Scout has lost a noticeable amount of weight over the past month or so; only a couple of pounds, but that's almost ten percent of her body weight!
Feeding her one-and-a-half times her usual amount of food each day for a couple of weeks didn't seem to be fixing the problem, so I took her to the vet this afternoon. To us, except for the weight thing, she's seemed completely normal -- showing her usual little-lover-girl personality, full of energy (with Digory around, you have to be), holding her normal obsessive interest in food, and with no strange bouts of diarrhea or vomiting. The vet found that her vital signs were normal, but that the lymph nodes in her neck were swollen, and that she showed a little discomfort when he palpitated her belly. This could mean any number of things -- so Scout stayed at the vet for a couple of hours longer while he took X-rays and collected her bodily fluids for a blood panel and urinalysis.
We come back at 9:30 AM tomorrow to find out whether there's anything to be learned from her tests. The range of possible afflictions runs anywhere from the minor -- some not-very-detectable low-level infection -- all the way to really fucking bad stuff, like possible liver or kidney disease, or cancer. We've been worrying ourselves sick over here, stuffing ourselves full of an entire Internet worth of canine-health paranoia. I don't think that there'll be much sound sleeping in our household tonight. Anyone who's visited this site for more than ten minutes knows that we both think the absolute world of our Scouter, and we'd envisioned her living out another nine or ten years, capped off by her peacefully dozing off in a sunbeam one day, never to wake up. The thought of things ending otherwise -- and the decisions that we'll have to make if they do -- is just too much to contemplate right now.
So please, think your best and warmest and most positive thoughts right now for a small dog and the rest of her pack ...
Posted by Kevin at March 1, 2005 10:26 PM