My senior dog is losing weight, not eating, and vomiting. What's wrong?

Hi there and thank you for using Pet Coach to address your concern. Based on your history and description, I would recommend an abdominal ultrasound as the next diagnostic step. The protein being low could be related to a GI inflammatory disease or intestinal cancer. X-rays do not show enough detail of the intestines or organs so things can be missed on x-rays that would show up on an ultrasound. I hope this helps guide you in the right direction. Please let me know if you have any other questions or concerns.

That is very concerning that she is not eating, vomiting, and losing weight. If blood work is normal than your vet could do x-rays and/or an abdominal ultrasound to look for abnormalities. Your vet could also do an ACTH stim test to make sure she is on the correct dose of vetoryl. Your vet could also treat with an anti-nausea medication called Cerenia and an antibiotic called Metronidazole to see if that helps with the vomiting and diarrha. Hope she feels better soon.

Poor Checker! This is a huge amount of weight to have lost in a year, so I would say that something is definitely wrong. In older cats with significant weight loss like this and normal blood work, the most common possible causes would be an intestinal absorption issue like inflammatory bowel disease (which can be present even if she is not having diarrhea), or some type of abdominal cancer. The next diagnostic steps would be abdominal x-rays and ultrasound, with exploratory surgery and intestinal biopsies if needed to get a definite diagnosis. If this isn't possible for financial reasons, a trial course of oral steroids and injectable vitamin B12 might be helpful - I would suggest discussing these options with your vet to see what he/she recommends.

Thank you for your post! I am sorry to hear Shurbee is not doing well. My concern at this age would be some type of malignancy. In older cats, one of the more common things we see in regards to cancer is intestinal / GI lymphoma. This does not always show up on blood work. I would highly recommend Shurbee get an abdominal ultrasound as the next diagnostic step. Hope this helps and feel free to contact me with any further questions / concerns

If the weight loss is more than 10% of the her body weight, this could be abnormal and should ideally checked. Gastrointestinal abnormal absorption of nutrients may be present and should be investigated. Usually chronic gastrointestinal inflammations/infections are responsible for it. I would start with a blood test and some imaging procedures of the abdomen (an ultrasound).

Hi. For weight loss, we would want a CBC checked, a full chemistry to check liver/kidneys/electrolytes/and glucose, a thyroid, and a urine test. If those are all normal, xrays will need to be done in weight loss cases. Good luck

I would definitely recommend some blood work, if this hasn't been done recently. Older dogs are prone to a number of health issues that can cause decreased appetite along with being less active - chronic kidney disease and hypothyroidism are two possibilities that are both very common. In many cases, these issues are treatable (at least to some extent) once a diagnosis is made, so it's well worth checking for them if you can - hopefully, there are some things you can do to make him feel better for as long as possible, even though he's getting older.