Friday, August 3, 2007

Our Aging Pepper

Thanks to those of you who have emailed or commented asking about our appetite-less dog, Pepper. I finally took him to the vet to be sure that I wasn't just connecting two things that seemed related but really weren't.

The blood work came back showing some elevated levels related to renal distress. In other words, his kidneys aren't happy. He is a big dog (Black Lab/Great Dane mix is the best guess; 110 lbs. now that he has slimmed down some thanks to a diet) and about 8 years old ... anyone who has been around lots of dogs knows that the combination of a big, aging, male dog leads one to think of kidney failure as something to keep your eyes out for. Therefore, I wasn't completely surprised by these results.

This can give one a bit of gastric distress as well ... a.k.a. an upset tummy. Tom went to heroic lengths and gathered a urine sample yesterday on a neighborhood walk (don't ask for details!) and Hannah took it to work today for further analysis. Most probably we are looking at feeding him very high protein food which won't have many byproducts to filter through those distressed kidneys.

And so it goes ...

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