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Thyroid Questions


Gnasher

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Gnasher had major spinal surgery at the end of September and has been struggling to get back to fitness ever since. Recovery has been very much along the lines of two steps forward and one back until Christmas when we seemed to be taking more steps back than forwards. After much to-ing and fro-ing my vets finally tested him for thyroid and he was very marginally under so has been treated for that for the last three weeks.

 

He was showing improvements in energy levels really quite quickly but his energy is taking a bit of a dip again at the moment which hopefully is just a temporary blip as he regains his mobility.

 

We are due back at the vets again next week and the vet will be doing another blood test for his thyroid. As he was so marginally under last time I am fairly sure he will be back on the correct scale this time - but how do we know if his levels are correct for him or if he should really be high in the scales rather than just scraping in at the bottom? I have seen something indcating different breeds have different natural levels - but Gnash is a collie/terrier type cross so no help there. I am also not able to be guided by "normal" activity levels as there is nothing to say what a dog who has been through spinal surgery and has nerve damage should be doing at this stage.

 

I do get on quite well with my vet so assuming he is lowish on the scales as I suspect can we just "tinker" with the tablets to see if an increase does give him any more energy or is there something more scientific we can do. Alternately is there any danger if we do try him on higher doses for a couple of weeks to see what happens?

 

If you have had a dog treated for thyroid problems how did you get the medication levels right and how long was it after treatment that you would say your dog was back to normal - particularly energy wise?

 

I will be working closely with my vet on things whatever - but just trying to get an understanding of how it all works to do the best for Gnasher.

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  • 3 months later...

Thyroid, my favourite subject... :laugh:

 

My ACS has autoimmune thryoiditis, so I have done quite a bit of research about this subject.

 

First of all, did your vet do a comprehensive thyroid test (which includes amonst other things antibodies) or just a basic T4 test? Most vets do just a T4 test, which is not a reliable way to assess thyroid function in dogs! It needs to be a comprehensive test (which is a 4 or 5-panel test). The presence of antibodies can falsify the results for T3 and T4 and make them look spuriously high... when in fact they are not. So it is actually possible that the actual thyroid levels of your dog are much lower than a T4 test may suggest!

 

I can give you the example of my spaniel to explain. When he was tested (comprehensive), his T4 levels were at the very bottom of the normal range (normal range is 15 - 40, he was 15.5), but my vet suggested to give him thyroxine anyway. The change in Jesse was incredible, mainly behavioural (he also showed severe aggression in certain cases), but over time also physical. When he was retested again 6 weeks later, his T4 was sky high at 130... He should have shown major symptoms of being hyperthyroid, but he didn't! When the medication was halved on my vet's advice to bring the T4 down, Jesse reverted back to his "old horrible" self and we had two serious aggressive incidents within two weeks, his resource guarding came back with a vengeance... After three weeks, we put his dosage back up to the original dosage and bingo, all was fine again.

This is when I contacted Jean Dodds (thyroid specialist in America) and she told me that the presence of antibodies influences the T4 test results and she wasn't worried at all about the high T4 reading. In fact, she said that even the 15.5 was probably a lot higher than it the actual levels were! With the medication, the number of antibodies should decrease and therefore the T4 test results come down with it.

 

Here are some articles by Jean Dodds that you may want to bring along to your vets too:

 

Assessing Thyroid Function

 

Thyroid test influence

 

And the general link to all her articles: Thyroid Articles

 

Also, re your question whether you can just use thyroxine regardless of the test results: yes, you can. It does not have any negative effects and if you stop it at some point, the gland will just resume producing the thyroxine again (provided of course the gland is not damanged).

 

Vera

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