New food

We started the Nature Valley Instinct on Saturday... No major difference yet... Still continuing the Miralax and Cisapride.

August 2016

The combination of Cisapride, Miralax and low residue food seemed to be doing the trick. After Lyla had her last surgical enema in June, she no longer had the liquid stool leaking from her rectum. She more than likely had a large buildup of hard stool that the liquid was leaking around. Lyla went exactly a month with having normal bowel movements without assistance. At a month of watching her like a hawk every time she went to the bathroom, she started going less and less. I gave her a home enema with large results. After so, he belly felt normal and decompressed. I did not feel anything hard like I had in the past. She had normal bowel movements for another week until things slowed down again. I gave her another enema. Again I got good results. This pattern again repeated and I have her another enema for a third straight week. After this enema, I started massaging her belly to assist her with bowel movements during the day. This seems to have made a big difference. She is able to have normal sized bowel movements at least once a day with my help. She was able to go 2 1/2 weeks between enemas this time. That is a big improvement. I am also happy to report that over that last month, Lyla has finally returned to her old self in wanting to play with her toys, running around the yard and wanting to cuddle. I know she is feeling better. If weekly or bi-weekly enemas are what I have to do to keep her healthy and out of the vets office, then it's what I will do. Currently it is working.

I also did some more research on dog food. The I/D that she is currently on doesn't seem to be causing any problems, but I want to see if there is something better for her. I found that Nature's Valley Instinct Ultimate Protein kibble for small breeds has only 2% fiber and after calling the company, I found that it is 80% digestible, which seems like it would be a good option. The ingredients sound superior as well. Problem is that they only sell this food in 4 pound bags. I decided to go with the same food in a larger bag, but not for 'small breeds'. The difference is that this exact formula has 3% fiber. Not sure why it has an extra percent of fiber, but it does. I'm going to see if this is going to make a difference or not. I have not started feeding it to Lyla yet, but will post when I have our verdict. I may have to suck it up and purchase several of the smaller bags... we'll see...

June 2016

A couple weeks after stopping the laser treatments, I decided to stop giving Lyla the Miralax and Cisapride. It did not seem to be helping her, only in having liquid stool constantly leaking. She was passing very small amounts of stool daily with my assistance. I periodically gave her enemas, with no results. Finally June 18, 2016, Lyla had not passed any stool in a couple days and was not eating well. I took her to the vet where x-rays confirmed her colon was full of stool again. The vet attempted to remove stool without anesthesia. Lyla was too upset for this to happen. She ended up having anesthesia and undergoing 2 hours of procedure to have more copious amounts of stool removed from her rectum. This was getting to be too much. I did not like seeing her go through this every month or so. It was hard on the both of us. The vet and I talked about the medications and that I did not think they were helping. The vet said that he was going to call a surgeon who specialized in this type of thing to see if surgery was a good option for Lyla... It was not... The surgeon said that although cats have good success with a colectomy, dogs do not. Medication management is the best option. The surgeon recommended the Cisapride and Miralax, along with a low residue (low fiber) or high residue (high fiber) diet. To try one and see how it works.

Lyla is a small 18 pound Frenchie. I work outside the home during the day, so I am only available to give her medications twice a day and not three. We decided to try 0.2mL of Cisapride and 1/4 tsp. of Miralax twice a day mixed in a tablespoon or so of wet dog food. My vet recommended trying the low residue diet first and suggested something sold at Petco by Eukanuba. I was not overly familiar with Petco, but I figured I would walk right in, find what I needed and go. Wrong. I walked down the aisles looking for anything that read 'low residue' and then looked through everything made by Eukanuba. Nothing. So I asked the girl who worked there. She was totally confused by the word 'residue'. When I explained that I wanted low fiber, she suggested a wet food would be the lowest. I wanted to stay away from this if all possible, so she suggested Blue Buffalo. But when we looked at the nutrition information, it was 5% fiber. Lyla's current prescription dog food was 3.5%. This didn't make sense to me. I spent a great deal of time walking through the aisles and reading nutrition information. I didn't find anything that appealed to what I was looking for, so I left empty handed.  I did some research online and found that the Eukanuba dog food that my vet was referring to was actually from Iams. I did not like the reviews I read on it and it had 4% fiber, more than what Lyla was currently on. I decided to keep Lyla on her current food and see how things went.

Back Story

Canine Megacolon. This is something that I have found little information about; on the internet or from my veterinarian. There is plenty of information regarding feline megacolon, but those of us experiencing this problem with our dogs, I wanted to share our story, not for ridicule or nasty comments, but to maybe provide some insight to those going through similar issues. Also feel free to comment with your personal experiences.  Here is our background...

Lyla is an AKC registered French Bulldog I purchased from a breeder in November 2012. Lyla is blind in her right eye and has been so since shortly after birth. Her mother stepped on her and the nail punctured her eye. Other than appearance, you would never know. She shows no deficit. I did not spay Lyla, as I had hopes of breeding her. Lyla had been a healthy dog up until November of 2015.

