Rolling Dog Farm Blog

When our equine vet Dr. Angela Langer was out here last week doing dentals on the horses, I had asked her to draw blood on blind Hawk so we could run a CBC and chem panel on him.  Alayne and I had noticed Hawk just didn't seem himself; a little stiff, lying down more than usual, but nothing dramatically different — and hard to know if the changes we were seeing in him were just because of his advanced age (late 20s) or due to something else.  We couldn't put our finger on it, but we figured blood work was the place to start.

On Saturday morning, our lead equine vet, Dr. Erin Taylor, called to say she had just received Hawk's lab results.  She said that while the rest of his blood work looked fine, his potassium levels were significantly elevated and completely out of whack with the other results.  Basically, it was a puzzling finding because it wasn't clear from the blood work why his potassium levels would be so high — but high potassium levels could ultimately result in muscle rigidity and other major problems.  Erin said it could also be the first indication of a kidney problem developing, though his kidney values were perfectly normal.

She wanted us to start him on daily injections of lasix, a diuretic, to help "wash" the potassium out of his blood stream.  The injections need to be given intravenously, directly into his jugular vein.  Alayne took this photo of me giving Hawk his dose this morning.  We're going to keep on lasix for several days, tapering him off, and then re-test his blood work.  You can see from the photo just how big he is, but he has a jugular vein to match, making it easy to find!

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Don't forget, you can vote every day for us in The Animal Rescue Site/PetFinder's Shelter Challenge. 
Enter
"Rolling Dog Ranch" and our state postal code, MT for Montana,
and it will bring up our listing so you can cast your vote.  Invite your family and friends to vote, too! 

Wow .. still No. 3!  Please keep voting — thank you!