Homer

I'm having trouble concentrating at work since I spoke with Homer's vet about an hour ago. I don't know all of the details or our game plan but I thought I'd let you know what's going on our with other baby. For the last month, Homer has been on medication for his nose. It became very dry around the edges. During that time, he was barely eating, became very sluggish and had lost a noticeable amount of weight. When our vet reviewed his chart with us, we were shock to see that he has lost 15 pounds since last May and five of those were in the last month. (Dad, he's way too skinny now for you to call him a pot belly pig!)

On Friday, Mike and I took him in to have some blood work done and the vet shared the results with me today. His liver enzymes are elevated but that could be because of the medication he was on. However, the blood work shows that his kidney's are not functioning properly and our vet believes he has Kideny Renal Disfunction. We won't know how bad it is until the urine analysis is done (hopefully we'll get the sample to the vet today or tomorrow). As soon as we have this information we'll be able to figure out our long-term plan. If Homer is in the early stages, we'll be able to change his diet to one that is less "poisonous" to his system to help his kidney's function better. If he's in the later stages, I'm not sure what we'll do...the vet didn't go down that road with me on the phone.

Our vet told me that this is normal for older dogs. We've never known Homer's true age since we adopted him in 2003. We were told then that he was between 3-5 years and have always thought he was on the younger side of that span. So now we're guessing between 10-12 years. We know he's getting older but we just don't want to admit it. We love the guy way too much.

We'll keep you all posted.