Any small animal vets?

[Tempi]

My mum has a 13yr old minature schnauzer. Hes recently been diagnosed with dementia and is on pills for it which are helping him (he was forgetting where he was which is quite hard to explain, you have to see it really). Apart from that (and being slightly deaf which comes with the old age) he is a very happy healthy dog and happily goes for very long walks with my whippet and charges around like a nutter

Anyways the vet wanted to run more blood tests to check there was nothing else wrong with him and they have come back with ridiculously high ALKP readings. Now the vet said ALKP should be around 50 (i think thats right) and Charlie's is 10,000!!!!!

Today the vet took him in to run more blood tests under different conditions just to check there was no other reason that the reading was so high as hes never seen it before. The reading today came back at 10,000 again so obviously there is something wrong. Our vet isnt sure what to do now as hes perfectly happy and well in himself. Hes referred it to a top pathologist in Devon and we should here back from him tomorrow.

Ive had a look online and it says that very high ALKP is related to liver disease or bone cancer. The vet had suspected he had Cusings but he ran tests for that too and they came back negative. Hes a very happy and energetic dog, so we are reluctant to have him PTS as he is very well in himself otherwise (apart from his dementia!)

I just wondered if anyone had any experience of this in their dogs? Ive looked at some case studies online and a couple of them said that with very high ALKP readings they have had a seemingly healthy dog just put down

Id just like to add that obviously we will do the right thing by him if the vet suggests that is best for him.

 

[star]

i wouldn't put him to sleep just because of a lab reading. if he's happy otherwise then why do that? ALKP is released from bone, guts, liver etc - there's many reasons why it could be high. it could be temporary or long term. it's up to you how much digging you do to try and find the underlying cause. maybe scanning his liver/bile acid stim test to check liver function is worthwhile and I would def want to check for gallstones as lack of movement of bile is a big cause of ALKP going up.

 

[Tempi]

Thank you star, i was hoping you would reply

i think the vet did say the next step was to test his liver/bile acid. Im not sure if the vet has mentioned gallstones or not, will see what my mum says as shes been the one liasing with the vet.

Thank you again, very helpful