# 1st thought Lyme, on and off Doxycycline, then liver issues, maybe Leptospirosis?



## Henrietta's Dad (Oct 25, 2008)

Hello,
We are new here. Our Dog's name is Henrietta. she is about 2 1/2 years old. we adopted her from the Humane Society when she was 4 months old. She is a Dobermann X unknown mix. She is currently 49lbs. She is spayed.

This is a bit long. sorry, just a lot of history form the last 6-7 weeks.
Back about 6-7 weeks ago, Henrietta started acting slow, lethargic, arthritic and also developed a limp on the front right paw. this was over about 2-3 days. So I made a vet appointment. they got us in with-in 3 hours thinking it could be Lyme disease and if so need to act fast. and while waiting for the appointment I googled Lyme in dogs to educate myself.

At the vet appointment, he took her temp which was only slightly high, she was acting a lot better there, but he said they can do that to fool the Doc. He checked the movement of legs, felt all around her body, etc. he said they could do a Lyme test, but the test result would not change what he would recommend, so we skipped it. Thinking it is some form of a tick disease, he put Henrietta on Doxycycline, giving her 2.5 tablets (250mg) every 12 hours or 500mg a day for three weeks. 
Well, after coming home from the vet where she may have been hiding the arthritis & lameness she was still either hiding it or suddenly fine, even though that morning she was so slow and arthritic and limping that you'd have thought she was 15 years old and in rough shape rather than 2 & 1/2 years old. But regardless of her acting much better by just going to the vet, we started the Doxycycline the next morning and went as directed till the pills were all gone. 
While on the pills she was doing awesome! She had more energy than she has had in 6 months to a year. she was like a 6 month old puppy playing, etc. after the pills ran out (about 3 weeks), it was only about 2 days and it seemed like she was slowing down again, by the end of 3 days off the pills, she was real stiff and slow like before and the next morning of the 4th day she was also limping. so I called the vet, they said that can happen that it can come back/take longer on pills, we will try two more weeks of the same Doxycycline as she was doing so well on it.
So we started again, after a day or two, but to the happy energetic happy pup. after two weeks the pills were gone. for 2-3 days off the pills she was still great. but by the 5-6 days, the symptoms came back just as before. unfortunately this was Saturday evening and our vet not open till Monday 9am. but we called and left a message Sunday morning to please call us asap about Henrietta's situation. leaving our phone number, first & last name, etc. well, They did not call so I called about 10:30am. told the guy who answers the phone the situation. he said he will have the Doc call asap. then it was 1:30pm, no call, so I call again, the Doc is in surgery, he will call asap. 3pm, 4pm, no call. my wife then calls and says our dog is doing very poorly and we are very concerned. a woman this time was answering the phone, saying how busy they are today and there are no notes on the system under Henrietta, or out last name, etc. which really ticked us off, because we had called 3 times before, Sun, then 10:30 & 1:30 on Monday. if I knew it would be this hard to get a 2-5 minute conversation with the Doc I would have taken her to a weekend emergency hospital on Sunday. well, besides all that poor service, my wife says she is coming in for some more pills for now since she really does well on them and she has been doing poorly for almost 48 hours now, but we would like to talk to the Doc at some point on the plan, as in have him see her again, change meds, do some testing??? anyway, my wife gets there, they say they are getting the pills ready. this time they did not even break some of them for us (need 2 & 1/2 per dose) like before even though the charge a lot more than 1-800-pet-meds does. 
So Henrietta is on the pills again 3rd round starting last week Monday night at 5pm, then 2nd dose at 7am - she will get them 7am & 7pm till gone as directed - that time works best for us. She is not wanting to eat kibble, but will eat human food like peanut butter, chicken breast, etc. no dairy as we have not been giving her dairy since this started as they said dairy can cause the Doxycycline to not be absorbed. she was still real stiff, slow lethargic and limping last week Tuesday 4pm. At times she has seemed cold as in shivering. so we cover her in a blanket.

During last week Henrietta started showing signs of the arthritis, lameness, etc going away about Wed evening (48 hours back on the pills), Thursday even better and more spunky and Friday even more so.

