<p>At 14, your dog is quite old for a lab. My advice would be palliative treatment only. Knowing what it is will not change the treatment: you know it’s not a blockage (because, hey, she had explosive diarrhea). You probably don’t want to treat a cancer at this age. If it’s a virus, it will pass. Most likely treatment is a broad spectrum antibiotic and fluids. Around here, that’s about $500 a night. Sadly, I know this from experience (my dog has had pretty much the same thing, twice, including the horror story cleanup). My advice is a nice comfy bed of towels in the shower, with the shower door closed, for when you can’t be with the dog.</p>
<p>MommaJ - I sincerely don’t want to alarm you, but I had a black lab who suddenly one Friday night lost all of his bowels right there, in the living room. His eyes looked sad and he was also lethargic. I showered him, and kept him in the bathroom overnight. He did not get any better over the weekend, even though he ate a bland diet. On Monday I went to the vet. It was not good news and the vet pointed to various cancers that can show up in this manner. The dog was almost 15. In an effort to be the most humane I could be, I had the dog put to sleep. It was that or thousands of dollars for testing that “May” or “May not” answer any questions. </p>
<p>I hope your dog recovers and that you don’t spend an arm and a leg in the process. $1800 sounds like a very lot of money to me.</p>
<p>We’re prepared for whatever comes–we realize that she’s been living on borrowed time for quite a while–and will not go to (more) extraordinary lengths to drag out the inevitable. The challenge of course is the effort and expense involved in figuring out what’s a transitory ailment and what’s the beginning of the end. When you first bring home that adorable puppy, you never think that at some point your dearest wish will be that your dog goes peacefully and unexpectedly in her sleep, with no difficult decisions to be made.</p>
<p>The vet called tonite, said they gave her two very small “low residue” meals today with no bad effect (though last time it was a full 14 hours after the first rice and boiled chicken meal before all hell broke loose, so who knows if that means anything) and are waiting for blood work results. Time will tell.</p>
<p>@dmd77: your advice would make sense (and beats by a mile the notion of just leaving her outside) if not for the fact that our full baths are on the second floor, she weighs 80 pounds, and she can barely manage three steps into the front door (requires various combinations of sweet-talking, stern-talking and bribery). She hasn’t been upstairs in a couple of years. Looking at her now, I can hardly believe that she used to scramble up and down the long flight of stairs from our deck to the back yard in seconds. Now she’s strictly a front door user, which I guess is appropriately dignified for a grande dame of advanced years.</p>
<p>Meanwhile, I’ve got the downstairs bathroom smelling quite nice, but the foyer is a trifle funky–still trying to figure out what I might have missed in my mad clean-up and disinfection extravaganza–the ceiling maybe???</p>
<p>why the vet in this case would do what you said he did and although she would never directly comment on second hand information, she did say when they recommend a dog ride out a session of the runs it is because the dog has steady vitals, and no other symptoms that appear life threating, etc. There are so many things that can cause a dogs digestive system to go crazy and some of those can be harmful to other animals. If the owners choose to keep that animal in the care of the vet hospital, they will immediately test the animal for community illnesses that could effect the health of the other animals in their care. This is for the well being of all the animals in the hospital’s care. The “ride it out” policy is a financially conservative approach because of this risk to the animals already in care.</p>
<p>That was helpful information, @collegeshopping, thank you–I really appreciate the professional input. Though I don’t know why the vet wouldn’t have explained it that way, and that explanation still leaves open the question of how the charges got cut in half as soon as H balked at the cost. Seems like there was a wide range of options as to what test were necessary to protect the other patients. Anyway, I appreciate everyone’s well wishes and good input, and now will just keep my fingers crossed that this will resolve easily. Now go hug your pooches.</p>
<p>The tests for community diseases don’t run anywhere near $3700 though. Even added to a battery of other tests, I question that much for anything other than surgery. I could well be wrong, but on a basic smell test it doesn’t pass for me. Also, I’m assuming the OP’s dog has had vaccine shots for most of the common ones - rabies, bordetella, distemper.</p>
<p>As regards the odor, my guess would be that she emptied her anal glands there. It’s a very oily mixture and it smells awful; a clean with vinegar or rubbing alcohol or Dawn detergent (all of which cut oil) might help.</p>
<p>If you can’t confine the dog to a shower because of the stairs, what about an ex-pen with towels on the sides and floor in a room with a tile floor?</p>
<p>The original $3700 quote included a couple of days of hospitalization as well as tests–but I agree it made no sense. Waiting to hear from the vet and hoping this is all in the past–except for the de-stinking of house and dog. I’ve cleaned every surface with Mr. Clean followed by Clorox wipes. I just get the feeling I missed something in the foyer, somewhere. I actually used Febreeze on the bathroom wallpaper, which is not exactly its intended use–but it worked!</p>
<p>I guess a crate in would be a possible solution, though I’d feel awful keeping her so confined–I know she’s caged at the vet, but at least I don’t have to see her sad face and hear her whine while she’s there!</p>
