Remember Rocky and his on-going battle with Cushings disease? His brilliant mum, Emma has kindly sent us an update on how his doing. It’s quite a remarkable story 
“3rd Jan 2013. As we start 2013, (a milestone I never allowed myself to believe Rocky would be here to see), I thought I’d update on the past 6 months or so of Rocky’s battle with Cushings disease.
Having been medication free for around 3 months, at the beginning of September 2012, I noticed some minor symptoms of the disease returning – at this point his only treatment was daily cushex drops. I arranged for another ACTH stimulation test to see where everything was at and the results came back showing that we were no longer managing to contain the disease fully so something needed to be done.
The vet and I agreed that he was to restart the vetoryl but only a 30mg dose (a dose for a small poodle, my 34kg boxer boy should need 120mg per day). The vets plan was to start at 30mg to get his system used to it and then gradually increase him to a dose which would actually have an affect on a dog of his size.
I went along with this and started the 30 mg dose, but in my head I decided to research more natural remedies and endeavour to keep him on the 30 mg if at all possible. Well, I scoured the internet but every possible natural supplement I could find to help him was already on the ingredients list for his cushex drops, with the exception of one – flaxseed lignans (the heart of the flaxseed which is often dilluted or removed in the process of making the flaxseed oil, making the oil no good in this case) so I ordered flaxseed with high lignan content and started him on a heaped tablespoon daily.
At this point he is on cushex drops, flaxseed and 30 mg of vetoryl a day – and of course … a raw diet. He was doing great and the symptoms disappeared again. In due course, the vets wouldn’t re-administer the 30 mg because they simply couldn’t believe that it was enough to keep him healthy. They wanted another blood test so I had to comply, although I told them it would come back fine as I am constantly monitoring Rocky for any evidence of the disease and he wasn’t showing any signs.
They called with the results, which were perfect, “Never seen a case of cushings being so successfully managed”, “his results could not be better” and “You do realise that 30mg is for a small poodle and technically speaking should be doing nothing at all to help Rocky” were some of the comments from the vet!!!
We agreed to continue as we were and Rocky continued to go from strength to strength. He will be 11 years old in May but doesn’t look anything like that, his disease is totally under control at the moment and he’s still excersized with my 1 and 6 year olds and has no problem doing 6-8 miles a day. He’s loving life and continuing to kick this disease into touch and I am absolutely certain we would not have made this kind of progress feeding “dog food” and throwing drugs down his throat!!! Happy 2013 everyone, me and Rocky intend to have a good one!!!”
