GI Issues? Addison's Disease?

[Laura and Angus]

Hi all,

Over the past few months, our now 19 month old goldendoodle has gone through frequent bouts of stomach upset - nausea, vomiting, and in some cases diarrhea. He tested positive for Giardia maybe two months ago and was treated with Panacur for the full 10 days and then tested negative afterwards. He has since had several bouts of stomach upset - either with loose stools, vomiting, or nausea and fatigue. Then about 4 weeks ago we ended up in the vet with a listless dog who had loss of appetite and seemed to be uncomfortable (getting up repeatedly to lay down in different locations) and panting. Last week we ended up in the pet ER for the same symptoms - he was clingy, had no appetite, and ended up throwing up (dry heaving) twice. The vet at the ER did a blood panel to look at Addison's Disease and said that this is common in poodles. Since his cortisol levels were off and his platelets were low, she recommended we get a more in-depth test with our regular vet for Addison's Disease. This was last week.

So today on our way to daycare he threw up in the car - all of his undigested breakfast. This was maybe an hour after he ate and he NEVER gets carsick. I let the daycare know and they called me about an hour later to tell me he threw up again at daycare. They ended up isolating him for the remainder of the day and when I picked him up he came home and is still not hungry. We have been in contact with our vet to schedule the screening for Addison's. Has anyone experienced anything like this? It's just not normal that we're in the vet's office more than once a month for stomach or digestive issues.  

If the Addison's comes back negative, then I'm thinking we're going to need to look at a GI specialist of some sort. Any thoughts or ideas would be greatly appreciated!

[Karen, Jasper and Jackdoodle]

Well, a few of us here have dogs with Inflammatory Bowel Disease, which is harder to diagnose than almost anything else including Addison's. The symptoms of IBD are different for every dog and can include chronic diarrhea, vomiting, regurgitating undigested food, gagging for no apparent reason, nausea, drooling, lip smacking and licking, excessive burping, loss of appetite, weight loss, and unusually loud stomach noises (borborygmus). 

What you're describing doessound like it could be either Addison's or IBD. I agree that if the Addison's test comes back negative, you should schedule an appointment with an internal medicine specialist (IMS). They are much better at diagnosing and treating GI disease than regular GP vets. 

[Laura and Angus]

Thank you for your thoughts, Karen! We're definitely going to rule-out Addison's first and then if that comes back negative we'll look to meet with an IMS. We're going to do chicken and rice for a while until his tummy clear up. We were out for a couple hours and just came back to some vomit in his crate :(  Going to have to maybe do some ice cubes and fasting until the morning to see if his stomach has improved for some chicken and rice. Any thoughts on serving size of chicken and rice to make sure he's getting enough?

[Karen, Jasper and Jackdoodle]

Can you do sweet potatoes instead of rice? A lot of dogs with GI issues don't do well with rice, contrary to popular belief, and the sweet potatoes are much more nutritious. 

Either way, use a 50/50 mix of white meat chicken cut very small and the potatoes or rice. You will need to give him about twice as much of this mixture as you normally feed kibble: in other words, if he normally gets three cups of kibble a day, he'll need 6 cups of the chicken/rice or chicken potato mixture. You may have to do 3 or 4 feedings per day instead of two. 

[Laura and Angus]

We certainly can do sweet potatoes. We always keep them on hand since we give them to him some mornings - wayyy easier than rice! We can probably work out 3-4 feedings a day. He normally gets about 3 cups a day, so it'd be 6 cups. Thanks so much for your help here. We feel so bad - at this point Angus still seems to be nauseous, so we're trying to just get him to have some ice/water and he had a little bite of just plain boiled chicken to see how that goes. We'll see how tomorrow with the Addison's screening goes! Thank you again 

[Karen, Jasper and Jackdoodle]

If he's nauseated, he probably won;t want to eat that much, and I wouldn't push it. Offer the food and let him eat what he wants. You might ask the vet for something you can give him for the nausea. 

[Laura and Angus]

Yeah - so he wanted the chicken (we gave him a little chunk and waited 30 min), but his body did not. He just threw up the chicken and water. We actually have an anti-nausea pill from a previous bout of nausea. We gave him the pill with the chicken and don't see it in his vomit (gross alert!), so we're really hoping it dissolved fast enough to actually help him. Luckily we're going to the vet tomorrow. Weirdly his stomach is growling and gurgling loudly (like you mentioned above in your description of IBD). 

[Karen, Jasper and Jackdoodle]

This is what I had with JD. He couldn't digest anything, everything he ate came up looking the same way it did when it went in, hours after he's eaten. Terrible loud stomach noises, especially after drinking water. But he was never lethargic and never reluctant to eat. In fact, he was starving to death. 

My GP vet tried very hard, running various tests and recommending various meds and foods, but none of it helped. It wasn't until he was in the hands of a specialist that he was finally diagnosed via endoscopy. 

[Laura and Angus]

Awh man...poor JD. It's lucky you really stuck with it to figure out what was going on. I agree that there's no point in continuing with a GP if a specialist would more easily get to the route of a problem. I don't feel like we need to spend months and months trying different things if we could rule things out more quickly by going to a specialist. Thank heavens we got insurance because honestly we would not be able to afford the visits without it!

[Karen, Jasper and Jackdoodle]

Dogs with IBD must be in the care of a specialist. It's crucial.

I really had no choice but to "stick with it", lol. He was dying. His pylorus had become stenotic from the inflammation and he couldn't absorb nutrients. When we finally got to the specialist and had a GI panel done (no GP vets even seem to know what that is), he was severely deficient in cobalamin (B12) and had lost 15% of his body weight in 3 weeks.

And the insurance is very fortunate, indeed, because Jack's inital diagnosis ran almost $4000. And I don;t have insurance. 

Jack was diagnosed in Dec. 2011, and once we got him into remission, (which almost always requires immunosuppressant drugs), he's been well-managed ever since. He eats well, he keeps weight on, he seems to feel well most of the time. Of course, he does have 5 specialists all working to manage his various diseases, lol. For the IBD, he's on low dose prednisone, tylan, VSL#3 probiotics (another thing most GP vets aren't familiar with), ranitidine, L-glutamine, a fiber supplement, fatty acid supplement, and gets B12 shots monthly. (He's also on immunotherapy shots for his allergies, as well as antihistamines, and pain meds for his ruptured lumbar disc, for which he also gets acupuncture and physical therapy regularly.)  He's fed 4 times a day. I'm grateful that he does well with an LID diet combined with home-cooking, and that he doesn't need the heavy duty immunosuppressant drugs; so many IBD dogs do. He hasn't had a flare in years now, and only sees the specialist once a year for a maintenance check. But the first 6 months was very rough until we got things sorted out. 

[Laura and Angus]

Wow! JD is lucky to have you as an owner! Sounds like it's a complicated business, but it's amazing you've figured it all out to find what works for him and how to keep him healthy and happy. I'm hoping we can get to that point soon since I know that Angus is happy most of the time, but having these stomach issues coming up every few weeks is so difficult and I feel so bad for him.

[Kaitlin and Ludo]

I don't have any advice, but I hope Angus feels better soon!

[Laura and Angus]

Thank you! We do too...it's so sad when he lays around :(