Has any one on here had any experience with auto-immune disorders and treatment with prednisone? My sister's dog has been having a problem for months now and she's at her wits end. I'm just hoping someone has been through something like this and has some good advise. I can provide more information if need be, and I've also posted the main story in the vaccination thread a while back (so it's not up to date with the most recent part of the story). I think more than anything, she just needs to hear some positive stories for moral support because this has been a hard, long-running saga.

Any insights are greatly appreciated.

This is the thread with my other posts on this problem:

http://leerburg.com/webboard/thread.php?topic_id=31562&page=2

There's more on page 1 in that thread.

My dog Terra has a weird incident, she had a swollen ear and I took her to the vet, they checked her out and noticed her gums were extremely pale. They did blood work and her red blood cells were way,low, I think 17 it should've been in the 50's I think. Well they began her on prednisone. I am not a fan of drugs, but her blood was going down even farther, She was very ill. So we did it. She has responded nicely. Once her blood began to come up, (30 days later) and was in the low normal range, we began lowering the meds. You do not want to be on prednisone too long. There are side effects. Terra has done well. Her side effects have been, she is hyper and very, very hungry. Some dogs have a urination problem. To counter this, I took her outside about every hour. We had only one mistake in the 3 months since her illness began. It is harder to train her because she is so hyper she has a hard time concentrating, but I still do it and she is so hungry she will do anything for food.
I also started giving her milk thistle twice a week, to help her liver process the drug.
It is hard to see your dog sick, but you can watch her closely, and read up on as much info as possible. You might even feed your dog a little more to help with the cravings. And try to stick to a natural diet, especially when ill. I have fed my dogs raw and it really has helped them.
I hope this helps. Sharon

Hi Sharon - it does help. Thank you. I will pass this information on to my sister. Her dog seems to be slowly improving and they've started weaning him off the pred now. Hoping it all goes well b/c this has been a long, intense ordeal and it's going to take him a long time still to get back to normal. His muscles are atrophied, both from having to be sedentary for so long, and from the high doses of prednisone - it's going to be tricky to bring him back without letting him over do it too quickly and have him injure himself again. He's also still having the diarrhea but they think that's from the high dose of pred. I'll definitely tell her to try the milk thistle.