[Ryan K]

Hello again!
I have not mentioned my financial concerns to my vet. I have mentioned not being able to afford things though which I feel like should be somewhat enough of a signal that I have financial issues going on. I always feel such embarrassment over finances and hate discussing them. I might have to just lay it all out there and see if I can get help from them somehow.

The vet did mention the symptoms possibly being caused by neurological disorders but she wanted to refer me to a specialist for diagnosis of that. I do have a friend with a small dog that is on anti seizure meds and I know for a fact that she didn’t have diagnostic testing done. Maybe I need to switch my vet? Maybe someone will just run a trial with drugs on him to see if that helps without the diagnostics? This vet that I take him too now seems super expensive. I am somewhat new to this area so they are kind of one of the first ones I found that would take him when I got here. They weren’t referred to me. I might need to find someone that makes the vet experience a little more personal and less about selling things like products they make at their office. Which mine does…a lot.

Another thing I should note is that he did have a gagging, hacking reaction when the vet pressed his trachea. She mentioned maybe it being a collapsing trachea which I have suspected for years now because of his hacking. He has hacked and gagged for probably 5 years off and on. I notice that my cousin’s yorkie does it a lot too and she said he has a collapsing trachea. Not sure if that is connected to his bouts of crazy eating and licking of the floor or not but he did hack and cough after she pressed it. Once again, she said scoping and expensive full body MRI scanning would be the only way to check that.

I might start looking into finding a vet that will just trial him for anti-convulsants and such if I can. I also might try to see if someone can get h. pylori results without scoping. I am wondering if blood work would show that somehow to save a 1K scope test? Hmmm. So much to think about.

I think this is my last dog. The stress this last year with him has been such an eye opener. I wish more people could understand how financially draining dog ownership is before they leap into adopting like I did. I don’t regret it because I love him so much but wow…when you get an unhealthy dog…it’s expensive! 🙁