Barkleys Blog: Suprelorin now into week 3 and an unexpected turn.

Aroooooooooooooo arooooooooooooooooo aroooooooooooooo!!!!!

What a happy Barkley I am, and it's not just the fact that the sun has been shining. I am feeling on top of the world.

And it's not just about my meeting ........

...................and greeting

................but also about my eating.

A lot of people, including mummee have been rather concerned about my weight. I am rather a lean machine at the best of times, but at the worst of times mummee says I look like a stick insect. I am not as skinny as our old Setter Nalle was during his time, when the RSPCA paid mummee a visit after having received a complaint about a starving dog in the neighbourhood. Nalle had the same malabsorption problem which Tally has, but we know a great deal more about the condition these days, and Tally has become so much better since having digestive enzymes added to her food.

I was diagnosed with a mild pancreatic insufficiency, and the pancreas is where a lot of enzymes and hormones come from. Digestive enzymes have helped me not to keep being sick and having tummy pains. They also helped me to start loving my food. I used to HATE dinner time. It made me feel really blurrrrgh. Just sniffing the food which mummee put down was more than enough - regardless of what that food consisted of and she would cry with despair "not another Setter who can't and won't eat".

Once I started eating again, just as with Nalle and Tally, I had problems with this lovely food passing right through me, and not doing what it ought to be doing. So why weren't those digestive enzymes which saved Tally's life helping me absorb my food too? What has been going on?

Well it seems to be that Suprelorin has the answer..... there appears to be a link to testosterone, because not only am I absolutely wolfing down my food. I am actively looking for more. Only this time I am not dumping the extra out the other end. It is going to be very interesting. Tally has to go to see Caroline the vet for her medicine check up next week, so mummee is going to take me along too, to put me on the scales. I really think the scales are going to collapse with shock next time I stand on them. It is just amazing what blocking that over production of testosterone from my pituitary gland is doing. Nobody can believe how much better I am, and I can't believe just how wonderful life has become.

You will see from the pancreas and pituitary gland links, that these are connected to the endocrine system. Setters Nalle, Lotte and Tally were all hypothyroid. So what is it that makes mummee think that Irish Setters have a big problem with their endocrine system, which perhaps isn't focussed around the thyroid at all - but originating from higher up the system? i.e the pituitary gland, or even perhaps the hypothalamus. If the researchers were to turn their attention to the workings of the hypothalamus in certain breeds, we might even find the cause of bloat - the big killer of large deep chested dogs, as the workings of the stomach are all linked into this complicated system. Perhaps they are looking for the cause in totally the wrong place. FOOD for thought huh?