So, I'm finally getting somewhere.  The vet is being brilliant - she has no clue about thyroid beyond the basics (as with most of them), so being faced with a dog with fibromyalgia of sorts she's basically letting me get on with and doing whatever I ask!

Remy's body doesn't properly convert T4 to T3 - this is the officially diagnosed bit, diagnosed about 18 months ago.  He responds a little to T3 therapy but not as much as he should.

The other side of the problem is joint pain (I posted about this a little while ago), this is the FM side of things - joint pain caused by poor thyroid hormone usage, which in turn is caused by low levels of key vitamins/minerals.  Same basic process as in some people - throughout this I've been using people as the basis for my theory, in order to identify what needed testing.

The results are in, I couldn't get everything I wanted tested but I got the main ones.  Everything is in range but as we all know, that means nothing by itself!  His zinc is scraping the bottom of the range - really borderline, so I need to start supplementing that.  His B12 is about halfway, but at the time of testing it hadn't dropped as low as it originally did before I started supplementing (he was tested a couple of months after he last had some and was showing symptoms again but nothing like before).  He'll stay on supps for that.  His calcium is low in range too, so I'm thinking a small supp for that but not too much.

His magnesium is fine, vit A was described as 'normal' but there isn't even a range given for it!  So I'm trying to find one atm.

The one odd result is his selenium - it's a little high at 238 (range 80-150, 200 max for a big dog apparently).  The vet's looking into that, just wondered if anyone had any thoughts on what might be causing that?

So now I'm at the supplementing stage at long last, can anyone suggest good ones to look at, especially the zinc?  That's the biggy really, I think that will make a big difference to him (I hope, as he's trialling gabapentin right now to no effect whatsoever so far and we're running out of painkillers to try!).

I would just look at good quality human supplements... 

Also, unless you raw feed, check his food ingredients because sometimes/often food manufacturers add vits and minerals - might explain the selenium?!

A lot of vitamins and minerals have a corresponding balance.  Could the selenium be high because its opposite mineral is low?

Might be worth you dropping an email to Jean Dodds on the selenium.  As I understand it selenium is linked to the thyroid although I don't know why it would be high as everything I have read seems to say that if a dog has a selenium deficiency it will make thyroid hormones rise but haven't seen any mention of high selenium levels.  It does say that selenium is only required in very low doses.  Could his being on thyroid medication cause it to be high?  Just a thought.

My hypothyroid English Setter (who is now 6) has battled with getting his levels right for the last 4 years and it has only been in the last 9 months that I have had some minor success.  Thanks to your advice last year I took him off soloxine and started giving him natural dessicated thyroid and he has been better but still not perfect.  To be honest I have given up trying to achieve perfect he still looks depressed on occasion and walks with stiff legs as if something hurts so I am interested to see your posts as I can see that this could possibly be happening with Obee at some point. 

Wouldn't it be nice to have a specialist vet in this country who actually knows what they are doing and can run the correct blood tests.

Wouldn't it just?  I was musing on that yesterday, it's now 8 years since Remy's thyroid trouble began and every single piece of progress has been made because I have learned about the systems, and I have pushed for testing.  That includes the vets (enocrinologist among them) at the Liverpool referral centre.  This current investigation into the vit/min side is entirely my doing, I basically gave the vet a list and said 'test what you can of these'.  I explained why, and she's leaving me to it, pretty much.  She's investigating possibilities for the selenium but she knows I'll be working on the rest of it.

What annoys me even more is that it's not just him - I have four dogs now who are hypothyroid and just like him, with each of the other three it's been me pushing for tests, me recognising that something is wrong when the vets have dismissed in-range results, me getting the confirmation from Dr Dodds, me pushing for trials of soloxine (which have worked well in two, not got Saffi on it yet).  It would be nice if once, just once, a vet, somewhere, realised what was going and I didn't have to fight for everything all the damned time.  It drives me nuts that I have been able to learn about the systems with no access to scientific journals or a veterinary education, and I've learned the majority of it in the last 2 years, yet in 8, it seems there has been no improvement whatsoever from the vets themselves :-(

But I digress! :-P  Remy has improved a little with his pain since he went back on the B12, so I'm more sure than ever now that I'm on the right track.  He starts his zinc tonight.  It's very likely your boy has some deficiency of some sort, B12 is certainly a possibility - low B12 can trigger hypothyroidism but it works the other way too, as low thyroid affects digestion.

I'll ask Dr D, for some reason I didn't think to even though I emailed her about Saffi last week when I got the results for both of them.  Twit.