Caring for a Three Legged Dog or Cat
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Hi all,
I cannot really complain at all in the face of some many heartbreaking things on the site in the last few weeks. So I will just pose this as a question:
Ajax is doing great but definitely has the predicted extra, urgent need to go out to pee more often on the prednisone. He demands to go out around 8 or 9pm because he wants to go to sleep and he knows he can't go to bed until he goes out. Then he is up at 1am and this takes about 1/2 hour while he zooms around peeing in different locations, and typically again by 5:30. Dog walker says when he gets there at the standard times during the day sometimes it is urgent as well.
We started on prednisone 1 1/2 pills for a week, then 1pill, now 1/2 and then will go to 1/2 every other day.
1) Does this urgent need to pee (which the vet says is normal) improve, or is this basically the schedule until we are off the prednisone?
2) And - please don't think me a monster - has anyone ever experimented with taking the water up at a certain time of night? I'm pretty sure what he does is sleep from 4:30 when dog walker leaves until I get home around 8, then wakes up and drinks a gallon of water. I am adverse to the notiion of withholding water, but if it just means he'll adjust himself to walk 10 steps off the couch and drink a little earlier in the evening, that could be ok ....
Thanks
-Sleepless in NYC
Needing to pee urgently, and drinking tons of water are both pretty common with Pred. Rio was on it during both of her chemos and my Monkeybutt Tosca was on it for skin issues, and I saw a significant increase in their water consumption. This does get better as they taper off the pred. However, the thing I've noticed with my pups is that if you start them on a "schedule" for anything, they adjust to it pretty quickly. And it may just be that Ajax has adapted to this new pee schedule, and could continue to follow it well after he's off the pred.
I don't think you're a monster for taking up the water in the evenings. In fact, my vet suggested I do that if there was too much middle-of-the-night peeing (all of my girl dogs were "fixed" at an early age and have had some issues with bed-wetting, i.e. NOT waking up to go pee). If it becomes part of the "schedule," then Ajax will likely adapt and adjust. Have you considered using those "pee squares" (not sure what they're really called, but it's like a tray with grass or astroturf that you can train your dog to use indoors in an emergency...).
Not to worry or upset you, but depending on Ajax's age and the amount of pred being given over long periods (such as with chemo), there can be additional side effects to worry about. Most of the vets hand out pred for everything, and don't really think too much about it, because it has some really positive effects. However, I've seen firsthand what too much steroid can do, and so I would just caution you to really understand all the side effects associated with it, and speak with your vet about any concerns that you might have if you start noticing anything like really excessive thirst, urination, ravenous appetite, thinning hair or any other things that seem out of the ordinary.
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~ ~ Rio ~ ~ |
Thanks, that is helpful. Vets recommendation was a 3 month course of traditional chemo (vinblastine + prednisone) and then palladia. I don't know if the prednisone continues during the palladia? I think not - she gave us a 3 month dose, not a 6 month dose. So not sure.
I will watch for side effects. He does drink a lot, and he is ravenous (not a big change for a Lab). But other than that he seems absolutely fine. If we didn't live in an apartment building in the city, the peeing would be no problem, but it is hard to haul myself out, get dressed, put winter coat on, and then get dragged around the city streets in the middle of the night!
What you said helps, though. I think that this weekend I am going to try controlling the drinking schedule a little and see if it works. It may be that instead of waking me up to pee, he'll just wake me up b/c he's thirsty, but maybe not. I've never tried taking up the water before because we never had a reason to. We did notice that when he became a tripawd he got noticably lazier about walking around the apartment during the day when we aren't there. He runs and plays fine, but I suspect he sleeps until I get home and therefore doesn't drink much after his 4:00 walk. Lazy Lab!
No pee pads in my house! Simply not big enough to designate part of it as a bathroom. I'd rather get up ...he's just 9. As my vet put it (I thought this was a nice way) when I was feeling bad one day that I had to do a drop off for chemo rather than waiting for him, "Ajax has to do his part too." That made me feel marginally better, and for what it's worth, fingers crossed, Ajax doesn't seem to mind "doing his part" so far.
BTW our oncologist said that, not for nothing, but she believes it is the pred that has the best effect on MCT (even more than the vinblastine).
Thanks for tips. Good luck with Rio, I read your blog post. Kisses to Rio from me and Ajax.
Hi - i can't really help w/ the prednisone questions, but I noticed you might consider Palladia in future. We tried it w/ Abby for 3 months, so if you have any questions, you can always PM me.
Oh, and no, you are not a monster for taking the water up after a certain point. I would do the same. They do it w/ people, so why not pups.
