Tucker's Travels

All the while I was dealing with Ceilidh and her cancer, my older Sheltie Tucker was also having some medical issues. At his annual checkup, my regular vet recommended that he should have his teeth cleaned and two teeth pulled. Since we had just completed Ceilidh's surgery and were starting chemotherapy, I opted to wait awhile to have the work done. In late April, I took Tucker in for the pre-op blood work necessary because of his age to go forward with the dental work. The results showed that his liver enzymes were elevated and his cholesterol very high. We then began a series of blood tests to find out if he had either Cushing's Disease or Hypothyroidism. The test for Cushing's came back slightly abover the normal range but it wasn't high enough to be significant. The thryoid panel came back normal. So now he is on a low fat diet to see if we can get his cholesterol down. We will have the triglyceride tests done again at the end of the month to see if the diet has been effective. If it hasn't, we'll have to look at an ultra low-fat diet or home-cooked diet. The very high cholesterol is very likely the reason he is so lethargic. So for now, it is a low fat diet, no people food (except for two bites of my toast at breakfast) and only sweet potato and duck or carrots for treats. I certainly hope the diet works for him as I have read that medications designed to reduce cholesterol in people are only used as a last resort for dogs since one of the side effects is liver toxicity.