Gwydion’s Eyes

As I said, Gwydion has seemed “down” or “off” for a few days now. Nothing that I could put my finger on and say “Ah Hah! That’s what’s bothering him!” but just kinda blah and droopy and unhappy.

Well, yesterday (Wednesday) wasn’t a good day at all :-( He woke up around 4am and wanted to be on the bed. OK, I picked him up and he slept on the bed. He got a bit restless toward normal “wake up” time, and when we went outside he had “cow plops.” So I gave him a low dose of insulin and broth for breakfast. When I came home for his eye drops, he looked like he felt really crummy. We went outside, still tummy troubles. I remembered a “recipe” for “Doggy Pedialyte” so I dug it out, mixed it up, and gave him some of it before I went back to work. He looked slightly better when I got home, but his tummy was still not too happy. I gave him another dose, and kept repeating and taking him out every couple of hours (no dinner, low dose of insulin) until bedtime.

I woke up at 4am, and Gwydion was sleeping soundly, but I woke him up, took him outside, and gave him another dose. When we came back, he wanted to sleep on the bed again, so I let him (My dog, spoiled? Why do you ask?)

I decided late Wednesday that he really ought to see the vet, so Thursday morning I caught a urine sample and called our regular vet as soon as they were open. I called work to tell them my dog wasn’t well and that I would be late. Gwydion seemed to be feeling somewhat better, so I gave him a small bit of overcooked rice and off we went.

He had blood drawn, which is always harder than we think it will be, because he will be very still until they’ve got about 3/4 of what they need, and then do something unexpected that messes things up (he once used his rear leg to kick the syringe out of his front leg and sent it flying across the room). While they were doing the lab work, the vet went over him, and didn’t find anything obviously wrong.

We got the test results back, and they were surprisingly good. All his liver values were right where they needed to be (Hooray! With all his anesthesia problems, I was worried about that). His kidney values were mostly good, the only one that was low was OK when compared to the urinalysis (kidney problems are another side effect of diabetes because they work harder when BGs are too high).

The only “problem” number was in the urinalysis. His urine ph was low. I’m not sure why that would be, but I’m researching at the moment. I’m wondering if it is because his potassium supplement is a “no salt” product (potassium chloride), and if I switch him to something else (potassium gluconate maybe), it will solve the problem. I’m going to give him a couple weeks to get over the tummy troubles (and hopefully get his BG more in line), and then have them do a retest. We’ll go from there.

So, after all this, it seems that he is just suffering from high blood sugar and an upset tummy (so we have some tummy meds and he has to eat a bland diet for a couple days before weaning him back to his normal food). But the good news is that he doesn’t have any liver or kidney problems showing at this time, and that really is good news.

P.S. Today is Gwen‘s Birthday! She’s 7 years old (I can’t believe she is that old!), and wants to know why Gwydion is getting all the attention!

This entry was posted on Thursday, February 2nd, 2006 at 10:28 pm and is filed under post-surgery. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.