A good friend of mine has a bearded collie he is 3y in January who has become terrified of going out he gets excited when the lead comes out but as soon as he steps outside the door he wants to go back inside then he shakes he even broke free from his lead a few days ago then ran home.
This has been going on for months.
He is now showing other strange behaviour tendancies growling and showing his teeth when being groomed and very very fussy over his food (always has been a fussy eater) she now feeds barf on advice from her other beardies breeder.
He is very highly strung excitable and nervous to a point he barks a lot (beardies are known barkers but it is excessive)he is from a very reptable breeder and a good line.
They have been to the vets who mainly is concerned about his eating habits as he regularily has an upset stomach and is underweight for a beardie they have had umpteen tests done for this which show no poor results.
My friend is at a complete loss as to what is the problem  with the mood changes and agressive behaviour she needs to find out what is ailing him ....ANY IDEAS??????????????????????

I have suggested that she change her vet as I think he needs further investigations.

~Roni

Has she had a complete thyroid panel done on him?

thanks for replying tohme....no she hasnt I suggested the thyroid after reading many post on it in the past but not really knowing anything about it didntwant to presume.

~roni

this sounds just like what my lab girl was like a few months ago, roni.

i think it was a noise that tiggered her, but her behaviour literally changed within hours. I had her out as normal before i went to work, then by the time i'd come home (at lunch time), she was a wreck when going out of the house.

the only thing i can think that triggered it was the noise from the building work next door were having-even though it'd been going on for 6 weeks prior to his, with no effects on her.

anyhoo, i just found that i had to take it really slow, and if she didn't want to go, i didn't force her.

it took two weeks before she would go out without a fight. Prior to this, she would just freeze at the bottom of the drive, and then try and run back in. Quite often we just used to sit on the doorstep watching the world go by, until she 'felt ready' to walk a bit further.

i found that a time and encouragement was all that was needed-a whole lot of it.

she was (and still is) skittish about thunder, and just as she was getting back to normal, we got caught in a thunder storm. Now whenever it rains heavily, she won't set foot beyond the front lawn-but thats fine with me.

i now take her to places with plenty of noise (one of our favourite haunts is under a flightpath!), and she's not phased by most noises now-bar thunder and fireworks!

i did have the vet rule out anything physical etc (she'd previously has cystitis), and he did say he thought it was behavioural-looks like it was.

you could always recommend a second opinion froma vet, and maybe ask for a referral for a behaviourist?

nicola

Hi Roni

I am sure the vet is doing everything possible, but tell your friend to keep going back if there is no improvement.  Hopefully he is insured and covered for ongoing illness.  This may or may not be psychological.

Like many others I am only speaking from personal experience and it could be so many things.  Our boy Beardie before these suddenly developed an aversion to going for walks, he hadn't been scared or anything he just wanted to come back as soon as he had gone out.  If I touched a certain area on his back he would squeal so we took him for all the tests, hips, back etc. nothing was amiss.  Then he went of his food and started to be sick. 

He had cancer of the spleen and when he was opened up the cancer had spread.  When the vet palpated the abdomen nothing could be felt that was out of the ordinary and so no one suspected.  His symptoms were so odd it was hard to pinpoint what was going on.

I am not suggesting for one minute that it could be cancer but please get your friend to keep taking him back to the vet if it doesn't improve and get her to keep a diary of everything that has changed about him.

Hi, join cimda, you`ll get a lot of help there, they deal specifically with AI diseases & also its owned by beardie breeder (but all breeds welcome) :)
Good luck hope you find out :)

[link]CIMDAsupport-subscribe@yahoogroups.com[/link]
http://www.affieloverbreedclubs.co.uk/immune_disease1.htm

Is there any possibility at all of heavy metal poisoning? I once had a young bitch that began to behave like this (except the aggression) out of the blue, and it turned out to be chromium poisoning. You can get chromium from all sorts of things ranging from black metalled fires to fence post preservative. In my bitches' case the diagnosis was made by a visiting biochemist friend. The vet was dubious but her level turned out to be high enough to kill a cow.