Bowel disease in Springer.

bertsmom

Just wondering if anyone has any experience or tips to help a dog with bowel disease. My Springer (love of my life) has developed it. I have brought him to the vets a lot in the last few months with loss of appetite and diarrhoea. He had an x-ray under anaesthetic on the 9th of November last and showed nothing lodged anywhere in his gut so the vet gave him a steroid injection (almost sure it was steroid) to help him regain his appetite and canigest for the diarrhoea .
This has worked wonders and he has been wolfing down his prescription food and in great form for the last month with no diarrhoea .
However since yesterday he has lost his appetite again and is back to having the diarrhoea again.
As far as I can remember the vet indicated that if this happened again in a month or so as it has it would definitely point towards a bowel disease diagnoses and he would need an injection every few weeks to keep him eating.
I guess after that meandering post I'm wondering if anyone has had a dog with this issue and what helped if anything and I guess I'm wondering also if we have long left together...

cocker5

Can I ask did the vet do full bloods / urine analysis?

cocker5

Also what age is you dog OP?

bertsmom

Hi cocker5 thanks for replying. No the vet didn't do the full blood/urine analysis but I do think he is very good. He predicted this to occur again in a month and its exactly that. Also he has been his vet since he was a puppy and knows him really well so I guess I do have a lot of faith in him.
My dog is twelve.

cocker5

Ok well personally while I understand you have full faith in ur vet and he may well be 100% correct on this .. but to rule out kidney disease, liver issues, pancreatitis and other conditions I would get full blood work up and uribe analysis. They all have similar symptoms. It’s quick and easy to do and at least you’d know exactly the cause and you could work at treatments from there. Once you have an exact cause / condition then you can google ways to help etc. those symptoms can also be linked to food allergies.

I don’t always go on the vets opinion I do spend time researching lots of things .. it’s not that I don’t have faith in some vets it’s that they are similar to Gp’s .. general medicine.. and not specialists in lots of areas so they aren’t always aware of what the best treatment is available.. that’s just from my experience.

To be 100% I’d get bloods and urine tests done then you know what your dealing with!

CelticRambler

Definitely need a full intestinal parasitology screen, aswell as blood tests. X-rays are pretty useless for investigating diarrhoea, ultrasound would be much better - was that done at the same time? It's possible that your vet can feel something during the physical exam, and maybe even knows of some history in other members of that particular litter, but it's a bit of a leap to go straight to a final diagnosis (and steroid treatment) without having done more of a diagnostic work-up.

tk123

I'd at least expect the vet to do a snap test for pancreatitis...but you need to make sure you have it done when they're symptomatic. I'd be in the same situation as yourself with one of my dogs OP if I the vet didn't do bloods and left me to it ie I'd be back every few weeks for anti-nausea medicine for him to stop him being sick. Instead we know it's mild/chronic pancreatitis so he's treated conservatively for it - he gets digestive enzymes with every meal, his meals are low fat (he either gets his raw food or Rocco sensitive from zooplus) and he gets 3 smaller meals instead of 2 larger ones with veg added to keep him full. At that if he's anyway symptomatic he gets the anti-nausea shot because from experience now once he's showing symptoms i'm not going to be able to turn it around with Zantac etc. He's needed pain relief for it once and he cried the place down getting it as it was so painful

To put it another way.. if you went to the GP with a bad tummy and they told you you'd be back in a month would you leave it at that? I know I wouldn't..

bertsmom

Thank ye so much for taking the time to post.
Cocker5 yes I think you are right and I've a feeling he will want to investigate himself further before treatment is decided but he wanted to let me know his thoughts I think.
CeltisRambler no the ultrasound was not done at the same time if I remember correctly he did say we would have to travel to a city vet for an ultrasound (I could be wrong on that one). He has had his vaccines every year and regular groom etc. He has flagged a few lumps that you can feel but to be honest he is a lumpy dog anyway and they have remained the same for years (he had two removed last year)
Tk123 I will mention that test you mention and blood tests to be done. He is currently only on the Hills digestive id dog food for dogs with gastro problems and he loves it on a normal good day. Hope your poor dog is doing well.
Thank ye, I am bringing him up to the vet in the morning and I probably won't get a chance to update until after work tommoro night.

cocker5

Best of luck OP hopefully with further testing a full diagnosis can be done x it’s not easy seeing our dogs unwell we all feel your pain here and we all try our best to keep them healthy and happy.

Let’s us know how u get on?