I took Smokey to a holistic vet for a nutritional consult with a goal of finding an appropriate combination of food/supplements that will keep him as healthy as possible and secondarily to see if we can wean him from the Tylosin. We are doing a 30-day food trial with Ultamino. He is also having a series of monthly aquapuncture with B-12 and is on a Chinese herb daily. She had me stop the Fortiflora. The stool has been pretty OK throughout, (a bit soft in spots, but nothing approaching diarrhea), but I really think the Tylosin is the primary factor in keeping the stool somewhat normalized. I think consistency was better on the Fortiflora than the herb, which I'll discuss at the next vet visit.
The current treatments are meant to help reduce inflammation in the gastrointestinal tract before we try any new foods & do anything to start a trial weaning period on the Tylosin.
At the vet's recommendation (and based on input from the forum ... TY!), we also did another GI Profile -- this time fasted and with the testing done at Texas A&M.
Results were:
Cobalamin 724
Folate 16.2
PLI less than 30
TLI 16.3
All of these results are within the normal range, although the vet seemed to think the TLI was a bit low.
The vet also recommended (1) we hold off a few months on neutering, which I am ok with doing, and to do a stomach biopsy when the neutering surgery is done, and (2) to consider titering for all vaccines at this point. I have mixed feelings on the latter and wonder what other experience forum members may have.
My gut feeling (no pun intended) at this point is that Tylosin is still the glue holding everything together. I'm not sure we're really making progress. but I know there's a lot of trial and error involved in finding the right combination. It feels quite discouraging at times. As always, I will greatly appreciate insights/experiences from forum members regarding the latest update. It's so helpful to know that we aren't taking this journey alone.