However, she was still not eating her dry dog food (Nutro Natural choice lamb & rice), then wouldn't eat turkey, rice, bread and a few other things she used to always gobble up. she is now real finicky. eats a tiny bit of something then turns away form it, but will maybe eat something else. for a while she did not eat like milk bones, but then she would eat them again. she would eat a little peanut butter here and there. earlier that day, she would not eat some nice plain chicken breast she would normally kill for, then tonight she ate it. but earlier she would eat some plain tuna with big excited eyes, but after four pinches of it she turned away from more, but then some baked crackers were good. just getting hard to feed her as she does not want to eat enough of one thing and lots of things she does not even want at all.

She started back on the Doxycycline last week Monday evening and every 12 hours after. last week Monday evening and Tuesday morning & evening went fine, but last week Wed morning she threw up her food & the pills 10 minutes later. we waited two hours, then fed her again and gave her more Doxycycline pills since they were only in her for 10 minutes. two hours later she vomited again. but this time we figured the pills were probably in her system. we fed her in the afternoon - just food, no pills. and all was fine. Last Wed night she ate and got the pills and looked like she was going to vomit (she does a routine before vomiting), but we caught it and petted her and took her mind off of it and she kept it all down.
Last Thursday morning she ate & had pills, then again 2 hours later vomited. fed her in the afternoon, all well Thursday evening was same as Wed, looked like she was going to vomit, but petting and love kept it down.
Friday morning, she ate & pills & vomited about 1 hour & 15 minutes later. so I called the vet. the suggested trying to feed her early for dinner - 3 hours a head, then try just pills, no food, nothing. if she tosses up the pills alone, then she would an appointment for "blood work" tests (last) Saturday morning. Vet is open 9-noon.
Also, noticed last Friday morning, when she urinates, it is orange, not dark. just orange. she has been drinking the usual water. Whites of the eyes are clean pure white (no yellow), her gums look good too.

So by last week Friday she was acting fairly happy and fine, no lameness, no arthritis or limping or sadness, etc. but she is not eating normal and the orange urine plus vomiting when taking the pills. so we took her in last Saturday morning for "blood work" tests.


Update Monday 10-20-2008

I had mentioned last Friday morning I noticed her urine looked orange!, real orange! Saturday morning it was darker like a burnt orange. So they are running a whole bunch of blood tests and a few others - about $130.00 worth: CBC (with Differential) $42, Profile $70, 4DX Tick-Borne Disease Screen $16. the results are expected later today (last Monday 10-20-2008). 

The pills must have been in long enough (before she tossed them) to make her better or she got better on her own. Matter of fact Saturday, Sunday and so far today she seems 100%. back to playing and happy funny character and attitude and eating normal. They had us fast her (no food, no treats, etc) for 24 hours from Friday night till Sunday morning. Since Sunday she has only been eating boiled chicken & rice. but now she eats it right away gobbles it right down. Since last Saturday she seems in perfect health other than the urine color. her urine is looking less orange last night (Sunday night) and Monday morning and at noon looked like normal yellow urine. We are still concerned that without the pills she will start to go back to the lethargic, artheuritic and limping sad dog. it's like night and day how she was from one weekend to the next.


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## Henrietta's Dad (Oct 25, 2008)

cont.



Thursday: 10-23-2008

HenriDog has been awesome since last Saturday. We stopped the Doxycycline antibiotics as she was tossing them back up last week wed, thur & fri. but I think they already helped her? If she needs them again we might have to try another type of antibiotic. They say the more you are on and off a certain drug/antibiotic the more likely you are to have side effects or that it will not work. 
One thing I was pondering was that maybe the last batch of them we got might have been a bad batch or expired??? or else it was too many times on and off of them and or side effects. but for now she has been off them since last week Friday morning and doing awesome. she has been eating very well now, super happy and 100% back to herself. Hopefully it is over. by last Monday her urine color was back normal - clear to light yellow from the orange and burnt orange color of Friday & Saturday morning. She is just not making much , um, well, poo. about one every 2 days and they have been small. she fasted from last Friday 10pm till Sunday morning 8:30. since Sunday 8:30 she has been on home made Chicken breast & White Rice. yesterday I started adding in a little dry dog food again. She has been on Nutro Natural Choice Lamb & rice for about 2 years now. 