<p>Three weeks ago one of my sweet 16 year old dogs died. We had both of our pups together since they were a few weeks old and the surviving dog did not take his buddie’s departure well. After a more than a week of his depression, uncontrollable runs and two big vet bills(with no results), I researched the problem online and came up with a two day treatment of white rice and mashed sweet potato. He is back on track today, but now has an addiction to sweet potatoes. (and, per a friends advise, I added a tablespoon of Pepto Bismol—which with the right dosage is perfectly safe for dogs <a href=“http://www.vetinfo.com/dog-pepto-bismol.html/[/url]”>www.vetinfo.com/dog-pepto-bismol.html/</a> )</p>
<p>Speaking as someone who has forked over thousands in emergency vet bills, I am not surprised by the treatment plan proposed by your vet. Your pet is quite elderly, which already puts her in a high risk category. Add to it your expressed concern that her problem was a communicable disease :
and the vet really had no choice but to attempt to identify the cause of her symptoms. It is not their mission to care for incontinent pets because the owner is appalled by the mess. Their way of communicating this to you is to exhaust the possibilities for any valid reason to keep your pet in their facility and give you an incentive to keep your dog at home if nothing more can be done.</p>
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I think that would be an entirely unethical approach. A vet should not be setting up a huge bill in an attempt to get an animal out of a facility, and I don’t believe that was the case here. If he wanted her out, he could have simply refused to admit her. It’s not as if we threatened to abandon her there. My H told the vet we didn’t feel able to properly care for her, at which point he agreed to admit her and came up with the treatment plan–the apparently highly flexible treatment plan. And it wasn’t a case of not being able to do anything for her. They kept her under observation, made she she wasn’t getting dehydrated, experimented with some special food. As noted, she’s quite elderly, and things can deteriorate very rapidly with an old animal, especially one who hasn’t had any nourishment in four days. I think there was ample justification to keep her hospitalized for a few days so long as we were willing to pay the bill. Incurring thousands for various tests for a dog before ruling out a passing gastro-intestinal issue is another matter.</p>
<p>While sitting at the laudromat this afternoon, I came across an April Money Magazine article on large vet bills. According to the article, the top 5 most common, costliest (over $1000) conditions for dogs and cats are torn knee ligament/cartilage ($1580), foreign object in intestine ($1970), foreign object in stomach ($1500), intervertibral disk disease ($3280) and stomach torsion/bloat ($2510).</p>
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<p>Financial planner, Jeff Rose, of Carbondale, IL cautions against pet insurance.
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<p>Instead Rose suggests, start a savings account for your pet’s health. “It’s like setting up a college fund when your kids are young. You know that eventually they’ll need it.”</p>
<p>He doesn’t have to tell us that!</p>
<p>Our Lab spent two days at the animal hospital, was bathed there, and came home with an antibiotic, a special “low residue” diet and blood tests that showed no parasites or other disease. (Between not having eaten for several days and the special diet, she didn’t poop for four days–we figured we’d developed a new super low-maintenance breed that we should patent immediately!) From Monday through Thursday she was very lethargic, stayed in one spot all day and night and had to be helped to her feet to get food or go out. The latter development was really worrisome, as lifting a big dog to her feet was not something my back could handle for long. I really thought this was the beginning of the end. However, yesterday, she finally managed to get up on her own, and is doing so about half the time now, so I think she’s heading in the right direction. I believe the illness just sapped her strength, and it took until now for her to recover. I’ve been walking her around the yard every few hours in hopes of building back up some muscle tone–she desperately wants to head down the street for her old walking route, but I know she’d never manage to make it all the way home. We’re gradually reintegrating her normal food into her diet and her digestive system seems to be normalized. </p>
<p>We spent a lot of time in the past week contemplating how one decides it’s time to euthanize a pet, basically deciding that so long as she’s not in pain, has an appetite, and can go out to do her business and sniff the universe (the telephone pole never loses its fascination), we will continue to run the doggie geriatric facility. My strong hope is that she passes in her sleep, with no pain, no medical procedures, and no agonizing decisions to be made. Or, second best, that her condition becomes so dire so quickly that the decision is an easy one. That’s how it went for our first pet, a cat; we were sad at her passing, but there was no second guessing ourselves.</p>
<p>Thanks to all who expressed concern and offered advice.</p>
<p>If your dog can get in a car, have someone drop you down the block and walk home.</p>
<p>I do believe dogs get sad and depressed and that affects appetite, etc, so having a positive attitude, no sad talk around dog, happy voices, etc does wonders.</p>
<p>So even if it’s just down the block a rest then back, your dog will know allmis rightneith the world.</p>
<p>Having had to make the decision with our dogs as they all were over 14 when we let them go, I know it’s tough. And whatever time it happens, do not think oh we should have done it sooner or we should have waited. You will see it in their eyes when you can help them let go.</p>
<p>MommaJ- Big hugs to you and your sweet lab.</p>
<p>MommaJ - Glad to hear that things are headed in the right direction for you and your lab. Best wishes for continued recovery.</p>
<p>This thread seems rather unfairly biased against the vet.</p>