Mutltiple Dogs with Lymphangiectasia

[mmyorkies]

Hello, my name is Trudie and I have been dealing with the Lymphangiectasia for at least 8 years now.  I have shown yorkies and bred them for about 15 years, and unfortunately my dogs have been out of my line.  By the time I had found out that my brood bitch had it, she had already had 3 litters, and one of her first girls also had two litters.  The good thing about that is that I only sold a few puppies, and they all were spayed as pets. The ones that I ended up with was first detected back in 2008, or 2009, I don't remember for sure.  That was Cheyenne and we actually thought she was pregnant because she had been bred and we took her into the vet to have her x-rays done to see how many puppies, but there were no puppies, only fluid.  With the blood work it was determined that she had Lymphangiectasia, and was treated with prednisone, and put on Hills WD food.  We actually got her off the prednisone, just kept her on the food and MCT oil, for about 2 years before her blood started showing it was active again.  She went back on the pred. and we lost her this January due to an infection that completely destroyed her body, she could not fight it off.  She was 4 1/2 pounds regularly but went down to 2 3/4 pound by the time we had to let her go.  She was 13, so she lived about 8 years with the disease.  Now I have 4 out of her line that are now being treated for the lymphangiectasia.  Right now I just had the youngest one crash suddenly with it.  I just got him out of Purdue University animal hosp, where he was for a week.  He was only slightly better when we took him, but they thought it would be better to have him at home and be treated.  He is one of my larger yorkies at just under 10 pounds, he went down to 7 pounds and then started to hold the fluid.  Yesterday we went in to have it drained off him because his stomach bloated so much he could hardly walk.  They weighed him B/4 they started to drain him and he was 9.78 pounds. After they finished he was 7.6 pounds.  I could hardly believe how much fluid they took from his stomach, and he still had edema in his legs.  He is nothing but a skeleton with skin right now, but he still is very alert and active so I am praying and trying all kind of things hoping to get him to come back to normal again. The others are doing really good right now.

[Geraldine]

Hi Trudie, how are your yorkies doing? I have a Yorkie too! His name is Ernie and he's 6.5-7lbs. Anyway, I've gotten him stabilized on a quarter tablet of prednisone (1.25mg) every other day and I feed him Royal Canin Low Fat canned food plus a non-fat probiotic. I'e tried to take him off of the prednisone once, but I wasn't very successful. After 2 weeks he relapsed so I'm afraid to try again. The difference between this time and the last is 1) I've had him stable for a while on a very low dosage of prednisone, 2) he's on RC LF not Science Diet WD, which has too much fiber for this disease, 3) he's on a daily probiotic.

I got Ernie from a reputable breeder that shows yorkies (Ernie's nephew one best of the breed at Westminster) and there haven't been many occurrences in the line (only 1 I know about) so I don't have many Yorkie owners ( or should I say lovers ;-) ) to discuss this issue with. Any insight you have or success without prednisone would be helpful.

A few additional details: Ernie was diagnosed a year ago. A few months before his 9th birthday. And two years ago I had him tested for it because of a friend's dog, who's related to Ernie, died of this deadly disease. At that time Ernie did not have any indications that he had CIL yet.