Lucky goes to the dermotologist, day 306

I sit here with Lucky laying across my feet. Koko, his Mom is pressed on my left side and his sister, Aly is half on my shoulder. I wish I had 3 arms to I could pet them all at the same time. This is the life.

A lot has happened in the last month. Lucky jumped on the bed one day. He's gotten up to 32 lbs with ascites (excessive fluid in the abdomin) and come back down. Up and down, the story of our life.

On the plus side I got Lucky to eat the special Liver diet food. :-)

I took him to see the dermotologist, who knew animals had dermotologist? I wish I had know that years ago. Maybe Lucky's Mom would not have needed ear surgery. Well anyway I took lucky because his ears are not getting any better and he cannot have the ear surgery. I had forgotten his Red Blood Cell (RBC) has been low since he ate the Sago. It's 21, normal is 35. This is considered a huge difference. Sometimes he shows the jaundice and sometimes he doesn't. I wish I understood this.

The dermotologist cleaned his ears so well they did not stink anymore. I could let him sleep in the bed with us. His ears had been so bad he was stinking up the entire house and both of us are sensitive to smell, I don't know how we managed but we did. But we could not sleep with him.

The dermotologist gave us a shampoo to bath Lucky every 48 hrs. We have 2 washes to puty in his ears every day and an antibiotic goes in his ears twice a day. There is some conditioner to put on his skin when we bath him. And he has atarax for dogs, twice a day. He's been on that before. And we don't even know which oral antibiotics he will be on till the culture grows. I work at home so I am always with the dogs. but I work long hrs I don't have time for all of this so I can't imagine people who have to go to an office. But make the time I will, we did not come this far and spend this much money to let a bath get in our way.

All three dogs ended up in the bed with us. We have to be fair. Usually they all surround me but he was being needy and ran his mom and sister off to the other side with my husband. We had a nice night but in the morning I found he had thrown-up. I just don't understand why he keeps going from ok to bad and back.

I started researching the liver again. Apparently it is very common for humans or animals with cirrhosis to be underweight and malnurished. It does not make me not want to fatten him up but at least I know I am not doing anything wrong.

The vets are amazed that I can tell when he is retaining fluid. I never realized it was so difficult. I reach under his belly while he is standing and push at his belly quickly with my fingers only. If it's jiggly like a ballon filled with water I keep doing it to get a feel for how much it is. On a dog that does not have acsites the belly will not move like that and will feel more meaty. I have the benefit of having 3 of these dogs so I can compare how his feels compared to the others. Sometimes it's not too bad and I track it based on his weight.

See ya, we're going to take a bath!