Crissy's Turn at the Vet

I'm exhausted today, and its all down to my little four-legged sausage, Crissy. Being so grossly overweight causes her to have trouble breathing. All that extra weight is probably pushing on her lungs, heart, and all the other organs. She has bouts of reverse sneezing (snorting in huge amounts of air rather than blowing it out). Reverse sneezing is normal in dogs, but not to the extent that she does it. Most dogs do it occasionally, beagles do it a bit more than other breeds, but she does it to the extreme. It seems to be such a struggle for her to even breathe normally. Last night, she was reverse sneezing, gasping, and wheezing quite a lot and she woke me up three times - not good when I had to get up at 5:00 a.m. for work. She scared me last night with the amount of trouble she had, so today I called the vet and told them that I wanted to switch dogs for the appointment I had made originally for Reggie. He has allergies, is on prednisone which stopped the scratching and chewing his tail, but he also had a slight ear infection and the appointment was for a re-check. Crissy needed that appointment more than he did, so I brought her instead.

Since the day I brought Crissy home, she's been on a diet. She only gets a half cup of dry dog food mixed with about a tablespoon of wet food for a bit a flavor twice a day. I walk her, weather permitting, but she can't go far because she becomes winded, tongue hanging almost to the ground, and dragging her feet. A few times I thought I'd have to carry her home. We don't go far - just around the block - but its a struggle for her, poor little thing. Her being unable to walk for any distance is cramping Reggie's style - he wants to go, go, go, but unfortunately she can't, so he's paying a price too. The only solution is to walk them separately, which will not be easy on me!! 

Anyway. . .back to the vet visit. Even with the reduced amount of food and the exercise she gets, she's not losing any weight at all. I had a vet tech come to the house two weeks ago to cut their nails (I'm scared to do it!), and she suggested that maybe Crissy has a thyroid problem. Being so scared last night with the breathing issues, when I brought her in, I asked the vet to please do testing for thyroid issues. Believe it or not, Crissy has the same symptoms of an underactive thyroid that my daughter Lauren had - always tired, sleeping excessively, always being hot and unable to lose weight. The only time Crissy isn't panting, even though the house is air conditioned, is when she's sleeping, which is like 22 hours a day. Just trying to get her up to go out is a chore. Pushing, pulling, prodding - just to get her on her feet. The vet gave her a thorough once-over and from what she could hear, she said she didn't hear anything unusual in Crissy's lungs. Crissy is just too fat  for the vet to get a good listen to her heart. Besides that, Crissy was panting heavily, which didn't make it any easier for the vet to listen. All other things, ears, lymph nodes, temperature, joint mobility, were normal. The vet drew a vial of blood for testing for any issues other than the thyroid. That's a separate test. I'll find out the results on Saturday. 

I want this little girl to be a normal, happy, healthy dog, and I'm going to do my best to make that happen. She had a shit life before I got her, locked in a cage for ten hours a day, eating crap dog food, and getting fatter and fatter. There's no more cage, and there will never be, she gets a good quality food, and we're going to take care of the obesity. I'll let you know how her tests come out.