So, I'm no vet, but I do have about 7 or so years experience in dealing with bulldog issues.... and the whole situation with Roxy is just flat out making me tired.
Shes very skinny (you can clearly see and feel her ribs and spine), and there are patches of hair missing. The old owner (who I seriously hope drops dead so he can never do this crap to another animal ever again) told me it was all due to a thyroid problem and gave me some medication for her.
The first thing I thought was a bit funny about all that was that she was SEVERELY underweight. Dogs with Hypothyroidism are OVERWEIGHT. Also, the skin where the hair is missing is soft and healthy, and not really even super flakey... and the hair itself is soft, and normal. She has also been super hyper all the time. She's constantly bouncing off the walls like a maniac. She has also been eating like a machine and putting on absolutely no weight. All of this leads me to think that she was not diagnosed properly... possibly by an ignorant vet who had no bulldog experience. Nothing about her symptoms looked like thyroid to me, so on a hunch I have taken her off the medication. In the last few days wihtout the thyroid meds, she has calmed down considerably. I've started giving her Benadryl each day to see if it helps with the coat issues as I believe it is allergy related.
Of course all of this is pending her being seen by a vet that knows something about bulldogs... leading me to the next issue.
I called the old vet (the one from the thyroid med pill bottle, since the old owner gave me no real info) to see if I could get her paperwork released to me, and they told me without the old owner's consent that they could not release any information. I asked them what they COULD tell me, and the girl said that according to their records that Roxy had actually only been seen there once, and it was about 2 weeks or so before I got her. The story I'd been told was that they'd gotten her from a puppy mill and that the guy who owned Roxy was getting deployed in a few weeks, 4 mos after "rescuing" her.
This is fishy and I don't believe it for one second now that I hear that from the vet. I am typically the type of person that gives others the benefit of the doubt, but in this case the state she was in when I got her and the fact she'd only been to a vet once with how she looked when I got her (and the fact she clearly had been bathed so recently when I went to get her that she was still damp) makes me think that these people are the culprits in her neglect and the whole thing was a story concocted to try and convince me that they were not the ones who maltreated her. I don't like it at all when idiots think they're being clever.
Im just so mad about all of this. My poor dog. Have any of you had thyroid issues with your dogs? What do you do when you get a mystery mixed bag of health issues with no med records??
Shes very skinny (you can clearly see and feel her ribs and spine), and there are patches of hair missing. The old owner (who I seriously hope drops dead so he can never do this crap to another animal ever again) told me it was all due to a thyroid problem and gave me some medication for her.
The first thing I thought was a bit funny about all that was that she was SEVERELY underweight. Dogs with Hypothyroidism are OVERWEIGHT. Also, the skin where the hair is missing is soft and healthy, and not really even super flakey... and the hair itself is soft, and normal. She has also been super hyper all the time. She's constantly bouncing off the walls like a maniac. She has also been eating like a machine and putting on absolutely no weight. All of this leads me to think that she was not diagnosed properly... possibly by an ignorant vet who had no bulldog experience. Nothing about her symptoms looked like thyroid to me, so on a hunch I have taken her off the medication. In the last few days wihtout the thyroid meds, she has calmed down considerably. I've started giving her Benadryl each day to see if it helps with the coat issues as I believe it is allergy related.
Of course all of this is pending her being seen by a vet that knows something about bulldogs... leading me to the next issue.
I called the old vet (the one from the thyroid med pill bottle, since the old owner gave me no real info) to see if I could get her paperwork released to me, and they told me without the old owner's consent that they could not release any information. I asked them what they COULD tell me, and the girl said that according to their records that Roxy had actually only been seen there once, and it was about 2 weeks or so before I got her. The story I'd been told was that they'd gotten her from a puppy mill and that the guy who owned Roxy was getting deployed in a few weeks, 4 mos after "rescuing" her.
This is fishy and I don't believe it for one second now that I hear that from the vet. I am typically the type of person that gives others the benefit of the doubt, but in this case the state she was in when I got her and the fact she'd only been to a vet once with how she looked when I got her (and the fact she clearly had been bathed so recently when I went to get her that she was still damp) makes me think that these people are the culprits in her neglect and the whole thing was a story concocted to try and convince me that they were not the ones who maltreated her. I don't like it at all when idiots think they're being clever.
Im just so mad about all of this. My poor dog. Have any of you had thyroid issues with your dogs? What do you do when you get a mystery mixed bag of health issues with no med records??