Coulee Update

I have no idea when I last updated you, so I'll do a quick summary.... We went to the dermatologist for her feet in early June.  Her feet were looking pretty darn good at the time, but she was able to see small issues on most of her pads.  She suggested a hypoallergenic food, doubling the oil supplements we were already taking and continuing with the zinc.  She also suggested using Uremol20 (an over the counter skin cream people with diabetes often use on their dry skin) on her pads.  Well the short story is, nothing was helping and they've been getting worse, not better.

For the last nine weeks, all four of Coulee's feet, and every single one of her pads have been dry, cracked and sometimes painful.  We are only walking her every second day or so because of her obvious discomfort.  At home she tiptoes around like she is on egg shells and on walks she is always raring to go but I'll see her hitching or running with her back legs together.  Gone is the graceful girl I used to see. :( But she loves it so much and doesn't seem to want to slow down, so we've been giving her Tramadol to get her through the more painful times.

A week or so ago, I thought we were finally seeing some improvement.  They weren't as cracked and they had softened up (usually the skin is rock hard).  But a few days later they had cracked again.  I think she was getting the "next wave" before the last wave had healed.  Poor girl. She was limping quite obviously at home and we were giving her pain meds every 4 hours or so.

Yesterday we went back to the dermatologist and she confirmed that nothing we were doing was helping.  So we've changed everything.  We've put her on a new hypo-allergenic food (again we don't think this is the problem, but it doesn't hurt to try), we've started some anti-inflammatories, we've stopped the oil and zinc and we will be putting a different cream on her feet.  In 5 weeks we'll check back with the vet to see if there has been improvement and to consider our next steps.  We are only putting the cream on half of her feet so we'll be able to see if the meds or cream is having an impact.

If there is no improvement, our options for the next steps are steroids and/or getting an ultrasound of her liver to see if there is something there that is causing the problem.  We are taking baby steps - we started with innocuous supplements, have moved on to meds with minimal side effects/long term impacts and are resisting steroids as long as we can.

These next few days will be filled with treats and chew sticks. We had to order her new food so she'll have a few days of non-hypoallergenic diet.  She'll be making the most of it, as we've been warned the new food isn't that tasty.

Coulee did really good at the clinic yesterday.  She was able to relax enough to lay down in both the waiting room and the exam room and for the first time in a while, didn't try to crawl out a window.