Info on thyroid, addison's, or cushings disease wanted

As the title says if any one has any information or experience with any of the above and would be willing to share I would be grateful to read it.

Why I'm asking is our vet is thinking ruby may have one of these or something else

A bit of history for you -
- ruby will be 4 yrs old in April and weighs 46.4kg she is over weight and we have had her on a diet since november.
Previous to going on the diet she was fed on wainrights dry food but as she was over weight and her coat and skin wasn't great on it we decided to switch her over to James wellbeloved dry, like I have said since November she has been on a diet, we was giving her around 300g of dry food a day along with treats, we stopped the treats completely and just stuck to the 300g's of dry food, we went back to the vets fortnightly for weigh in's, about 7 weeks ago after loosing no weight we decided along with the vet to put her onto hills r/d food to see if she would loose any weight on this.

Along with the food we no she needs the exercise to go with it but we have a problem in getting her to go out for walks she can only manage about 15 mins walk before she is tired and 95% of the time we are having to pull her along to get her to walk. On Friday my mum walked her to the vets for her appointment it's a mile walk and it took them 30mins to walk it (the walk was all flat or downhill at a slow pace as ruby doesn't walk quick) I drove them home and on getting in the house ruby flopped down in the hallway and slept for around 2 hours she then had her tea, got in her bed and didn't move again until the following morning not even to go out in the garden to toilet.

So this is where we are up to now, she is on just over 300g of r/d food a day no treats, (cant remember exact amount of the top of my head as we weighed it out in bags so each day she gets one of the bags split in to 4 meals but its based on a 35kg dogs needs) she is getting at least 2 20 min walks a day, more walks if she will go but she will refuse to walk and we have tried to pull her along but it doesn't make her walk, and she has still lost no weight even with being on the prescription diet food.

The vet is in agreement that she is over weight but not that much that she should have so little energy and reluctance to walk, she is also now looking around for food all the time which she didn't do before, she has also had a course of Rimadal incase it was pain causing her to not walk, and a basic panel of blood test which came back all fine, the vet is now thinking that it could be one of the 3 problems in the title, so we are keeping a diary of everything she has and does for the next week and then were going back to see our vet to discuss what steps to take next.

Any advice will be gratefully accepted.

Sorry for the length and thanks for reading if you got this far.

Sorry Ruby is having these problems. I don't have any experience of the conditions you mention but I am sure someone will be along soon to give you the benefit of their experience. Meantime, good luck with Ruby's weight loss and hope the problem is diagnosed soon so that Ruby will feel better.

Why hasn't your vet tested this dog for Throid before now? Reluctance to exercise is one of the classic signs for thyroid disease. She sounds almost depressed, another common sign in a thyroid dog. Does she "look" miserable like a "hang dog" look/expression? This is also a sign. Feeling cold is a symptom - there are other of course

Im afraid I would be back at the VeTs door demanding in the first instance they do a full blood profile including TSH, T3 & T4 thyroid testing. don't let them fob you off with the thyroid blood test they can do overnight in their surgery, it's half the price however not very accurate. A vet put us off for months by doing the in-house thyroid treatment. I was told to cut down food, exercise more etc. eventually I got angry and told them in no uncertain terms they had to do something.

It takes approx 10 days for the results to come back and for our poor dog it showed she was most definitely hypothyroid. The difference when she started on treatment was amazing. For the first time in many months, within a few days of treatment, she was playing and taking an interest in what was going on round her

The three conditions can mimic each other so don't be surprised if they want to test for them all, our dog was tested for Cushings which thankfully was negative.

Please to back to your vet and insist they test this girl for Hypothyroidism x

You need to do a full panel blood test. My friends dog had a problem with his thyroid, he came back clear on the first blood test but my friend insisted on a full panel which confirmed it was indeed his thyroid.

One of the symptoms he had was a change in temperament and coat.

I def go back and tell them the tests you want

TSH
T4
FT4

my boy looks a shining example of health and vitality bar feeling the cold (his ears were cold and his teeth chattered on days where i could go outside in just a t shirt) i had him tested and the vets said 'hes fine hes within range' where he was actually at the low end of the range and when i had him retested 3 months later he was 'borderline' to them so retested another 3 months later and he was well below the range so went on to meds which improved his 'chills'. Actually waiting for his latests bloods today which i think will show his levels will have dropped judging by recent 'chills' so anticipating an increase in meds.

His mums owner had a male who was exactly as you describe your Rott and he turned out to be hypo after she pushed the vet to test.

Thank you

Thanks I will explain below why the tests haven't been done yet.

We are back to the vets this week where we are going to discuss what we do next

Thanks everyone for your stories.

To try and give a bit more info, the vet hasnt ignored that it could be thyroid and did say this before we tried the prescription diet food, but has with our agreement tried the diet food first as ruby is quite a character so we wanted to be sure it wasn't just her being lazy/stubborn before spending x amount of money on test she doesn't need as she's just stubborn.
By stubborn I mean when we go out for walks we can go left or right out of the drive to 2 different place's to walk, if we turn left and ruby doesn't want to go that way she will plant herself and no amount of coaching pulling bribing will get her to go that way, turn around and go the other way and she will willingly walk that way although at a snails pace, then on her next walk she might decide she wants to go the other way instead that time.
If there's more than one person in the house she won't go out for a walk unless everyone goes and there's no tricking her and doubling back when out as she knows and will refuse to go any further
amongst her other quirks so this is why we have tried the diet route before any other expensive test are carried out.
I'm guessing to test for thyroid it's going to be blood test and then if it is that what's the treatment, tablets injections??

Heres a couple of pics from tonight

Out on her walk (about 15 mins long)

How she's been since getting home

Hi,
We are going through exactly the same at the moment with Meg,we like you were advised to do the diet etc first before testing.

Meg is booked in on Wednesday to have a full thyroid panel done and then I will take it from there,our vet has told us the results should be back within 5 days,she has symptoms of thyroid but also cushing's.

Thyroid is done by blood testing and I believe it's easily sorted with medication in the form of tablets....

I hope you get her sorted asap.

Sorry to hear meg is suffering like this too I hope you can get her sorted soon.

It's just tablets, they will start her off on a low dose if she is hypothyroid. Test her bloods every three months while her dose is being sorted out, thereafter once stabilised blood tests are less frequent or when the owner notices changes. All they do is take blood for analysis

She shouldn't be as tired as that poor lass.

I wondered just out of interest..if a dog does have under active thyroid do they put them on the same meds as they give to humans? (Levothyroxine) ..just smaller amounts?

I would suspect it would be one of those drugs the vets would charge a fortune for, which would be identical to the ones people get from chemist for much cheaper? (or free if person has it on prescription)