Healthy as a Horse, Strong as an Ox - Oban

[Snowshoe]

All Oban's bloodwork and other tests are back and he is fit as a fiddle. Some of you know his scary health story with Lymphangiectasia. All out of whack bloods, liver, B-12, albumin, protein, creatinine, everything that was off is still good almost a year after first recovering. The roundworms he had recently were not killed off by the Strongid so he had a different med for another course of five or so weeks and this time good. Vet says it's unusual for an adult dog to be so filled up with those worms, an apparently healthy dog, so he must still have some immune system problem going on and we still need to be careful with his food. But they are gone now, no worms and no eggs either.

The only small wrench in the health is titre shows he is not mounting a response to Distemper so we have to decide whether to vaccinate again or leave it. Vet cannot get the vaccine just for Distemper so Hepatitis and Parvo would be included and those titre out at protective levels. I am thinking I will not vaccinate. But we do have lots of raccoons around, even if most dogs are not spreading Distemper. Still, thinking no.

Oban's biggest problem now is his sore elbow which is markedly out of alignment, cannot be repaired. Here is where the Ox and horse come in, he still wants to run, run, jump, play, even when it hurts. Oban still wants to ZOOM.

[SunDance]

Great news. It's a shame most dogs don't have a really good way of sensing what they shouldn't be doing until it's too late.

I've seen a lot of sick raccoons around here the past few years...distemper and dumb rabies look a lot alike per Animal Control. The ones I've seen have been staggering or having seizures or just not in control of their limbs.

[Sue]

Good to hear!

About the titre. Keep in mind there is still probably memory present. Same reason I will not titre protected for HBV, although I converted fine when I had the series many years ago. The last check was showing negative, when I was tested at work, but I declined a new series as it meant I hadn't ever been exposed. This article explains it better than I can.

Titres: What Do They Mean? - Dogs Naturally Magazine

P.S. I normally take articles from Dogs Naturally magazine with a healthy grain of salt, but this particular one does have science behind it. Written by a Lab breeder, by the way.

[Annette47]

Glad to hear he’s doing so well.

I don’t know if I mentioned it, but my trainer had two dogs (mother and daughter) diagnosed (fairly close to each other) with what they think was a hereditary form of Lymphangiectasia. The younger dog is doing well, but they were unable to stabilize the mother (she was about 10 years old at diagnosis) and they lost her a few weeks ago. They couldn’t find any food that she could both tolerate and was willing to eat for more than a meal or two. She just got weaker and weaker until they decided enough was enough. As I said though her daughter is doing well on a special diet. Unfortunately though, this means that she has to end this line of dogs as she can’t take a chance of passing it down again. Scary stuff!

[Snowshoe]

@SunDance - We had NO raccoon rabies in Ontario. Then it made it's way in, MNR did culls and vaccine drops, got rid of it. Now it's back again. Still, pretty rare around here. Yeah, we had people panicking next door, no, actually they were pretty calm, it was the dopey OPP who were panicking, when a sick raccoon got into their yard. It ended up in our yard, OH made a snare pole and caught it, took it to wildlife rehab nearby who euthanized it, distemper. We were cautioned to bleach our patio.

@Sue - Yes, I get those too. I feel the same way about the salt.

@Annette - I'm so sorry, my condolences to your friend on her loss. Yes, it is thought to be genetic and most websited I looked at mention certain breeds where it is fairly well known to occur. Labs are not one of those breeds but they can still get it and the Internal Specialist Vet who treated Oban has had Labs with it before. I have joined a Canine Intestinal Lymphangeictasia FB and it seems that Oban got off pretty lightly. Maybe your friend would like to google that up for her other dog.

ONe thing I forgot to mention. Our regular, Holistic/Integrative Vet had been wanting Oban to go back on raw food. It would be hard as a very low fat diet is the common way (though not scientifically proven) to handle L. But Oban, as per his Nutriscan, has intolerances to turkey and whitefish which wipes out two of the favoured foods. So we think he will still go to raw, but only about two meals a week. He'll like that, he definitely likes the raw food, Poppa Bear got a work out nearly every day when he was on raw.

[Sue]

Poppa Bear got a work out nearly every day when he was on raw.

[Meeps83]

^^^^^^^

Eeeeeeew lol!

[POPTOP]

So good to hear Oban is doing great.

From experience, there is no way to slow them down, no matter what the problem is, when they want to go.

[janedoe]

That's fantastic news! I wouldn't do the vaccine for our dogs but do understand the concern about wildlife. We used to have tons of raccoons but I haven't seen one in about six years. There were some sick ones and people were calling them in. They were all gone in a year. The coyote population is way down too. All good thoughts for Oban's continued good health.

[Scoutpout]

great news!
hmm, not sure what to do about the low titre test, but i'd tend to go the way you're leaning. think i may be having that discussion with Triggie's vet when we titre him at about 6.5 months to see about all the "baseline" vaccinations.
and raw...oh how they seem to love raw. I know Oban was doing great on it until the L. hoping you can find something that works for him, get the immune back up a bit.
he looks fantastic, considering how sick he was last year....