Doggy Diabetes? No, It's Cushing's.

I once swore I would never prepare special food for an animal, no matter what. Now here I am preparing hamburger and white rice twice a day for the little dog, because my husband doesn't understand what's wrong with the dog. We took him to the vet on Thursday, because he was lethargic, drinking excessively and had started breaking housetraining. I knew something was really wrong, because for a good year now, he didn't want to play much and he had been putting on so much weight. The vet called me yesterday with a diagnosis of Cushing's Disease which is an excess production of the stress regulating hormones ACTH and Cortisol.

I understood 95% of what he tested for and the results found, so when I got home, I pulled out the old faithful, gargantuan Biology book and found out it can be caused by one of two things. The most common cause is a pituitary tumor that doesn't respond to excess cortisol in the endocrine system, so production of ACTH in the pituitary doesn't stop. The excess ACTH causes even more cortisol to be produced by the adrenal glands. The other cause could be an adrenal gland or kidney tumor that is causing excess production of cortisol that doesn't respond to ACTH levels in the endocrine system. In layman's terms, the biological feedback loop that regulates stress hormones in the body is damaged by a tumor, and so the dog's body thinks it needs to respond with excess fat storage in the abdomen, and unsatiable hunger and thirst.

Then I went on to the WSU Veterinary School website to see the treatment and prognosis of canine Cushing's, and to be frank, treated or untreated lifespan is the same. Untreated, he will eventually get pancreatitis, diabetes, seizures, congestive heart failure and kidney and liver failure. The treatment improves quality of life, but does not prolong lifespan. By the time the disease has progressed to the point where most dog owners notice something is wrong, their immune systems are already shot, and most dogs that actually respond to treatment, end up eventually dying of a quickly progressive form of the disease once the medication stops working.

We guess he's had it for about 3 years, if not more. The early signs were desperate guarding of food, garbage raiding, gradual lethargy, a potbelly and lumpy, calcified fat deposits on the torso. He's had those symptoms for a few years now, and we just attributed them to his age and stress before he came to live with us. He's not really our dog, so we agreed no lifelong medicine or surgery, but the hubby thinks he'll be okay living in the garage and can eventually go back on dogfood and stay inside. Since the dog is in the later stages of Cushing's, this is not going to happen. I am going to have to keep preparing his food, his bowel control is only going to get worse, and I listed the eventual progress of the disease above.

The dog's feelings are already hurt now that he's been banished to the garage at night and when we're gone. I say get him a giant cheeseburger meal, take him to play what ball he wants to play, and let the morphine take him into doggie dreamland. My mom made my sister's dog live outside after it lost its control, and the poor little thing shiverred through the whole winter. It was blind, had no bowel control and was obviously in pain, and banished to the yard. I can't imagine what the dog must have been thinking after living inside for sixteen years. I don't think I'm being the cruel one here, but if we're not going to treat him, how is that not cruel? I'm in a real dilemna.