So I have an update on my pooch's status. Kinda wondering what's going on. So right before Valentine's day he had the dental cleaning and 9 teeth pulled. He will be 12 in August. He was given an antibiotic and completed that and was back to normal by the time we took a March 3 trip to Disney. We boarded him in the kennel with can dog food. He was there for 9 nights. The day we pick him up, at 2pm, and get him home he starts running around all restless like in the house.
I thought he was behaving oddly and then discovered, as I took him out to potty, that he had terrible diarrhea. It continued. And he was waking me all through the night to go out. Like every 2 hours. After a couple nights, I took him in to the vet and they tested his stool and said he had a bacterial infection (I forget what it was called) so they give him another antibiotic and tell me he can go back to eating his dry food as his mouth was healed and he could manage even though he's had 11 teeth removed in total. He said we'd notice an almost immediate recovery with the meds. And he was right. By the next day he was much better. He slept through that night. The next day he was almost 100% in the BM department. But then that night he was back to not sleeping.
Now he is 11.5 and for the first 10.5 years he slept in laundry room or family room as he was gated from coming upstairs to where the bedrooms were. Then, a year ago, we moved and got a place with a first floor master. So DH, the very first night in the new house, went to bed and the dog followed so DH put him up on the bed and let him sleep with us. He has been doing that since last May. He cannot jump up on the really high bed and would rarely jump down from it. When DH would get up early for work, he'd just take over his spot and sleep in with me and would let me put him down from the bed at like 7-8am. We always take him out for his last potty break at like 9-10pm. Then go to bed (well, he and DH would and I stay up later).
So, after he seemed better from the diarrhea for a couple days, he started waking all through the night and would jump off the bed and wander through the house. He'd get a drink, jump on and then off the sofa, go in our bathroom, climb under our bed and scoot around, scratch at our back porch door, scratch on the side of the bed to be put back up on it where he'd then walk all around or scratch himself or lick himself and then jump back down off the bed again. I was thinking maybe he was having some dementia or he got his days and nights mixed up somehow (the sleepless diarrhea nights were only like 3 or 4 nights, so I don't think that would be long enough to mess him up. Then I wondered if the 9 nights in the kennel messed him up). After about 5 nights of this or more, he started having a bad itch on his bottom where he was scooting and licking frantically.
After a couple days of this, I checked his bottom out and see 2 bumps (look like bug bites) under his tail and above his you-know. Side by side bumps. I call vet on a Thursday but they can't get us in until Tuesday. So he continues going nuts over the itchy bottom and not sleeping. But instead of just wandering the house, he's dragging his bottom all around and licking it and whatnot. I give him Benedryl and it mildly helps. When we go to vet they see the area but it's now two little scabs and they aren't concerned about it. They express his glands and it's no issue there. They give me ointment to put on the area.
So his bottom seems to clear up and he stops dragging and licking it for a couple days. Then he start frantically chewing on an area in his inside thigh area and makes it bald. It has some bumps too. So I put the ointment there too and keep up with the Benedryl. He calms down on that area but then moves over to the other inner thigh area. So I add that to the ointment list. All the bumps seem to get better with like 3-4 days on ointment. But he still, this whole time, is waking all through the night and getting off the bed...usually around 12am. He'll sleep on the floor by the bed for a coupe hours and then get up and walk around and settle in again. Then around 3-4 am he gets up and scratches on the bed to get back up. We put him up and he lays down briefly and then jumps off the bed again. At 5am he's scratching the bed and walking around, ready to be up for the day.
His bumps seemed healed. I stopped applying to the butt area first while the thigh ones were healing. I stopped the Benedryl in case that was, for some reason, making him sleepless at night. Nope. Still sleepless. And now the bottom bumps are back. He also is now short tempered and nippy when I go to apply the ointment and even sometimes when we pick him up.
We walk him a bunch and let him sit on balcony to watch the neighborhood in the fresh air. Hoping that would make him tired at night. But nope.
**he is on flee and tick meds and does not have flees or any signs of mites or anything like that.