Please Pray for Our Dog

For the past month our dog has been having various problems. First she seemed to be in pain when she got up or down and we thought it might be arthritis; a trip to the vet and x-rays confirmed that might be the case. The vet gave her some medicine for it and she seemed to get better. Then, a few weeks later a new problem emerged: She started drinking like there's no tomorrow, as if she can't drink enough to satisfy her thirst. Drinking so much also causes her to need to go a lot more; we've had several "accidents" in the living room and she can't make it through the night so we take turns getting up to take her out each night, which means we haven't had a full night's sleep for a while now. We thought maybe it was a kidney infection but another trip to the vet with blood tests and a urinalysis ruled that out. The vet now thinks it might be a thyroid issue (hypothyroidism) so now she's on medicine for that. (Ironically, our cat has hyperthyroidism and has been on medicine for that for several years. The cat's medicine seems to keep her condition under control; we're hoping this medicine for the dog will do the same—if hypothyroidism is indeed the cause of her problems.)

The biggest problem is she hasn't been eating regularly through all of this, as many animals (and humans) don't when they don't feel well. At first I was able to coax her to eat by putting some chicken in her dish with her regular food and she would eat some food with the chicken. Over the past few days, though, even that hasn't worked, and no matter what we put in her dish (chicken, steak, bacon, beef jerky—all her favorites) she just sniffs it and walks away. She'll eat the chicken, steak, etc. if we give it to her directly out of our hand but she won't eat her dog food even that way.

I know she's getting weaker now and doesn't have very much energy (except to still bother the cat occasionally). My husband tells me not to worry too much yet, that we'll call the vet again and that she'll eat when she gets hungry enough. But the dog and cat are my "babies" and I get very upset when either of them is sick or won't eat so this is definitely affecting me now. Please pray that our dog will start eating again and her thirst will go back to normal; if it is hypothyroidism that the medicine she's on now will help and not make things worse, or if it's not that the vet will be able to determine the cause and find a treatment plan that works.

We miss our playful dog. Thank you for your prayers.