I missed Steven's Feline and Furball Friday again, and Bea, whose two dogs both died recently, asked for an update on Tuffy's health. To be honest, we don't really know how she's doing. She had improved dramatically on the full dose of prednisone, and the Pepcid the vet had us add also seemed to be helpful. She no longer kept her head down and avoided us, she was a little more energetic, she begged for food and hung out with us and with Pepper, and even ran outside to bark a few times.
But the vet said that the prednisone was bad for Tuffy in the long run, and was already giving her a bleeding stomach ulcer. So on her instructions, John cut her down to half a pill a way, and after a week or more he cut her down to a quarter pill a day. That was yesterday or the day before. She had seemed to be doing well at first on the reduced dose, but by Friday she wasn't eating much, was back to her loner routine and kept her head down, albeit not as far down as before. So John is going to try a full pill alternating with half a pill daily, and keep her on the Pepcid, and hope that helps.
Meanwhile Pepper is doing fine, except for an itch that contributes to her serious shedding. Black dogs leaving clumps of hair on light-colored carpets is a problem we haven't run into before; all out dogs to date have had finer, lighter hair than this. We'd bathe her, and probably will, but knowing Pepper, she'll run outside immediately afterward for a nice, thorough roll in the dirt.Karen
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Tuffy still is not up to par, poor thing. I recognize the loner act... it was Misty's routine for a long time before the end. Looking back, I did notice an unusual behavior: she had begun to follow me closely around the house, and sat very close to my feet if I was in a chair. I didn't notice it at first, nor give credence that anything was wrong at the time except she was probably wanting more attention. Only in retrospect I discern possibly that she was trying to tell us something in dog language that I misinterpreted. I think she was telling us then that she was unwell, that we should take notice, and that she was ready to let us take care of her. That's the hard part with dogs/cats... when they are sick, they lay around a lot, and they look relatively sad. They may or may not stop eating, and they may or may not stop playing entirely. Just when we thought she was sick, she'd perk up again. The turn was sudden for both of our dogs. I do hope Tuffy gets well. We hate to see our pets suffer like this. It's heartbreaking. Thanks for the update. bea
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