Day Six

J & M ♦ January 16, 2012 ♦ Leave a Comment

There’s nothing like the sound of a dog throwing up. At 4:30 in the morning. On your day off.

Not sure what would have caused this with Sasha today, but I doubt that it’s related to the raw milk. Nothing came up, not even yellow bile, just the “heaving” noises. The raw goat’s milk digests so quickly that there was literally nothing in her stomach to come up. When she went outside, she didn’t try to eat grass or anything, and she’s been fine since then. Maybe a bad dream.

One unusual and unexpected side effect has come up. Sasha started licking the bottom of her paw between the pads yesterday. Pretty insistently. We have looked at it very carefully several times and can’t find anything stuck in there, and we’ve even rinsed it with water to try to get out anything that might be in there. Still a problem. This morning, I talked to Jacqueline at Answers Pet Food about it. She said that it is common for patients to “re-experience” old injuries after being on the diet for a few days. Basically, the site of the injury will begin to tingle, and that tingling sensation may be what is causing Sasha to lick at her paw. She said that it generally only lasts a day or two and it starts with the oldest injury first and when that one stops, it moves to the next injury that occurred.

Now this sounds a bit crazy, even to me. Jeff and I thought about Sasha’s past trying to see if we believed this as a possibility. What we realized is that when she was a puppy, she had Panosteitis. This is a bone growth disease that is common to GSDs that causes lameness. It can last for days or weeks and can effect one or all of their legs, individually or all at once. It is a disease that they generally outgrow, which she did. In Sasha’s case, it jumped from leg to leg and moved through three of her four legs. However, it was her front left leg that seemed to be the worse for her and she had it there for the longest time. She even wore a splint for a few weeks. And it is her front left that is bothering her.

And this afternoon, she started limping on it. We’re watching her very closely. But I admit, it is all very interesting. There is no other explanation for her chewing/lameness. There is nothing in the pad of her paw, and she hasn’t been running around and hurt it. If it is this weird milk thing, thank goodness Sasha has been relatively healthy all of her life.

Here’s today’s belly shot. I have to admit, I think she doesn’t look as good as she did yesterday, especially in the area in the center of her belly.