Aspen the Yorkie

We learned the hard way about impacted anal glands and how to express them.  I got sick during our own natural disaster, Hurricane Irene, and my owners were doing their best to keep up with flooding issues and me not feeling well at the same time.

I couldn’t tell them that it wasn’t just the Pancreatitis that I’d had before…but something more.  At first it seemed like I was doing better when they started treating me for the Pancreatitis, but then one Saturday I was miserable and in pain.  These are the things I did to try to let my owners know what was wrong, and some things that they should have picked up if they weren’t so distracted by the weather, power failure, etc.:

• I scooted around dragging my bottom on the floor, they just thought it was itchy, but it was more than that
• I licked myself a lot trying to clean my anal area, which made me feel sick..and icky thing to have to do
• I didn’t have an appetite.
• I skulked around the house with my head down, flopping down wherever I felt like it.
• My belly felt bloated and distended, and felt hot, I was feverish

Finally my owner looked online, and through searching for different things about dogs anal glands, she found that they can need what they call “expressing” and if they aren’t cleaned, they can get impacted.  She realized I had all the symptoms she was reading about, and tried to find a video on how to express the anal glands.  There were a few, but this is one that you can see really well, and of a small dog, so it was most helpful:

BUT, my owner couldn’t do this, and decided to take me to the vet (finally) after the weekend. The vet said that because I had diarrhea, maybe from stress related to the storm, he wanted to hydrate me so gave me fluids under the skin. Also told my owner to continue to treat me for the Pancreatitis, and then he expressed the glands. He said that they were very full and that what they contained was thick, so hard to express.

I came home and now it’s over a week later, and I’m fine…got better almost right away after that, and now my owner will know the signs and symptoms that show the anal glands need to be expressed.

As a Yorkie, I can tell you having Pancreatitis is not fun…it hurts…and it’s kept me from wanting to blog for a long time, but I’m feeling great now, back to pestering my owner regularly, and now she appreciates it because it means I’m feeling good>:-)<

I am hoping that I went through might help other Yorkie friends out there.

Over the years, I’ve been getting (sorry, this is yucky) diarrhea a lot easier than I used to depending upon what I eat.  So my owner has been doing all kinds of things to take things out of my diet, and carefully add new things, very gradually, that’s what you have to do when you’re changing foods with a Yorkie.

One day a month or so ago, I got really bad, and we went to the Vet.  We’ve done that before, but this time, the did a blood test for Pancreatitis, and I came up as having it.  There are really no medications for this, but they did treat it in almost the same way as they did a year ago in January, 2009, and then we just had to watch and see.

Here’s some things my owner did wrong (I forgive her) and what the doctor had us do:

• My owner gave me Chicken Livers the night before, you would think that wouldn’t bother me, but it’s very rich and high in cholesterol.  When I was younger, I could handle more foods than I can now.
• The next day I had VERY yellow diarrhea, and was throwing up, also yellow, and walked around with my back kind of hunched and head down because it hurt inside. So we made an appointment with the Veterinarian.  So important if you think something serious is wrong.
• The vet gave me subcutaneous (I think that’s the word) fluids, they put a lot of water just under my skin with a needle to help with dehydration since….
• I wasn’t allowed to drink or eat anything for 24 hours!!!  But it wasn’t that bad, I wasn’t feeling well at all so not very hungry, and if I did eat was in pain.
• I was given 1/4 of a 10mg Pepcid A/C tablet on an empty stomach in the afternoon a 1/2-1 hours before when I would have had my dinner, then every 24 hours for a week before my evening meal. The veterinarian had us add another week on because I still wasn’t quite right after a week. After finding that to be a battle (I hate taking pills), and after I had started eating again, my owner added it to just a tiny bit of chicken breast so I wouldn’t notice it, then gave me the rest of my meal later.
• I had to eat several small meals a day of white rice (or I like Gerber’s baby flaked rice…just about a tablespoon mixed in with the cut up chicken with a little water added) and chicken breast, morning, mid morning, noon, mid afternoon, and dinner time, about 2 tablespoons of food each time until I got better.

I finally did get better, then there was the quest to find the right food for me, that’s another story that we’ll share with you in our next post.

It’s good to feel good again!