When we rescued Wendy, our beloved Cocker Spaniel, from the SPCA in January of 2006 (believed to be 3 years old at the time), she had no energy, couldn't run, and was beset with hair loss and elephantine gray skin. She also tremored noticeably when drifting off to sleep. Apparently, none of the vets who'd previously examined her managed to tie all her symptoms together to diagnose the root cause. When we adopted her on a Saturday, we set about researching those symptoms ourselves and found that everything pointed to an underactive thyroid. That following Monday, we brought her to the local vet who warned us her symptoms were so varied and advanced, that we may be investing time, money and emotion into a dog that may not be around for long, but we had them run the blood test anyway. Sure enough, we hit the bullseye. The vet called me at work and told me we were dead-on with our research, and they'd get her on Soloxine to normalize the hormone output from the thyroid immediately. Within two weeks, she was running with energy and growing hair again.
And here she is, still going strong at age 13!
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