Our Maltese has Pancreatitis and Colitis both of which are stable at the moment. We now have the problem that she won't drink. Iam letting her have a couple of spoonfuls of tea before each meal otherwise she won't eat (Hills canine I/D). I am worried that by giving her tea i will make her ill again and she desperatly needs to put weight back on. Thankyou for any help you may give.

You need to get her some Lectade from the vets.

Thanks we have tried that and the only way we can get that down is to syringe her with it. We were maybe hoping we could get her to drink from a bowl. Thanks anyway.

Have you tried giving her live yogurt you can put some water with it to make it into a drink. she will love it and it's good for her it must be live natural yogurt.

Thanks we are going back to the vet tomorrow, so will give this a try if we have no luck with her drinking between now and then. At the moment we are desparate and just want her to pull through but if we don't have a breakthrough soon we might have to let her go. She seems okish but is not eating and refusing to drink, but is still keen to go into the garden and is the first to make it up onto the bed at night.

If she likes tea, you have no reason to think that it irritates her colitis, and it's the only way to get fluids into her I'd let her have it - as long as my vet agreed. Be careful with too much milk in the tea though, as she may be intolerant to lactose. Why not check with your vet and if (s)he says OK, then increase the amount she gets gradually just to make sure it isn't starting things off again?

Thanks unfortunatly Pippie was admitted to the vets last night as she was becoming dehydrared and was refusing all food and water. We are waiting to hear how she is this morning. Fingers and toes crossed.

Oh please let us know how she is later on, i am sure she will be okay now; thinking of you both xx

how is pippie doing?

Have been to visit Pippi at the vets and all being well she will be coming home tonight. She is still on a drip but is eating by herself which is a good sign. They are hoping to take the drip out and see if she will drink unaided. Fingers crossed that my little 2kg baby can come home and be nursed.

Good news Pippi is home, and although not completly better is happy to be home and we are too. Back to the vets tomorrow if she still doesn't drink.

Glad she is home and hope she gets back to normal very soon.

Cordelia

I know how this feels, i just went through it with my Cinnamon and she still doesnt really want to drink but she'll drink if I spoon water to her but she wont drink out of her bowl, im not quite sure what to do, sigh, but she's better than she was before.  I really hope that your dog gets better and i'll be watching the boards to find out if she does!

Thanks for your reply and good wishes, how is your dog doing,what breed is she? Pippi is a Maltese. She is still not drinking not even from a spoon but will take a little from our fingers all very strange but she is eating so i am mixing water into her feed and she appears ok. What a worry though arn't they, worse than children. Take care love to Cinnamon.

Cinnamon is a Pitbull, she's a lot better now, turns out that she just had worms and we now have it taken care of, she put us through quite a scare though.

when our dog was dehydrated we had the same problem, she had had a fit and the vet said to make sure she drinks a lot.

Obviously putting a bowl of water infront of her did nothing, so we started off giving her some milk, which she loved and then started to water down the milk more and more, so she was basically just drinking water but because she could still taste the milk she thought it was somthing special and drank it.

I have no idea if that would affect colitis though as i said my dog had a fit and it was a brilliant way of making her drink

Hi just regarding the colitis. Our rehomed Bedlington suffered from this and last week I placed a message on the forum entitled "Colitis" and was kindly advised to try Naturediet Lite. This seems to have completely resolved the situation that had been ongoing since we had her from January despite having had injections, tablets etc. She was put on prescription food - Waltham Sensitivity Chicken and Rice which I believe may be similar to Hills I/D, and was only available from the vet. The vet told us to continue with this but I am glad we changed last week as there was remarkable improvement after just  day 1 and by day 2 the colitis had fully gone.

Naturediet is a wet food and has a large misture content and so this might be helpful to your situation also. There is a website www.naturediet.co.uk and we bought ours from Pets at Home, about 69p a pack. Our Bedlington really really loves it too. She can't wait for us to get it ready and she keeps looking for more. She even tried to raid the cupboard where we keep it on Friday!

Hope this is helpful and everything works out ok.