My Yorkie Bichon Mix

Every since Val and I got home from our Mexican Riviera cruise, Jack has been a little sick.  Nothing terrible as he seems to act fine when he plays and greets us at the door.  Unfortunately though he is having a bad case of “The Runs”.   We noticed it getting worse each day until nothing but liquid comes out where it should be solid.   Often times he attempts to go, but can’t and then just sits on the grass.  It is so sad looking that you just want to scoop him up and hug the little guy.

This past Saturday night was the worst though, I suspect some of our guests at a party we had, fed him some table food.  At this point we were only feeding him chicken and rise and had just started to see some improvement but that all went to hell in a handbag Saturday night.   Jack sleeps in our bed, and when he is about to throw up or go to the bathroom he will thankfully jump off the bed first.  This alerts my wife (‘m a heavy sleeper and could get hit in the head by a brick and not wake up,) that something is wrong.  We first put him back in bed and he jumped back down moments later so I quickly rushed him outside thinking something was about to explode.  YUP!

During the night, Jack had to be let out 3 times and another time in the morning.  I’d be lying to you if I said we managed to anticipate all his movements as we found a few spots where he had gone to the bathroom on the rug.  Let me tell you that stuff is a pisser to clean up.  So after that night we did not feed him for 24 hours and then started him on a regimen of chicken and white rice only.

I’m happy to say that Jack is officially clogged up now and should be returning to normal pretty soon.   Just like humans who take Imodium, dogs will usually not go to the bathroom at all for a day or so until their stomachs start to feel better.  Jack’s tummy isn’t making those sickly noises anymore so we are on track for a full recover any day now.

Oh, and Jack LOVES chicken and rice!

Over the two years we’ve had Jack, he will occasionally start having these episodes where it sounds like he is having trouble breathing.  His body gets stiff, back arches and he makes this weird sound.  After doing a little pocking around on the internet it turns out that some dogs have this reflex called Reverse Sneezing.  It isn’t bread specific and at least in Jack doesn’t happen to often.  I’d say that he’ll probably have an episode once ever few months, but it’ll happen a few times over an hour or so.

Jack will stop after a few minutes, but to help your dog stop reverse sneezing a little quicker you have to get them to swallow.  An easy trick for doing this is to cover their nose and that’ll make your pup swallow.  I’ve tested this out on our borkie and it works very well.  He will swallow and the reverse sneezing will usually come to an end.  I don’t believe there is a cure for it, but we are going to show the video to our vet when Jack goes in for his yearly checkup next month.

I know pets can have allergies and I’ve dealt with it first hand growing up with my Turkish Angora cat named Rusty.  Of the 20 or allergens out there he was allergic to roughly 12 of them and we had to give him a shot once a month in order to combat the affects.  Rusty’s allergies would make him get very itchy around the face and it would also cause very skittish reactions.

With Jack we have noticed over the past year he tends to lick and lightly bite on his legs until the fur is completely wet.  It doesn’t seem to get overly red or irritated though so part of my thinks that he is just cleaning himself.  However, Jack does not like it when you touch that area and will pull his leg away or even show his teeth a little.

I have been trying to pay close attention to him with the hopes of finding the cause of the allergy.  Maybe it’s the type of food he is eating or a treat that we give him causes the itchy legs.  There is no particular season, of the year, that brings it on because he has been doing it routinely.  Magoo will literally spend thirty minutes just licking and licking and licking.  Sometimes you wish the little guy could talk and just say “Hey!  my legs are itchy” or “It’s nothing, I’m just keeping up my appearance”.

All in all it doesn’t look to be causing any damage to his legs, he never draws blood or irritates the area that much.  On our next vet visit we’ll bring it up and see what the doc has to say.  Does anyone have an idea of what might be going on?