An ITP story with a dog...

When we saw the hematologist earlier this week, she said to Caitlin..."Do you want to hear something funny? My dog has ITP!!" She said she called the vet about two weeks ago and said that she thinks her dog has ITP and asked if she could just watch and wait. The vet asked her to describe what her dog looked like (Italian Greyhound) and she said he had bruising and petechaie all over his body. The vet said that it is very dangerous for any cat/dog to have platelets under 50. I asked what the normal range is for dogs and she said it starts at 175 and they don't like their platelets to be below 80 or 100 (I can't remember which). She said her dog was put on Prednisone, Visticrine, and Cellcept! Poor dog! She showed us pictures of her dog on her Iphone and you could see the bruising from the needle and then the petechaie was obvious because of thin fur.

I love it when drs make their patients feel comfortable and share things with kids like this! My daughter and her hematologist have a great relationship and I couldn't ask for anything better! I just thought it something to share...an ITP specialist who has a dog who has ITP!

I always wondered how you could tell with a dog. Maybe underneath? My dogs have a lot of fur, even the one with Cushings that has thinning fur.

After some routine bloodwork on my old (then, now recently departed) dog I was told my dog had ITP but it seemed weird. I asked the vet what normal platelet levels were for a dog and she said she didn't know, the lab report only said they were too low so they decided it was ITP. My dog had no symptoms of ITP. So I told them to re-check the count and sure enough normal platelet levels. Some sort of lab error.

I learned then though that dogs did get ITP. I told the vet I had it and she thought that was pretty funny (in a nice way).
Erica

All I know is that it was obvious on this dog and maybe it was because of her thin fur! I'm sure most owners would never know! And her dog's platelet count was at 5K so she definitely was able to spot it. I do remember my other Golden had alot of spots just before he died and they were all underneath. Never thought it could be petechaie, but he seemed to have a stroke and then he was very disoriented for about a week before he died. (Walked like he was extremely dizzy, kept bumping into things. Vet couldn't figure out what was wrong, but I am pretty sure they ran blood tests.) He was only 7 years old.

7! That's so sad.

My older dog (13) has had a stroke. She was walking like that, but recovered pretty quick.

A friend of mine at work told me her cat had ITP! The cat lived on prednisone for 5 years and died at the ripe old age of 17. They discovered it on routine blood testing. So it can strike animals.