Okay, for all of you that are interested... Here's the update.
We went to the vet Monday, and got bloodwork, a fecal, and of course a HW test.
The HW test and fecal were negative. Free of any parasites.
When the vet got to Fleetwood's bloodwork results, the first thing she said was "It blew my mind." :wall: She says that nothing concerns her as far as his organs go, but His white blood cell count was WAY high. And the majority of them were lymphocytes, which is way unusual for a dog of his age. And to boot, the cells themselves were abnormal. She ordered some kind of pathology test on the cells, and the results of that test will be in tomorrow....
Forgive me if I get any of that slightly wrong, I don't know all the technical lingo. Fleetwood's stool has been the consistency of water the past few days, and he threw up partially digested food 3 times this morning. When we went in on Monday, She noticed that every part of his body was unusually dry-- his paw pads, his skin, everything-- it's like he's not absorbing any of the moisture that he's taking in. She also said that the dry skin is causing secondary infections on his skin.
As for his shoulder... She did do another X-ray, and sure enough, there's an OCD injury. Osteochondritis Dissecans. They're confident that it can be fixed with a sort of stem cell treatment called PRP. Platelet Rich Plasma. It sounds incredible- he gets blood drawn, They isolate platelets, and he gets them injected into the site of the injury-- they say that we'll start to see improvement in as little as a week! Sounds great, I hope it works!
I'm done with dog food. I stopped at the grocery store on my way home and then cooked up a big batch of hamburger and rice with bonemeal and oil. That's what he's eating until we can come up with a better game plan. He's going in tomorrow for fluid treatment, and we'll hopefully have the pathology results back by then.
I also took Gina in with him for pretty much the same work-up. According to the bloodwork, She's got signs of cushing's disease. We'll be doing an X-ray and ultrasound later this week or next week to work on figuring that out.
We went to the vet Monday, and got bloodwork, a fecal, and of course a HW test.
The HW test and fecal were negative. Free of any parasites.
When the vet got to Fleetwood's bloodwork results, the first thing she said was "It blew my mind." :wall: She says that nothing concerns her as far as his organs go, but His white blood cell count was WAY high. And the majority of them were lymphocytes, which is way unusual for a dog of his age. And to boot, the cells themselves were abnormal. She ordered some kind of pathology test on the cells, and the results of that test will be in tomorrow....
Forgive me if I get any of that slightly wrong, I don't know all the technical lingo. Fleetwood's stool has been the consistency of water the past few days, and he threw up partially digested food 3 times this morning. When we went in on Monday, She noticed that every part of his body was unusually dry-- his paw pads, his skin, everything-- it's like he's not absorbing any of the moisture that he's taking in. She also said that the dry skin is causing secondary infections on his skin.
As for his shoulder... She did do another X-ray, and sure enough, there's an OCD injury. Osteochondritis Dissecans. They're confident that it can be fixed with a sort of stem cell treatment called PRP. Platelet Rich Plasma. It sounds incredible- he gets blood drawn, They isolate platelets, and he gets them injected into the site of the injury-- they say that we'll start to see improvement in as little as a week! Sounds great, I hope it works!
I'm done with dog food. I stopped at the grocery store on my way home and then cooked up a big batch of hamburger and rice with bonemeal and oil. That's what he's eating until we can come up with a better game plan. He's going in tomorrow for fluid treatment, and we'll hopefully have the pathology results back by then.
I also took Gina in with him for pretty much the same work-up. According to the bloodwork, She's got signs of cushing's disease. We'll be doing an X-ray and ultrasound later this week or next week to work on figuring that out.