by Tubular Toby » June 15th, 2011, 7:57 pm
Today we saw a different doctor, one of the highly recommended vets in my town. He looked at Toby's chart (including the timeline that I made for last week's appointment) and asked me a few questions just to get everything straight. Told him everything I could possibly think of. He said they would go ahead and draw some blood and do a CBC and Chem Panel. I also took in a fresh urine sample and he analyzed it.
Everything checked out within normal ranges. :headdesk: This is good news, but it's also puzzling news. Ruled out some more things, I guess.
He said with the stretching, hesitancy to jump on furniture, even the episodes of aggression, that it sounds like it could be osteoarthritis or something similar. We all agreed that Toby is a pretty stoic dog when it comes to pain, so he could just be showing subtle signs.
I don't know. I am skeptical. But I'm also willing to try anything at this point. So he prescribed five days of Rimadyl and asked me to call him and let him know how Toby was doing at that point. If he was stretching less, getting on furniture, feeling better, etc, it was a good place to start. He also recommended having a trainer come to my house and work with us instead of going to their place. This has been a priority, getting back to work with Kathy Cascade, but it's also been held off on since Toby hasn't been feeling well. If the Rimadyl helps, I'll put that back up in the top priority spot. He said it wasn't uncommon for him to see dogs with pain problems act out like this and it was probably a combination of that and a protectiveness (My trainer friend and I actually discussed this very real possibility, since Toby is okay with US approaching people, but didn't like Allen approaching us in the dark, for example. Was fine with a friend in the house, but didn't like it when she went down the hall and started to approach us again). He did say that he felt that the two were definitely linked and not just coincidental, but that it could be a combination of things. I totally understand that.
He also said that our next step would be to consider sedating and doing hip/back x rays... Sounds expensive, I do know that.
Our total today was $177. $20 for the exam (yay, it wasn't $48!!), $44 for the Chem 10, $40 for the Complete Blood Count, $50 for the Urinalysis and $23 for the Rimadyl.
After last week's cost, I asked about payment plans. Luckily, they take Care Credit and even MORE luckily, I got approved for it up to $500. So I'm going to definitely start paying that off, but money seriously sucks right now.