all the test results from last Saturday morning blood draw are back: 
1) Complete blood count: said results were all pretty normal 

2) 4DX test for Lyme/tick Bourne and a few other things was negative (but he said the tick test is not very accurate - they have seen positive on the test and the dog is fine and a negative on the test and the dog shows all signs of Lyme disease) so not very accurate of a test. but probably not Lyme.

3) last group of tests was the Profile, it looks at blood sugar, organs like liver, kidneys, etc. He said it showed some problems with her liver, some levels or enzymes or something with it. not too serious - yet, and since she is doing great now, they will hold off on anything and just want to recheck her in a few weeks to see if any better or worse. not as expensive since just checking the liver & kidneys

Based on those results pointing to her liver plus the symptoms she had of body & muscle pain, temperature and lethargic, some chills, he thinks she has Leptospirosis. which he has not seen in 20 years, but there are reports of new strains of it being reported and it making a comeback. and lucky enough the Doxycycline she was on for suspected Lyme is also what they use to fight Leptospirosis.
He said we can do another test for $48 that tests specifically for Leptospirosis. However, since she is doing well now, it is up to us. We think we might just do the test to be sure. what is another $48 after $330. 

But back to the food. I googled "Nutro Natural Choice" and found a consumer thread that concerns me: http://www.consumeraffairs.com/pets/nutro.html
There are many complaints about their dry food and a few talk of liver enzymes high and liver damage and sick tired lethargic dogs. also in there I found a pet food rating site: http://www.dogfoodanalysis.com/dog_food_reviews/ which says out of 6 starts Nutro natural choice is only 2 stars! So we are thinking of going to Blue Buffalo since it is 4 stars and not much more $. 30lbs for $42 vs. 40lbs for $40.
I was thinking about Solid Gold barking at the moon because it looks to be even better and only $10 more, but then there are some posts I have seen lately about newer bags of it having rancid issues.
Henrietta was on Nutro ultra puppy as a pup, but we had switched to Nutro natural choice lamb & rice when she was about 8 months or so. she always had great coat, etc, but lately this problem plus we had noticed little bumps on the top of her head and her outer ears, which went away on the Doxycycline & still gone with the home made chicken & rice. 

Another food: 6 stars is Innova EVO Large Bite Dry Dog Food is about 29lbs for $45. so not much more than blue buffalo 30lbs for $43, but is 2 stars higher! Not sure available local, but Amazon has it: http://www.amazon.com/Innova-EVO-La...5?ie=UTF8&s=home-garden&qid=1224794758&sr=8-5
Chuck & Dons pet food outlet has it too. My wife is stopping on way home for a price check.
Chuck & Don's the EVO was $60 for 28.6lbs, so she bought the Blue Buffalo Lamb & rice for $43. a 4 star food vs. the Nutro 2 star. but not the 6 star Innova EVO. and the Amazon.com price on EVO is without shipping and the shipping is like $17!

Another forum, someone is recommending Milk Thistle (a herb). which is supposed be help the Liver to heal. anyone here know much about it?



Friday 10-24-2008
Henrietta is doing very well still. at least from outward appearances she seems happy & healthy. her urine is still clear since Monday. eating, playing, etc.

We received the test results today. anything out of range was marked with a H or L.

This was from blood taken last week Saturday morning, note: when her urine was a burnt orange color, she had just been on the Doxycycline and vomiting it up. but was her first day of acting 100% better. 

