piggymums
New Born Pup
Hi, looking for some advice from someone who has experience with piggies with heart problems.
One of my boars, Gus, suffered pretty severe heart failure and fluid on the lungs about 4 weeks ago. We had x-rays and an ultrasound at the time. He didn’t really show any symptoms aside from slight wheezing so we didn’t catch it until pretty late.
Since then, he has been on 0.1ml Frusol and ¼ of a 1.25 mg Vetmedin tablet twice daily. He has stabilised and is back being super happy, but is still pretty wheezy, sometimes has laboured breathing and hasn’t put back on the weight that he lost. I’ve spoken to our vet about this, and asked if there is a chance that we could adjust the Frusol dose because it seems like it’s not enough to deal with the fluid (and I’ve heard of plenty of piggies who take much higher doses). The vet has told me that this is a bad idea, and he would rather do another ultrasound/x-ray combination in case there is a better approach. Of course, I know that I should take the advice of my vet, but it’s not clear to me what we’ll gain from another x-ray, and it feels as though maybe they are just trying to charge us for more expensive treatments. Am I being too sceptical or does anyone know of a reason that he doesn’t want to prescribe a higher Frusol dose?
Does anyone else have experience of a similar situation?
Any advice would be really appreciated - thanks!
One of my boars, Gus, suffered pretty severe heart failure and fluid on the lungs about 4 weeks ago. We had x-rays and an ultrasound at the time. He didn’t really show any symptoms aside from slight wheezing so we didn’t catch it until pretty late.
Since then, he has been on 0.1ml Frusol and ¼ of a 1.25 mg Vetmedin tablet twice daily. He has stabilised and is back being super happy, but is still pretty wheezy, sometimes has laboured breathing and hasn’t put back on the weight that he lost. I’ve spoken to our vet about this, and asked if there is a chance that we could adjust the Frusol dose because it seems like it’s not enough to deal with the fluid (and I’ve heard of plenty of piggies who take much higher doses). The vet has told me that this is a bad idea, and he would rather do another ultrasound/x-ray combination in case there is a better approach. Of course, I know that I should take the advice of my vet, but it’s not clear to me what we’ll gain from another x-ray, and it feels as though maybe they are just trying to charge us for more expensive treatments. Am I being too sceptical or does anyone know of a reason that he doesn’t want to prescribe a higher Frusol dose?
Does anyone else have experience of a similar situation?
Any advice would be really appreciated - thanks!
