Well, at least we know. Diagnosis from the biopsy: Moderate to severe lymphoplasmacytic and eosinophilic enteritis with central lacteal dilation, mild multifocal chronic LP gastritis…..
We have done just about everything diet wise as you have read in previous posts. Even the supplements like Digestin and GI Cell support that have worked really great for a couple of our other senstive digestive dogs have not helped Onyx. From an expert in Seattle the only treatment are 2 different immunosuppresant drugs. Since Onyx did terrible before on prednisone she is now on Budesonide every day. Added to that is Azathioprine. That is the “nasty” drug. Careful monitoring of neutrophils is critical as this drug is very toxic. But….if we don’t try something then Onyx will die. The vet in Seattle said only 50% of these dogs get better and live. sigh.
She is down to 32 pounds. A bag of bones. Her energy levels and attitude though are almost like any other dog. She still has her beautiful sleek black coat (even while shedding!) and her eyes are bright and cheery.
We have also switched her food. Something I swore that I would never do (and I become quite obnoxious on my soap box about this) is to feed a “dog food” with corn in it. We have Onyx on Science Diet I/D both dry and canned. The dry food has the first ingredient as corn. No dog should eat a diet of corn!! I’m so against all these dogs foods that have corn, especially as the first ingredient. But obviously Onyx can’t process anything else. So, now her stools are nothing but yellow corn. ugh. BUT…our vet has ordered a different very low fat dog food. It should be in soon. I’m curious to see what the ingredients are. It is not a Science Diet food. (If you read most of the labels on all the Hills/Science Diet regular foods, they are full of corn and corn products. Why????—cheap fillers that turns to fat. No wonder our pet population is obese)
She doesn’t seem to be processing this food either. The vet did say it could get a little worse before her body starts to react to the drugs and begin the healing process. She is on pretty high doses right now and the object is to get her stabilized and digesting food, then start to slowly wean her off the high doses to where she can maintain with the smallest amount of drugs.
So we continue to battle with this disease. I will keep this updated as to her progress.