My girl is 16.5 yo, 7.5-8 lb dachshund (normal weight is > 8.5). She had pancreatitis twice in the past few months (May and July, admitted in July but recovered). For her whole life, she had presumptive irritable bowel and was on tylan for years, but we stopped it (initially) in July because she refused to take it. We added pepcid then, and her poops were great--solid--2-3x a day. She also has been on the probiotic propectilin twice a day. All was right with the world...and with her poop....
Then in August, out of nowhere--she developed bad diarrhea---which eventually responded somewhat to tylan--> better stools, 2-3 X a day, but gloppy and yellow.
So starting in August, we put her back on tylan, and pepcid, and continued the propectilin. While she initially had 2-3 yellow softish stools on this regimen, eventually it increased to 8-10 stools a day, various forms, and she was losing weight. So we had her tested for EPI, and her tli came back at 3.5---which my vet says IS epi, and recommended pancreatic enzyme.
I tried pancreplus through various ways (on the food---no way, she wont eat it) and self-filling in enteric capsules. We never got too far with the capsules, as she only takes this willingly "sometimes." I cant always guarantee that I can get it into her. So I figured the answer was Creon--no taste or smell---amazing!! I thought we had our answer and solution.
She is really sensitive to all medications so we have been using this medication very carefully. I bought Creon 10,000 and started with 1/4 capsule with all meals. No change. I increased it to 1/3 capsule with all meals--no change. Then I changed the timing of the 1/3 capsule to 5 minutes before eating, and then 10 minutes before--no change. Now we are on 1/2 capsule with all meals (immediately with food), and so far NO CHANGE!! Next step will be to change the time up again, but I'm losing my patience
My house is all poop all the time, even during the night-time. ALL POOP ALL THE TIME.. (I'm sure you can relate).I know this medication can be tricky to "get right," but I'm wondering if anyone has anything more to recommend. I've thought about changing up her tylan dosage (now on 1/2 of 1/64 tspn twice a day as hoping to taper off once creon works), or changing her probiotic---but I'm also afraid to do ANYTHING until I can see at least some improvement from the Creon---otherwise I wont know what actually worked. If it's just about being more patient, I can be---but I'm beginning to feel like this wont work for her, and it's a battle all day cleaning up, feeding her multiple decent sized meals so she keeps her weight, and oh--she also has dementia so it's also all peeing all the time. The good news--is she looks pretty happy, waggy, and not too bothered.