Lyla had heat cycles every 6 months, but they were never regular. I wanted to wait until she was over 3 years old before I tried breeding her. She turned 3 in September 2015 and started her heat cycle in October. A few weeks after the cycle she started bleeding again. I didn't think too much of it, as she was always irregular with her cycles anyway. She started bleeding more than normal and started having an excessive amount of drainage, so I took her to my small town vet. He was not overly familiar with her breed, so he suggested another veterinarian to treat what he thought was Pyometra. I took her in to the recommended veterinarian to confirm the presumed diagnosis. She had Pyometra and would be taken in to surgery right away.

The veterinarian called me mid surgery to tell me that she was doing well with surgery, but there were two things they encountered; one was that Lyla's uterus was abnormally shaped and she would have never been able to have puppies, which would explain the irregular heat cycles. The other problem they told me that Lyla's colon was 3 times it's expected size. They had removed copious amounts of stool from her colon with an enema while she was under anesthesia. The vet asked if Lyla had any problems defecating in the past, and I told her that she hadn't. She only had a problem at the start of the infection, she seemed to be really constipated.

Lyla has a screw tail and the infection had gotten so bad that when I took her to the vet, I could no longer see her anus. Her skin had swelled around her tail and covered her anus, making it impossible for her to defecate. This is my theory to how the megacolon started. The vet believes that this is something that was congenital and with her since birth, but she never had a problem prior to this, so I find this difficult to believe.

Lyla recovered from her uterine surgery and the vet recommended a tail amputation to

prevent the tail from being the cause of constipation in the future. I decided to see how things went... In January 2016 we were heading back down the same road we had before... Her tail started swelling and she stopped defecating. I took her in to have her tail amputated. The surgery went well and another large amount of stool was removed from her colon during surgery. A few days later Lyla developed a urinary tract infection and colitis that was treated successfully with antibiotics. She was defecating what seemed to be normally for a few weeks.

The beginning of March 2016 we started going down the same path yet again with Lyla unable to defecate. She was taken in for another surgical enema to remove the stool. This was getting to be quite costly and not something I wanted us to go through every month. Doctor started Lyla on Reglan and Miralax to see if this would help her colon peristalsis. She was also started on a prescription food... Science Hills Diet I/D. I was to report back to see if this worked in a couple weeks.

Things took an unexpected turn on March 16, 2016. Before I went to bed that night, I noticed that Lyla was walking a little funny, but I thought that her leg was asleep and thought nothing of it. In the morning, Lyla was unable to move either of her back legs. She was paralyzed. I took her to the vet immediately. They confirmed my fears; Lyla was paralyzed due to what they diagnosed as Degenerative Disk Disease. I was devastated. She had just a slight deep tissue feeling in one foot, and nothing in the other. In this state, Lyla's prognosis was poor. The options were to take her to a spinal surgeon with a 20% chance of success and a price tag of $5000-$6000 minimum. Or I could try steroids and laser treatments to see if this helped. The only other option was to euthanize Lyla. This was never an option for me. She was only 3 years only, had a lot of life left. I was not giving up on my girl.

We left the vet's office after getting a steroid injection and a laser treatment. I returned 3 consecutive days for more laser treatments and steroid injections. Lyla was then started on an oral dose of steroids and twice a week laser treatments. During this time Lyla continued to have bowel issues. She had control of her bladder and somewhat over her bowel, but it was hard to tell due to the issues she had previously. I thought that the Reglan and Miralax were helping, but minimal amounts. Several times a day I would massage her belly to help facilitate defecation, but would get little results.

In the beginning of April, Lyla's veterinarian spoke with a gastrointestinal vet who recommended trying Cisipride, a motility medication that had been banned for human use in the United States. It would have to be compounded and ordered from Canada. I decided to give it a try, as nothing else seemed to be working. So I added the Cisapride to her Miralax regimen.

This new medication regimen had liquid stool seeping from Lyla's anus constantly. I couldn't let her on the carpet, otherwise there would be a mess wherever she went. This wasn't an issue in the beginning, as Lyla was confined to her kennel except for potty breaks to help facilitate her spinal healing. Slowly Lyla started getting more movement in her legs  and feet. I even built her a doggy wheelchair to keep her from dragging and build her muscle strength. We continued laser treatments for 2 months. Lyla was able to gain 90% function back in her hind legs. She still has some weakness, so if she runs too fast, her legs can't keep up and will give out, but she is back to walking! I was skeptical of the laser treatments, but they worked miracles with my Lyla.

During this whole process, I was pretty emotional, but looking back, I do believe that Lyla's paralysis was due to a botched tail amputation. I am a registered nurse and I know that if Lyla's injury was between the shoulder blades like the vet tried to tell me, then she would not have had any control of her bladder. Be that as it may, I just wish the vet would have owned up to his mistake instead off passing it to something else. My girl is a fighter and she was able to pull through, even after he gave her almost no hope!

This is a little back ground of where we started...