Pancreatitis in Small Dogs

Fingers crossed, Grace should be able to come home from the hospital tonight. That's very, very good news.

She was suffering from acute pancreatitis which is apparently relatively common in miniature poodles (and other small breeds) around her age. Hopefully this will be a one time occurrence and she'll never suffer from this again.

If you have a small dog let me warn you that pancreatitis is a bit hard to diagnose and Grace actually was misdiagnosed at first. There is no definitive test to diagnose it but standard bloodwork can indicate raised levels of something technical that I've forgotten the term of that pretty much indicates pancreatitis. Before the bloodwork was done the doctors thought Grace had perhaps hurt her back because of the obvious pain she was in and the hunched up posture she was exhibiting. Turns out, anecdotally, that the hunched up posture is pretty commonly exhibited with pancreatitis. Even when she's been hurt or sick in the past Grace has never exhibited that posture before so I should have known that it wasn't a traditional injury. In any case signs of pancreatitis that are pretty common and which Grace exhibited are: complete aversion to both food and water, obvious pain (whimpering, moaning), hunched up posture, inability to get comfortable at all in normal lying down positions (in fact Grace could only get relatively comfortable by sitting straight up), lethargic, and depressed and uninterested in anything.

The only lasting bad news about this situation is that our planned trip to San Diego in April is off the table. Grace's hospitalization has essentially cost the same amount as our San Diego trip would have. Though we could probably do it if we stretched things it would make the budget tighter than either B and I are comfortable with.

I'm really bummed that we're not getting to come to San Diego but my little dog is worth every penny I've got to say.