Dog not responding to treatment

[mattiesmom]

Last month, I adopted a 3 year old jack russell/beagle mix dog Mattie from our local animal shelter. I followed protocol and took her to the vet the next day. It was then discovered that she had signs of an immune disorder because she was covered with small strawberry bruising all over her body.

For the last month she has been on Predisnone 2xs a day, and the last 2 weeks she's been on Azathioprine once a day along with the predninsone. She's had her platelet count checked every week and instead of going up, they are constantly going down. The vet said her count is now at about 6,000 which is extremely low. She has been tested for various tick born illnesses, along with heart worms and several other things all which have come back negative. The vet suggested a bone marrow sample with a specialist and the price range for that was beyond my income means. I am afraid that we are at the end of what I am able to do for her and that really scares me. I love this little girl with all my heart and I want to do what is best for her within my capabilities. The vet said this was unusual of having a dog not respond to those medicines. She said normally it can be treated with just the prednisone. She is not anemic, nor is her white blood cell count down. It just is all with her platelets.

Is there any other medicines out there that we can possibly try or perhaps look into something we haven't checked for yet? Thanks for any insight I can get into this matter.

[chihuawa10]

treatment for tick illnesses are cheap. if she were one of our rescues we would have our vet place her on Doxycline or similar for upwards of 3 weeks to see if there is an improvement. tick borne tests are not always correct.  we had a boxer who had erosive Pollyarthritis (its an autoimmune issue)  and he was on pred & azathioprine.. he had joint taps that told us what he had... but when he would come out of remission he was placed on cyclophosphamide a few times and it really helped.

[mattiesmom]

I just wanted to say thanks for the suggestions. I will mention those other medicines to our vet and see what she says.

[ddeiman]

Mention to your vet the drugs leukeran or cyclosporine. These are immunosuppresive drugs also used for dogs.  

[Anna2002]

hi well i just saw this on this web site and kinda looked into it and this builds up the immune system, i did a fast search and not sure how well it is. it is called pycnogenol. hope everything works out.