Newly Diganosed AIHA in Min. Schnauzer – Page 3

Arianne

Guest

Hey friends,

Yesterday in the States, we celebrated the fourth of July, our independence day. Carsten woke up looking and feeling pretty good. He’s eating on his own, drinking lots of water, and has more pep in his step.

As the evening wore down, people in our neighborhood began setting off fireworks, despite being against city ordinance. Carsten began to have very fast respirations with no visible panting or distress, but at one point, my husband and I were measuring between 60-80 bpm. I called the vet hospital again, and explained what was going on and they recommended we bring him in again.

Carsten went back with the care team and they took another PCV. The vet. was very busy, and we waited quite a while, but when she returned, we received some pretty good news. Carsten’s PCV is up to 35 from 24 on Wednesday. I was pretty excited. The vet said Carsten was probably showing a mixture of anxiety and quicker breathing still being slightly anemic, anyway on the low side of normal. She sent us home with a sedative called Acepromazine which she explained would calm him down, make him feel woozy, and fall asleep.

Well, we gave him the Acepromazine, and it did little to calm him down. He is 22 lbs., and they prescribed a 10 mg. tablet every 8-12 hours as needed. Carsten lay by my side all night, clearly tired, but seemingly unable to relax enough to fall asleep. He had a hard time falling asleep when we went to bed, too, and that was when I began to read about Acepromazine. Apparently, it causes a dog’s body to physically become relaxed, but does nothing to calm the dog’s anxiety or slow his mind down. Essentially, he was still feeling the same anxiety, but was trapped in his body unable to express his stress. I felt absolutely terrible!

When we got up this morning, he was a drunk-like little dog. He was stumbling, having a hard time going up the stairs, unsure of himself, a little wobbly on his legs. His third eyelid made an appearance, and he generally looked miserable. He also looked at me with this “Why did you do this to me?” face, and I felt so bad for having given him the medication. He ate his breakfast and drank water with no incident.

Later this morning and into the afternoon, Carsten started to perk up and it seemed the Acepromazine was wearing off. My husband went out to run a couple of errands. When I came home, I realized that a take out box from a local BBQ joint was on the floor in the living room. In all of our stress last night, I forgot to throw the box away. The box contained chicken bones! Tiny ones from the breast and back, picked clean of meat (since I fed him a lot of the chicken last night), but clean gone from the box. He seems to be doing fine. He greeted us at the door, tail wagging, and barking, but now I’m nervous we are going to have complications from the chicken bones. Ugh. In the past, he has accidentally (from our end and purposely from his end) eaten a pork rib with no incident and a corn cob, too. I am just going to continue to monitor him as he is showing no signs of distress. He is a really good chewer, so I’m hoping everything goes down and comes out okay.

This dog is going to give me a heart attack before the weeks is over, I’m sure of it.

Thanks for reading,
Arianne and Carsten

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