Here is what was out of range:

AST (GOT) HIGH should be range: (13-18) Henrietta: 182

AST (GPT) HIGH should be range: (14-151) Henrietta: 816

Alk.Ptase HIGH should be range: (13-289) Henrietta: 1937

Total Bilirubin HIGH should be range: (0.1-0.5) Henrietta: 0.7

Albumin LOW should be range: (2.6-4.0) Henrietta: 2.5

Anion Gap LOW should be range: (15-25) Henrietta: 12

Platelet Count LOW should be range: (140-540) Henrietta: 58

There are a whole bunch of other results, but they are all with in the range - not high or low. We are concerned that some of those numbers are really high! The Vet had basically said, if she is doing fine then we should just watch her for now and maybe run just a few of these tests in a month. if we want to do a Leptospirosis test we could just to know if she has it or not.

I'm thinking we want to take a new blood sample now a week later and test for these things that were high or low.

I Googled all of those test results above: Platelet count seems to mean concern for her bleeding easy. I think most everything else is Liver related. 
So her Liver seems to be in rough shape. not sure how bad? the Doc didn't seem too worried, like to suggest a special diet or meds. We still have her on Chicken breast & white rice with some Blue Buffalo Lamb & rice mixed in - slowly ramping up to be back on the Blue Buffalo dry dog food.


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## Jenna09 (Dec 20, 2007)

I would be seeking a second opinion. The ALT elevation and drop in liver platelets could mean she is having a reaction to something. Immune mediated thrombocypotenia is something that I have looked into in the past few days because of Lola's situation. You should google that and possibly ask you vet about it.

I would be concerned that your vet hasnt seemed very concerned with the elevation of ALT and elevation in Bilirubin. Is she jaundice?? 

Lola has been on iv fluids for almost a week. Now her elevations of ALT and Bilirubin were higher but I would still seek a second opinion. 

When we took Lola to the Guelph University Veternarian College they asked us so many question about whether she could have gotten into anything; such as: bubblegum, wild mushrooms, pills, poison, certain plants, tomatoes, cleaner, chocolate, etc etc!

Hope you find out what is wrong soon!
Jenna


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## Henrietta's Dad (Oct 25, 2008)

We have watched for any signs of jaundice as someone on another forum was warning us that being on the Doxycycline so long can cause IMHA. Her eye whites are clear and white. her gums look good too. She had that orange and burnt orange urine, but that was last week Fri, Sat & Sun - probably from the Doxycycline???

We always watch Henri very close. We do not have human kids, we never give her chocolate or other poison foods or leave it around. no poisons around, we keep her out of treated lawns, we even take her out to potty on a leash. when running free in the backyard we are there and check the yard first as we have found things like chicken bones, parts of dead small rodents, etc probably from neighbors cat or local squirrels and raccoons.

Monday (tomorrow) we are going to take her to another Vet. I want to run everything by them and see what the say/suggest. I do want to blood test for at least those levels that were off for sure to see where they are now that it is a week later and she is still doing awesome . Those blood results were the morning after she had been on Doxycycline for a few days (and a 5 weeks of it before that) and the Doxycycline was making her vomit every time we gave it to her. her urine was also orange and burnt orange the morning they took the blood for the tests, and that day was her first day of looking like she was feeling 100% in over a week. She is been doing awesome, looking awesome since last week Saturday - 8 days now off all meds. her urine was clear by last Monday/Tuesday. So I'm thinking the levels will be much better now??? hoping anyway.


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## Shalva (Mar 23, 2007)

Doxycycline can cause liver problems..... 
you might talk to your vet about an alt med like tetracycline.

I know a person whose dog showed severe hepatitis and almost died due to doxy.... 

I will be honest I didn't get through your whole post so this may be mute if you already know this.... 

I would also want to run a full tick panel not the little snap test but the full tick panel and find out exactly what you are dealing wiht as well as a lepto test 

then treat any tick born illnesses for a minimum of 6 weeks. 
not with doxy.... 

s


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## secondchance (Sep 9, 2008)

I second everything that Shalva says. 
I worked with a dog that ended up on doxy for a long time due to a tick borne disease and now has severe liver damage that will shorten her life significantly... talk to your vet....
Definately spend the money on the diagnostics.... it is totally worth it... and if you have a reference point before you start treatment, you can retest later so you know if the medication is working properly. Get a proper tick panel (pretty sure it is a blood culture)


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