Hang in there,
Jackie, Abby's mom
Abby: Aug 1, 2009 – Jan 10, 2012. Our beautiful rescue pup lived LARGE with osteosarcoma for 15 months – half her way-too-short life. I think our "halflistic" approach (mixing traditional meds + supplements) helped her thrive. (PM me for details. I'm happy to help.) She had lung mets for over a year. They took her from us in the end, but they cannot take her spirit! She will live forever in our hearts. She loved the beach and giving kisses and going to In-N-Out for a Flying Dutchman. Tripawds blog, and a more detailed blog here. Please also check out my novel, What the Dog Ate. Now also in paperback! Purchase it at Amazon via Tripawds and help support Tripawds!
Hi there -- we had Sam on prednisone for about 6 weeks and the peeing remained constant - it was our schedule the entire time he was on it - didn't lessen at all. He would pee a river every single time we let him out. We upped our dog walker to 2x per day. The evening thing wasn't an issue for us because we go to bed really late - as long as we took him out right before we went to bed, he could last until we got up in the morning. Our oncologist also recommended taking up the water by 8:00pm every night to help - it just wasn't an issue for us though because we're still up anyway. He was so thirst we actually put extra water bowls down so we could keep up with him.
Hang in there ! xo Sue
oh and ps yes, I will certainly contact you re palladia. Vet's recommendation was 3 mos traditional chemo followed by 3 mos palladia. said there was no study comparing one vs. the other, so best course is one and then the other. she says since Ajax is still strong and (otherwise) healthy, assuming no problems, we just want to blast this asap.
A little off topic, but all the studies I've read suggest that both Palladia and Masitinib have more of an impact if they are used as a first round course of treatment. If used as a follow-up to traditional chemotherapy, the effectiveness of both drugs declines significantly. Also, did you get a c-Kit done with your pathology? Palladia has been shown to work much more effectively on "mutated" c-Kit (although I'm not entirely sure what that is...), and Masitinib also to a certain degree.
We went the Vinblastine/Pred route the first time with chemo, and this last time it was Vinblastine/CCNU/Pred, but then we discontinued the pred because Rio developed Cushing's disease. If I had it all to do over, I'd go straight to Palladia and fore-go the traditional chemo, but that's hindsight!!! Neither Palladia or Masitinib were available to us when we started this roller coaster ride.
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~ ~ Rio ~ ~ |
I can't offer much help- Maggie was on pred for around 6 months with vinblastine and CCNU. Because we had a dog door the worst thing I had to do was get up in the middle of the night to help her back up on the bed.
We did have some problems at my parents house with her peeing inside. Because of all the stairs she would pee inside instead of going outside (she could go down stairs fine, but not up because she was so little). We had to make sure we took her out often, and didn't leave her unsupervised for long periods. We fenced her into the downstairs area where the dog door was in that house.
I don't know that she had any long term effects from the pred. She did develop kidney failure about 3 years later- but no way to tell if it was related to the chemo, the pred or just her getting older. I did discuss with our oncologist when the kidney failure was diagnosed- and she didn't feel it was related to the drugs. I have my suspicions but no way to ever know for sure.
Karen and the pugapalooza
well after i went and complained, I got to sleep through the night for 3 whole nights .... so maybe it's just going to be an up and down thing.
rio's mom - I read those studies too, and then also read some studies pulling back from that theory that the palladia has to be done first. honestly, I think they are still figuring it out. after a ton of reading, I finally decided the vet opinions were all over the place so we would go w/ our vet's recommendation. that being said, because there was no lymph node involvment or other systemic signs, and they felt they got good margins, we weren't facing CCNU which I understand may be harder to deal with than just vinblastine.
if I thought training a Lab not to eat everything on the sidewalks of NYC, it was NOTHING compared to doing the same with a Lab who is taking prednisone! Sheesh. I'm waiting for some nosy NY'er to lecture me that I'm not feeding him enough ...
Hi! Ajax says "I'm on the cover - cool"
I wrote a long post here just now detailing Ajax's experience with prednisone but I somehow lost it. I don't have time to do it again but I will soon.
Long story short - he had the thirsty and hungry and needing to go out, but it clearly made him feel better and those side effects seem to be diminishing as his dose has stabilized (it was 1.5 pills/day for a week, then 1/day for a week, then .5/day for a week, now .5 every other day)
Don't miss Jerry's recent Tripawds News blog post on this subject:
Tripawds Founders Jim and Rene
tripawds.com | tripawds.org | bemoredog.net | triday.pet
kazy55 said:
I wrote a long post here just now detailing Ajax's experience with prednisone but I somehow lost it. I don't have time to do it again but I will soon.
I'm so sorry! It's always a good idea to "copy" your text before you post it, whether you're here or in any other online text editor. We look forward to reading more about Ajax's experience with pred, thanks for the impetus to write the blog post about it.
Tripawds Founders Jim and Rene
tripawds.com | tripawds.org | bemoredog.net | triday.pet
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