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I wanted to share our recent experience with a puppy with a portal shunt because I had a hard time finding information here beyond diagnosis. A portal shunt is where there is abnormal blood flow and blood from the intestines isn't sent to the liver for filtering and processing resulting in high ammonia levels secondary to the abnormal processing of protein. The more protein the dog eats, the worse the problem can be.
I have two 7 month old dachshunds who are litter mates. We got them at 12 weeks of age and they were both super playful and healthy. Whenever you have two puppies, its hard to not compare them to each other and we definitely noticed that one was bigger and played "rougher" than the other, but they both were active, good eaters and just a ball of fun!
When they were about 5 months old, I started to notice that the smaller one didn't seem to want to play as much and often didn't finish her meals. The size difference between the two of them because more pronounced and the littler one often had a hard time settling down after dinner, where her sister would just conk out like puppies do. Then she started vomiting off and on which I attributed to all sorts of things for a week or so before I finally took her to the vet. Our vet felt like it was a portal shunt right away just based on the history - especially when I described her restlessness and staring after meals.
Over the next two days we got labs to check liver function (wildly elevated) and a bile acid test which is the definitive test for portal shunt (it was abnormal). Then we went to a specialist and had an ultrasound done which officially confirmed the diagnosis. During this week, I quit feeding her puppy food (too high in protein) and made up a diet of rice, boiled chicken breast (lower in protein), avocados, broccoli, apples and flax seed oil (I was completely making this up but she seemed to love it and quit vomiting and the post-meal staring and wondering improved).
It has been two months since her surgery and she is doing AMAZING! She was in the specialty hospital for two days after surgery but came home feeling pretty darn good. She is now eating Hill's LD dry food and is still on two medications to help with protein binding, but if her bile acid test is normal (or close to it), I believe the plan is to try to stop the medicines and transition back to a 'normal" food. She has gained 4 pounds since surgery and is full of energy and personality!
We hope that she continues on this course of wellness. I know this isn't always the case for this diagnosis, but for now we are grateful and hopeful and I wanted to share our experience for anyone who is looking for information.
Thank you for sharing this. It may shed light for another dog owner in the future. Your description of the dogs behavior is very specific, and that’s a good thing.
It has now been one year since my dog had surgery to repair her congenital portal shunt. I wanted to share an update so anyone else who is facing this diagnosis can hopefully benefit from our experience.
My dog is doing quite well! She quickly gained weight after her surgery and actually caught up with her litter mate. She is playful and seems like a happy, well-adjusted family dog. Because her bile-acid test never normalized, we have left her on the Hill's liver diet though her recent liver enzymes (AST and ALT) were normal for the first time ever so we may consider a trial to a more standard food. The only medical problem that I notice now is that she seems thirstier than her sister which the vet attributes to her food. She has had a couple of UTIs in the past year but we don't have a good explanation for that.
Over all, she is about as typical as can be and we are enjoying her good health and sweet personality. I have no regrets for going through with the surgery and am hopeful that we have plenty of healthy years together!
"Avocados can be as a nutritious and delicious snack for humans, but can dogs eat avocado? The answer is yes and no. Avocados contain persin, a fungicidal toxin that can cause serious health problems — even death — in many animals. Dogs may be more more resistant to persin than other animals, but that doesn’t mean you should feed them to your dog or that avocados are safe for them to consume...Persin is present in avocado fruit, pits, leaves, and the actual plant. All of these parts are potentially poisonous to your dog. Exactly what amount of persin is lethal isn’t known. In large amounts, it can cause vomiting in dogs, doggy diarrhea, and myocardial damage (in humans, this is another name for a heart attack)."
We have wild avocados growing on our property and our dogs sometimes get them, but we try to take them away when we can. It doesn't appear to be a 911 situation if dogs get avocado, but it sounds like it should be avoided when possible.
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One year later...
