Cynthia- About 10 years ago my 3-1/2 year old intact male Cavalier had a brief episode of "staggering" one evening. We promptly ran him to the vet, who kept him overnight while blood tests were run. The only thing that they could find was a very low platelet count, somewhere in the 20's or 30's (where "normal" then was considered over 200). My poor little boy was subjected to countless types of drugs as they tried to combat the "problem." I do remember that prednisone was one of them. My vet consulted with Colorado State University to try and figure out what the problem might be. Fortunately he did not remove his spleen, which was one of the remedies that was often used for this "problem." I was new to Las Vegas at the time, and new to this vet, and we had not yet established the wonderful working relationship that we enjoy today. At the time I had suggested that maybe Cavaliers just ran low numbers, to which he had just raised his eyebrows. Of course, ten years ago was before the time of the Internet, and the only way that I was able to dig up info on this problem was to call around to my friends in the Cavalier world, and I finally did come across one breeder who had experienced a similar problem in some of her Cavaliers. Her conclusion was that some dogs just ran low platelets. To make a long story shorter, my boy stayed at the vet for almost a month, with blood tests run on him regularly to check the status of his platelets. I swear that I paid the down payment on my vet's new home. His numbers continued to run very low, at one point dipping to around 10. His original symptoms, of course, had never reappeared! He was finally discharged to me, with my vet stating that "maybe his platelets just ran low." For a while I would check his platelets every couple of weeks, then every month, then every couple of months, and finally I just stopped since his numbers rarely went over 100, and yes, we were doing hand counts because by then I had heard about the "giant, clumping platelets" phenomenon in Cavaliers.
I will never know whether the symptoms that he exhibited that evening had anything to do with his low platelets, but I do know that he has lived a very long life without any apparent problems being caused by a low platelet count. He is now 13-1/2 years old and is the household curmudgeon, and at our last visit to the cardiologist was still free of a heart murmur! So by all means get him off the pred . . . All the best- Denise Quittmeyer Hobbshire Cavaliers ========================================================= "Magic Commands": to stop receiving mail for awhile, click here and send the email: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]?body=SET%20CKCS-L%20NOMAIL to start it up gain click here: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]?body=SET%20CKCS-L%20MAIL E-mail [EMAIL PROTECTED] for assistance. Search the Archives... http://apple.ease.lsoft.com/archives/ckcs-l.html All e-mail sent through CKCS-L is Copyright 2002 by its original author.
