AIHA-Just Diagnosed

[Wendy Gonzalez]

My Frank was just diagnosed with AIHA and I am heartbroken. I am trying to feed him and he barely eats. This is the second day. I don’t know what to do for my little guy. I am just thinking about the worst, but I know he is a resilient little one. He survived parvo as a baby and now he has to deal with this at 11 months. I need advice! Please, I need help.

[admin]

Hello Wendy,
I am so sorry you had to find us, but also glad you did! Day two and not eating, that is pretty normal. Please, please do NOT think the worst, think the best! Although this is a serious disease and I do not want you to have pink glasses on, there are many dogs that recover from this. Everybody on this forum has experienced their dog being very sick and we have accumulated a lot of knowledge and can help people understand the disease better. Many times we have questioned the treatment of well meaning vets that have not a lot of experience and it turned out we were right. In order to help you it would be great if you could download the latest blood test results to the “Urgent Advice”. Please check out the blue tabs at the top, “AIHA Terms” and the “AIHA Video library”. It would also be helpful if you could give us a list of the medications he is on, maybe we can make some suggestions there.
To have a dog getting ill with this, at this young age is rare, but not unheard of. We know of a little West highland White Terrier that was diagnosed at 5 months. He is still alive and well at over 5 years of age.
What are you feeding him? You might have to hand feed in the beginning. The most important thing is that the food he is getting is very lean. Poached egg, boiled chicken breast works well. Try not to make too much of a fuss, try and stay matter of fact, like: oh you don’t want to eat right now, that is ok we will try again later. Hopefully your pup is drinking, because you don’t want him to get dehydrated. If he does not drink you might want to syringe it into him (without needle of course) One thing that has worked for me sometimes was I cooked some lean chicken and gave the broth to my dog, he loved that. Once the

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