Cooper update: he does seem to be getting a little better every day. I took advantage of warmer weather on Friday and Saturday to test him on short walks. He did pretty well on Friday (a little less than a mile); we had to take a slightly longer route Saturday, and he started doing this thing where he would jog ahead a few feet, then drop back to just in front of me, etc. He's a little wobbly on walks - he walks just fine, but if you're watching closely, you can see that his feet are not quite landing firmly when he puts them down. He's fallen once trying to run up the two stairs to the deck. He's fine when he takes it easy.
The banana-stuffing pill trick has worked for the most part, although he also sometimes is rejecting that, so I still have to shove peanut butter into his mouth occasionally. I'm learning tricks, like priming him with a few cheerios before switching to the banana, to sort of get the juices flowing.
He's definitely still queasy most of the time. Lots of chops-licking. He will eat a greater portion of food at a time than he had been (wet dog food, cottage cheese, etc), but there's nothing he'll just keep eating until it's gone. I did get him to eat a fair amount of a pancake in small pieces - who doesn't like pancakes?
Fingers crossed that we'll get test results today and find out something conclusive about whether it's Lepto. He's just finished fourteen days of amoxicillin. Lepto would also require doxycycline. This is pretty opaque, but I gather Cooper hasn't even had the worst of possible symptoms for Lepto:
https://www.merckvetmanual.com/generalized-conditions/leptospirosis/leptospirosis-in-dogs
Last night freaked me out a bit. I heard Cooper get up and go outside. It had gotten very cold, and I didn't want him spending too much time out there. I saw him eating vomit, though I'm not sure how old it was. I'm thinking it must have been pretty recent, because then Loki got outside and wanted to eat it. Sigh. Now I wonder how many times Cooper has barfed without me knowing, and possibly losing the benefits of the amoxicillin. He was also shivering like crazy - of course he was, being sick and with so little body fat.
HOWEVER - the really good news is that, subjectively, he seems to be a little less skinny. Still quite skinny, but it feels like there's something between his ribs and his fur, you know? And his waist doesn't look quite so narrow. He's lost a ton of muscle, and I hope he can build that up again. That's assuming he doesn't take a turn for the worse in the near term, of course. It doesn't seem to me that he's eating enough, but I guess being extremely lethargic allows him to get by on fewer calories.
I am also really concerned about our planned visit to family over Christmas. Any other year, I would simply explain that I can't make it - but it's my dad's 80th, and my mom has been clear for a couple of years now that it is important. And maybe I still wouldn't go, but my brother will be in town from out of the country, and he recently got a diagnosis that is ... not good, and we don't know how much longer he'll be able to travel. I have to go. But I can't go if it would mean Cooper would likely die because of, or during, my absence. It's causing me an enormous amount of stress, and I'm not sure how to arrange for care with so many variables. Will he need someone to force feed him a Pepsid two hours before breakfast? Most people's schedules just won't allow that.
I've also been queasy for a couple of weeks now. Could be stress. If Cooper gets a positive diagnosis, maybe I'll inquire with my own vet, er, doc, about a test.
