Huile de poisson seule = danger (en anglais)

[Saint mom 0]

This came across on a Pom list. Thought it would be interesting as so few are aware that when giving fish oil supplements you need to give vitamin E.

"This is for all of you who may be giving fish oil supplements to your dog, thinking that you are helping them. I just brought my 9 1/2 year old Pom, Mitzi, home from the vet school/hospital at Michigan State University inLansing, where she spent the last three weeks. In mid-December, because she as having trouble jumping onto furniture and acted like she was hurting when you touched her, we thought that her back was giving her trouble. The et eventually put her on "rest and rimidol", and we saw her chiropracter. However, she continued to go downhill, and on New Year's Day I found several lumps in her lymph nodes. Our vet did X-rays and blood work and aspirated the nodes, then referred us to MSU because of her whacky blood work. In all, she spent 3 weeks there, and was tested for everything there is - lots of lab work, X-rays, ultrasounds, aspirations, two biopsies, EKG, etc. She also had a blood transfusion and was on IVs for fluids and antibiotics. She started vomiting a lot, lost a total of 3 pounds (started at 11 pounds), spiked a fever above 104, and became very weak, but was always so happy to see me when I visited her daily. After ruling out cancer, thyroid or parathyroid disease, pancreatitis, etc, the main thing wrong seemed to be an inflamation of her abdominal fat and very high blood calcium levels. They then discovered that she had contracted MRSA, an extremely serious staph infection that can be life-threatening, from the nutritional catheters that she was on at the hospital. There are only 3 antibiotics that can treat this, and they can cause severe kidney problems. Another catheter caused her hip to become infected, so that last nutritional catheter was taken out and her leg was wrapped. Last Saturday it looked like Mitzi was not going to make it, and I didn't think that we could give her more than a few more days. At that point they put her on one of the strong antibiotics, as well as on steroids (which can damage the stomach) and Vitamin E, and she quit vomiting and slowly began to improve. She has started eating again, has become very perky, and things are definitely looking up. Today I brought home a bandaged package of only fur and bones, wearing an Elizabethan collar, with shaved legs and stomach and neck, but she has that bright look in her eyes again, and was so excited that she started barking two blocks from home. She is now sleeping at my feet.

When I translated the biopsy pathology report (took two hours for me to understand one paragraph), I concluded that she had a disease that cats get when they eat too much fish - in our terms, it is called "yellow fat disease", in medical terms it is called "granulomatous steatitis" or "pansteatitis" or "panniculitis" . I had started Mitzi on a supplement of Omega 3s in late summer to help increase her energy level, and when that bottle ran out I bought some salmon oil at a show which seemed to have the same benefits. What I didn't know, and that EVERYONE should be aware of, is that an overabundance of unsaturated fatty acids (fat) in the diet can be toxic (and fatal) if additional supplements of Vitamin E are not added as an anti-oxident. And we could have cured Mitzi easily if we had just taken her off of the fish oil and added Vitamin E to her diet early on, or used an Omega 3 supplement that had added Vitamin E. Unfortunately, I was not warned about this, and the staff at MSU did not recognize this disease in a dog, leading to all of her biopsies and other complications.

Mitzi's prognosis is still "fair to guarded", but we are hopeful that she will continue to improve and that her high blood calcium levels will not return now that she is off of IV fluids. This may have been an isolated incident, but we hope that this awareness will keep other dogs from the suffering that she has gone through.

Our friends and the agility community as a whole have made such a difference in our lives, and the positive thoughts and prayers of our agility friends have substained us. We hope that someday we will be able to just step to the line again together - meanwhile, we'll just cuddle!

Hug your pups -

The vitamin E that you will see as an ingredient of the fish oil capsules is NOT enough and you still need to add some vitamin E along with the fish oil.

If fish oil makes you uncomfortable, there's always Derm Caps or the 3-6-9 from Vetriscience.


Judy Thompson and my "heart dog", Mitzi
MACH2 C-ATE Mitzi EAC OJC OGC UAG1 CGC (Pom)
Lazer OA OAJ CL4 CGC (Pom)
Tia AX AXJ CL4 CGC (Sheltie)"

[gin1 0]

Je remonte un vieux post mais je fais des recherches sur l'huile de saumon. En lisant ton article, j'exclus les huiles de poisson comme supplément.

[Isabelle45 0]

J'en donne a mes chiens de l'huile de saumon, c'est en capsule. J'ai acheté un gros pot chez Costco. J’inclue aussi un 400IE de Vitamine E aux 3 jours. A date, je n'ai jamais eu de probleme.