Thursday, January 26, 2012

Rimadyl for Samson

Well, we've given him four weeks of antibiotics and about three weeks of prednisone. Soon as we started to ween him off of the pred, his limp returned. He's still favoring his right leg even though we can't find anything wrong with it. Travis is going to call a couple of orthopedic vets for some advice. We're thinking about taking him in to see one of them so they can maybe to an MRI or something to check the soft tissue for injuries since we already know his bones are fine.

His limp is really pretty bad when he's off the prednisone. It's hard seeing him hurt, but we ordered him some Rimadyl (or rather the off-brand version) and it came in the mail today. We gave him his first pill earlier this afternoon, so hopefully we'll start to see him feeling better in a couple of days.

We're also going to continue giving him this glucosamine+chondroitin and fish oil pills. lol Sam and Abby eat those things like Gushers. xD In fact, Abby has already broken into two jars of the fish oil pills and eaten a third of a bottle the first time, and well over half a bottle the second time. After the second time, we decided to keep the pills in the upper kitchen cabinets instead of our bathroom countertop.

Monday, January 9, 2012

Prednisone Kicks the Limp

A week ago we started Samson on a short-term regimen of prednisone with the hopes that his limping is due to autoimmune arthritis (a.k.a. Lyme disease). In theory, giving Samson a round of pred will "reset" his body and get rid of the inflammation and limp. After two days his limp was mostly gone; he hasn't limped at all in a couple of days now. His allergies have also settled down (for a while there he was trying to get a few hot spots).

We're continuing his antibiotics, glucosamine+condroitin, and fish oil. We'll get two more weeks of antibiotics before he finishes these so that he'll have a full month's worth before it's all over with. As a side note, we're supplementing his diet with plain yogurt to help his digestive system while he's taking the antibiotics since they can sometimes upset dogs' stomachs.