dominate their lives?!

We'll always have a dog but it will always be just that - a dog.

2nd opinion it is then .. cheers guys

I've taken issues with our local vets...vets4pets.

Its seems their business mantra appears to be aimed at racking up fees over and above the pet's best interests with some emotional bribery added for good measure. I mean giving dogs drips for no reason other than it won't drink water while he was in the there for the afternoon (well, I put it to them our dog likes fresh cool water - he won't drink smelly room temperature water - especially when penned in a small cage in a unfamiliar environment). I'd go as far as saying they over-hydrated him as he wet his sleeping blanket whilst in there - something he'd never normally do as he is properly house trained. Of course I was presented with a extra few fees on the bill for the drip and a dog that immediately wanted to take a 3 minute piss as soon as he left the vet (he's 7kgs - didn't know he could hold that much!)....£££

Also upon knowing he travels abroad I'm giving a massive list of inoculations and vaccines in addition to the usual stuff that DEFRA demand to prevent him contracting stuff that is supposed to be local to those areas. Obviously none of which is cheap and of course had to be done regularly. They also seemed over-pushy on getting them done...£££

They also wanted to remove his dew claws as clipping them puts him under stress, which is true....but to do this he has to go under general anesthesia....again ££££

Cue a visit to our trusted vet in Spain and when shown the vaccine list said most of it was a load of bollocks. The only major risk in that area is infections carried by Sandflies of which there is no proven vaccine.

Also when questioned about the dew claws, she was adamant that putting him under a general anesthesia posed too greater risk of him dying, and she would never allow it unless there was a outright need for it (like a infection)....main reasoning being that small dogs do die under general anesthesia, so to do it for minor things like dew claws is in her opinion verging on reckless as the risk outweighs the benefit.

Fees, and costs of drugs charged in comparison to UK vets is tiny. Laughably so and just reinforces my opinion the UK vets and probably their suppliers are ripping off pet owners. I'm mean a consultation is 10 euros - compare that to the UK!


So to sum up; second opinion. Preferably avoiding the franchises. Ther's obviously overheads in having that branding above the door that's being passed onto the pet owners.

I've got a 2 1/2 year old GSD, he has a condition in that part of his brain hasn't developed properly. He's very clumsy and runs into things a lot.

Having had an MRI scan the specialist vets we took him to they said there was nothing that could be done for him. the good news is he could spend the rest of his life like this without any change but there is the slight potential his condition could worsen and he'd loose the ability to walk.
I've already decided that his quality if life is the most important thing.

To the OP, get a second opinion but also take a look on here:
http://www.mygermanshepherd.co.uk/forums/
I've found it to be a really useful website and maybe someone on there gave give you some better advice

Go to Boots or some other shop where women go and buy a heart monitor and put it round the dogs neck.
You can get all sorts of monitors these days, there must be one that can track a hart beat over 12 hours or more.

p.s i love my dogs but what's all this crap about them being on par with people/kids. Unless you're a vegetarian you eat animals that are as intelligent as dogs that deserve to live just the same.
It's a illusion people, stop the double standards and valuing a animals life by how cute it is.

Ali, I agree regarding vets4pets.
We left due to silly prices and un-needed procedures.
Now we are with a local vets that's been in business for longer than the franchise vet, with better knowledge and prices imo.

Apart from the "episodes" does she seem to be in distress at all

Not everyone suggesting to spend further £900 on Pim's dog is that abnormal. Some could be, I know.

My older sister in India is off her head with her GSD. He has her husband's surname on his vet card. They think the sun shines through his @rse, and they didn't even tell us he mauled a 19 yo village girl only this year in Feb, and we resided in their house, with their dog around us. He's not a friendly type. They never told about his crime to us, but kept him outside in servant quarters while we were there in their house. One day he lorded in while we were eating. I went mad at my sister, and told her to keep her away from us. She was defending the dog, and went mad at me instead. That dangerous dog is their baby, isn't he? :rolleyes: I told her that if he had hurt a village girl in the UK like that, he would have been put down. Then after few hours, the madam did apologise to me, and said- "I will endeavour my best to keep James Sapra in servant quarters while you guys are here, because I don't want my Jamchooey to be put down". So, the dog hurting people is less or least of her concern, but he shouldn't be facing a put down. Nice. :freak3:

He's terribly spoilt. Eats curry and chapattis etcetera. He's not my in my good books at all. My son's SBT in the UK is much well-behaved than him.

People that are advocating further expense aren't necessarily that abnormal. Wanting to know what's wrong with your pet and spending on further investigations doesn't mean that they are unhealthily attached to their pet.

And yes, the owners are responsible for their dog's spoilt behaviour, not the dog. With this angle, of course, a dog is just a dog, what does he know.

Exactly.:thumb:

Turbo; It wasn't a direct disagreement, more an observation. That's a rather disturbing story too.

The poor lady down the road (around 70 but still active) got a rescue terrier and spent ages training him; over six months she made progress but he did go for my little boy on one occasion (I had to pin the dog down until he gave up) but it wasn't too awful. Then the dog bit her 18 month old grandson and that was it; back to the rescue home and she's on her own again. I feel really sorry for her as she did everything "right" in my opinion.

I agree with carnut too which is unusual.

Had a similar situation with my Rat Pack male Parsons Jack Russell, had him from 10 weeks fully trained did everything 10,000,000 % better than anyone would with him as I wanted him right, read countless books studied and did everything right , 2yrs later he attacks my 3yr old son for no reason in my presence, thankfully, only one way that's going to end, the dog unfortunately is no more and no one more sad about it than me almost 5yrs later.

I'll take that one to my grave.

Ouch - that's pretty awful.

My folks had a rather naughty but incredibly charismatic male collie who just disappeared one day aged about 5 - forever. My Dad still misses him heaps and blames himself for the disappearance - the dog was quite a wanderer - I suspect someone picked up up and took him home one day.

Was your boy okay? I still have a deep scar on my cheek from being pretty much savaged aged three. Never put me off dogs though.