Welcome to Lola's Journey

Let me introduce myself my Name is Rachel and I'm starting this blog to chronicle and keep track of the progress of my dog Lola and her journey to health. Lola is a Tea Cup Chihuahua she weighs about 5.5lbs. about 2 months ago Lola was diagnosed with Liver Problems back in May she went in for her annual exam and she had a normal blood work up that they do at the appointments Lola's level were a bit high so the vet wanted me to bring her back in a month later to do another blood test unfortunately the levels had jumped up even higher so the vet wanted to do a bile acid test which is basically where they test the dogs blood after fasting and then feed and test the blood again to see how the bile is processing the food (I'm not a vet I could be describing that procedure wrong, but that's the basic jist) well Lola's levels were still high after that test so they wanted to do an ultrasound. well she had the ultrasound which didn't really indicate anything was abnormal which of course frustrated me then why are her levels so high. one problem with the ultra sound the vet's office didn't tell me to fast Lola and also make sure she had a full bladder which is really another story, but because neither of those things happened the Vet couldn't get a clear view of the liver this procedure cost aprox. $350.00 not exactly a small sum for me so that didn't go well. so the vet wanted to do a second bile acid test to see if the levels had changed they didn't, but were still really high. so it was good that they atleast weren't higher. Lola has been very lucky so far not to exhibit the normal effects of liver failure or just liver problems they can have seizures, be very lethargic, and a few other things which I have to look up again, but I'll post on here what they are just for informational purposes. After Lola's first Bile Acid test the Vet sold me 2 supplements Denosyl and Marin I haven't researched them much yet, but I'll post findings on that as well. After that test I also switched Lola to a new dog food called EVO I heard about it from a myspace friend, but it's more natural then some of the foods out there and supposedly a higher quality which I believe, but I'm still doing research on dog food. pet food in general the manufactured food from the pet food companies I have been doing some research on pet food in this blog I'm going to also post information about pet food. since Lola has been diagnosed with Liver problems I've been doing a lot of research on pet health in general and specifically liver problems. I'll be posting links and letting you know about the books I'm reading on the subject. one link I found was to a liver cleansing Diet (I will post the recipe and the link later don't have it handy at the moment) so today I just started Lola on this diet and plan on keeping her on it for the next 2 months or so and hope that it will have a positive result I'll post updates. so before this post gets to terribly long I'll call it a night I'll post more tomorow on the liver cleansing diet. here's a pic of Lola.