Sugar Needs Our Help

This is Sugar – Sugar is a 6 year old Afghan hound; a rescue from South Korea. Sugar and her brother were adopted from AHRSC Afghan Hound Rescue of Southern California when they were 6 months old. Sugar has always been a finicky eater but recently her particular eating habits have escalated and have now perhaps been explained. About 3 weeks ago, Sugar had a severe gastric event – throwing up blood and diarrhea that was black (which means blood in the gastric system). She was rushed to the emergency vet and discovered that she had an extremely low platelet count in addition to what was going on in stomach/bowels. A low platelet count means there is the danger that if bruised or is cut, she could bleed out and not be saved.

The wonderful vet at the emergency vet focused her attention on building platelets and providing several transfusions because of blood loss and several days at in the emergency vet. All this had to be resolved before she could even focus on addressing the gastric event.

Sugar came home with 5+ medicines to try and stabilize her gastric issues until they could focus on them, but more importantly to suppress her immune system to allow platelets to increase.

Sugar was home a few days then had to go back to the emergency vet because she had stopped eating and peeing. They gave her fluids and she was sent home.

A few days after that visit she started to deteriorate again and went back to the emergency vet. The vet checked the platelets – they had increased to a level that she was confident to try and address some of the gastric issues. The did a CT scan and xray to see what, if anything, was in her stomach. The CT scan and xray indicated that there was something in her stomach that needed investigation.

They decided to scope down her throat and her belly and discovered that for some reason Sugar was not digesting food – was it a blockage or failure on her body’s part to digest?

The internist, surgeon and xray technician determined that in order to more completely understand Sugar’s problem and resolve it for good, she would require surgery. Sugar had her surgery on September 7th. They determined that she did not have a physical blockage but in fact, her system, for whatever reason, is not processing food and moving it along adequately in her system.

Sugar is currently recovering at the vet center – she is doing well. They have started her on medicines to assist with her gastric issues and they are also working on pain medicines to keep her comfortable when she is healing at home.

Sugar is a loving, wonderful dog who needs your help towards her medical care.

Thank you,