I’m devastated my faithful cocker Oliver is no longer here. He was nearly 11 and had been pretty healthy all is life apart from an eye problem, which he’d been on drops for the last year. A few months ago I got up and he was not himself, he wouldn’t get out of his bed not even when I got his lead out, he just looked at me sorrowfully. I picked him up and carried him outside where he came to and had a few wee s then wanted to go back inside to his bed. Over the next day he seemed a little better, but still not himself, I’d walked him just to the bottom of our street and back and patted him and he’d yelped when he looked up at me! Anyway the next morning (Monday) I took him to our vets, were he was looked over, and the vet thought maybe it was his back (twisted it or something) he gave him an injection and put him on metacam for a week. The day after he seemed a lot better and I carried on with the metacam, and tried to stop him jumping on sofa and going up stairs (easier said than done). Well he seemed fine eating normally and drinking normally, I just took him short walks down the avenue. A week later took him back to vets for routine eye assessment, and he was fine. Then a week later he started limping with his back left leg/foot. So back to vets, he checked his paws/leg and thought that it may have been a torn ligament. So he gave me more metacam for a month. He picked up a little having spurts of energy then lots of sleeping, which I put down to The metacam. Then he went bad again 7 days later so back to vets, where he was booked in for an x ray on his leg following week. So carried on with the metacam, then two days later noticed a pink sore above his paw on left leg, so back to vets were they said it looked like an infection and put him on antibiotics, still carried on with metacam. He seemed a little better, the next couple of days, but had started drinking a lot of water, on the Monday he hardly ate, which was hard because the metacam had to be in his food and the antibiotics too. He had a little chicken on Monday tea, then was sick a hour later. The during the night he was sick again (more of a dark brown /black bile liquid. Did not look good. I couldn’t get him out of his basket in the morning so took him to vets first thing, were they said he should have his bloods tested, which they did, a few hours later they phoned to tell me, he had pancreatius, High liver Levels High Glucose and High kidney levels and advised to get him to pet hospital as quick as possible. So I drove him to hospital, where he was put on a drip to get his fluids up. I left him and they phoned me later to say he’d got diabetes and they’d done an ultrasound on his liver which showed a lot of scarring, their main aim then was to carry on with the fluids to stabilise him, then to start to stable his diabetes. Then he would have to have a biopsy of his liver! I phoned later that night he was still on a drip and no change. They phoned back 2am to say if they started with trying to stable his diabetes he would be in hospital 5 to 8 days. Then we had the prospect of the liver scarring maybe being cancer! We made the decision to put him to sleep, which I keep asking myself was we right! I feel all this last few months it may have been his liver in the first place, not his leg/foot, maybe I should have asked for blood tests who knows, just feel devastated, the house is so quiet and everything is reminding me of him, he was so close to me and he followed me everywhere. Sorry for such a long post but felt I had to write this down.
