Oscar, my Jack Russell/Basset Hound cross dog, has not been feeling well. He's always a bit loggy, not a bouncy dog, but lately he's been even more sluggish than usual. I made an appointment to bring him in to the vet, thinking perhaps he had Lymes disease. ( We just had a horse w/ Lymes symptoms, and he responded very well to a treatment of doxycycline.) They did test Oscar for Lyme, and he does have it. So, easy enough, onto doxy he goes to treat that. But that wasn't all my poor puppy is suffering from. When the vet examined him, she thought that he looked unusually pale in the gums. She pulled a bit extra blood for tests ( had a hard time finding a vein- turns out there was a reason for that ) and discovered that his CBC was 15.4, very low. ( at 12 they want to do a blood transfusion! ) His blood was very thin, and very weak. He has Auto Immune Hemolytic Anemia. Her thoughts were if he had gone a few more days without treatment his system would have crashed and we would have lost him. Unfortunately, we still may. Said he was in a bad enough condition that there was still a 50/50 chance that his system will crash. He got a shot at the office, and is on Prednizone now, and will be for the next month ( along with the doxy for the Lymes) She did say that if he makes it through this next week his chances are much improved. The treatment that he is on is all that we can do. Steroids ( the pred ) aren't helpful with Lymes, but the Anemia is a much larger danger to him right now than the Lymes is. No idea what is causing the Anemia, most likely a different problem entirely from the Lymes, though it is slightly possible that the Lymes triggered it. Hopefully the underlying cause isn't a tumor of some sort, which is a possibility. We'll take it day by day and see how it goes. We'll ( hopefully ) be back at the vets office next Thursday to re-check his CBC.


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