Pancreatitis in a dog

16/04/2008 by Arielle.

I was so happy to send little old Poppy home today. She had Yorkshire Terrier written on her files but she looked like a little overweight, balding grey crossbreed.

She has been in the hospital for 4 days as we diagnosed pancreatitis. This condition is extremely painful.

The pancreas (as shown above) is an extremely important organ in the body. Not only does it secrete insulin to control the levels of glucose in the body; it also secretes enzymes into the intestines to help break down the food that passes this way.

Any condition ending in ‘itis’ means inflammation so a pancreatitis is an inflammation of the pancreas. This means that it secretes far more enzyme than it should as it is inflamed or swollen and these enzymes quite literally ‘digest’ the area around the gland. This leads to a severe inflammatory condition in your pet and when Poppy came in 4 days ago; she was in severe pain.

Affected dogs sometimes walk with a ‘prayer dog’ position as they are in so much pain in their abdomens. This is made even worse when we do our examinations on the table and squeeze their abdomens between our fingers.

Other signs occur such as vomiting and a yellow diarrhoea (all of which poor Poppy had).

We admitted her straight away, put her on a drip as it is so important that NO food goes through her intestines as this sets off more digestive enzymes being secreted. She had a nil per os sign hung on her cage which means nothing to eat.

We gave her strong painkillers by injection and antibiotics and sent off a blood sample to the laboratory to confirm pancreatitis as the levels of certain enzymes that we could see from our own blood test, pointed to this horrible disease.

Long term management of pancreatitis involves a change of diet to a purely low-fat diet. I remember a dog in the past with this condition. He had eaten a piece of Kit-kat no larger than a thumbnail and it set off his pancreatitis. He came in in severe pain again and the owners were very cautious of any fatty food after that.

Poppy was so happy to be off her drip, out of pain and see her beloved owners again. I sent her home with some tins of Hills chicken and rice and the owners were going to keep her on a long-term low fat diet. She did need to lose some weight, but it seemed a harsh way of going about it with her illness!

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