I’m going to be serious for a moment….

As all of you know, Little Merry Sunshine here blogs nonsense 99% of the time. We all have problems in our lives, but this site is a happy place, and I’m a positive person, so I normally don’t blog about the rainy days just the bright ones. But I have a story to tell you, and hopefully, if I can help just one person who is getting ready to bring a Yorkie into their home, it will be worth it.

If you are a regular reader, you know how besotted I am with the M&M’s, and you all know about Maggie’s bladder surgery last month. What I didn’t tell you is that when her stone was analyzed, it came back composed of ammonium urate, which is not good, my friends, and follow-up bile acid tests supported the vet’s theory that Maggie had liver shunt, a potentially fatal illness that happens in small breeds, mostly Yorkies, but it can affect other breeds, such as dashunds, maltese, poodles and schnauzers to name a few.

Thanks to the amazing people in the Yorkie forums on the internet, they directed me to Dr. Karen Tobias, a veterinarian in the teaching school of the University of Tennessee in Knoxville. Dr. Tobias has a phenomenal reputation and is is recognized as being the very best in the country for performing surgery on dogs with liver shunt. People bring their dogs from all over the United States for her to perform surgery on them, and I feel very fortunate that we live within driving distance of UT.

Liver shunt can be a congenital disease, or it is possible for it to happen later in life. There is a portal artery that goes thru the liver, and then feeds into the heart, and after a dog eats, the blood goes through the liver in this artery and the blood is cleansed before it goes to the heart. But in Maggie’s case, that portal artery was outside the liver when she was born, so the blood was bypassing the liver and going around it instead of through it, and protein, specifically animal protein is not broken down and it poisons her system, making her appear lethargic and glassy eyed. In dogs where it is more severe, some of the symptoms are banging their heads, walking in circles, salivating and refusing to eat.

Maggie didn’t really have symptoms, except for being lethargic, but she had reoccuring urinary tract infections which pointed to a bladder stone, and even though she was a good eater, she was a very lean little dog, she didn’t gain weight, which is also indicative of liver shunt.

Of course,after finding all of this out, I was totally devastated, I had my vet, Dr. Wagner, get in contact with Dr. Tobias, and I made an appointment for Maggie to go to UT for consultation and hopefully, surgery on July 22nd. We left Monday afternoon, stayed with our son, John in Franklin, Tn. and met with Dr. Tobias on Tuesday, the 22nd. They did a scintigraphy on Maggie Tuesday afternoon, which injects a radioactive dye into her bloodstream to see if she has a shunt around her liver and sure enough, the test came back positive.

Dr. Tobias operated on Maggie Wednesday morning, the portal vein was all the way up and around her larynx, Dr. Tobias told me it was in a really “funky spot” but she was successfully able to put an ameroid constrictor around the vein. A constrictor is a small stainless steel ring that slows the blood flow in that vein, forcing some of the blood to go through smaller veins, which the Dr. explained were like small little cobblestone streets, inside her liver. The constricted vein, will hopefully, scar on the inside to the point that it completely closes, forcing the blood to go through these veins in her liver, and Maggie will be a normal dog. This is successful in 85% of all of her surgeries, so Maggie has good odds. We will know within six months if it worked by repeating bile acid testing. We’ll actually do a bile acid test in three months, and if we’re lucky, her numbers will be closer to normal and we will know then that it’s working.

We spent the week with John, had a wonderful time, and I was able to relax after Maggie came thru surgery. UT veterinary students intern in the small animal clinic, Maggie was lucky enough fto have a great student assigned to her case. Holly is a 4th year veterinary student, due to graduate next year, she assisted Dr. Tobias with the surgery, and was Maggie’s primary caregiver. She not only did a superb job of taking care of my Mags, she gave her lots of cuddles as well, and called me with updates twice a day to tell me how she was doing. Holly is going to be a great vet! I think women vets are just the best! They are so nurturing, so compassionate and they really care about their patients, not only clinically, but emotionally, too!

We picked her up yesterday afternoon, she’s off of her pain meds, has a mother of a scar on her tummy, five inches long, but she’s alert, eating well, and happy to be home. She’ll be on prescription LD dog food for the next three months, no animal protein, and if the surgery is successful she will return to a regular diet.

The picture at the top left of this column of Maggie was taken forty-eight hours post-op, she was just home from the hospital and resting on John's soft, fuzzy throw. I'm happy to report that she is much improved since this picture was taken.

So that was my week, it was a bit rocky, but things seem to be going very well, and of course I’m eternally grateful to the staff at UT for taking such wonderful care of my little fur child.

So it’s back to nonsense for me, but I will be posting a link on my site with links to information on liver shunt. If you are looking to buy a small breed pup, I would strongly advise that you insist the breeder have a bile acid test performed on your dog before you purchase it. They will be able to tell from this test if the dog is liver compromised. Breeders don’t normally run these tests, because it is an additional out of pocket expense for them, but this can happen in any bloodline. Maggie came from a reputable breeder, and we still had a problem.

So life is good for me, this sunny Saturday morning, I’m going to take my fur kids and go back to bed for a nap…
~ jan

If you would like to learn more about liver shunt, you can link to some information from Dr. Tobias here…