I have a two-year-old Belgian Tervuren named Atia, who is a wonderful dog and the light of my life. When she was about ten months old, she got very sick. It started with puking foam in the morning and progressed to eating nothing and uncontrollably squirting red jello and raw hamburger out her rear end. Within three weeks she'd lost 20% of her body weight, despite going back to the vet every few days. It wasn't a foreign body, bacterial infection, worms, or giardia; she got a surgery with biopsies, and it was really severe eosinophilic inflammatory bowel disease. We gave her hypoallergenic dog food (science diet Z/D), prednisone, imuran, and flagyl, and her guts healed up.

We've done well since then in the sense that she has never again been nearly that sick, and she's a very happy dog except for her very limited diet. We have not done well in that I cannot wean her off prednisone for more than six or eight weeks without flaring again. I'd like to feed her something other than Z/D (she used to eat bones and have such beautiful teeth!), but she flares within two days of eating beef, lamb, pork, or rabbit. and I suspect that is not an exhaustive list. I would really, really like to find a way to manage her disease that does not require steroids. I don't know if it's possible or not, but I welcome suggestions.

Hi and welcome. I'm glad to read she has improved since inital diagnosis. I found this site helpful http://pets.groups.yahoo.com/group/IBDogs/ for education as well as internet support in addition to a good internal medicine vet.

Thanks Aimee, I will check it out. My current vet is a rural small animal GP, and she's really very good but has never seen a dog like Atia before. We're moving somewhere quite urban in about a month, so I will look for a canine IBD specialist when we get there.