EPI – (Exocrine Pancreatic Insufficiency)
EPI was believed to be an illness that solely affected German Shepherd Breeds. Unfortunately this is no longer the case.
My 2 year old Cavalier King Charles Spaniel has recently been diagnosed with this horrible illness.
I’ll give you a short story into the background of my dog as the cause for this is slightly different from the normal. The two main causes of EPI are Idiopathic pancreatic acinar atrophy (PAA) and Chronic Pancreatitis. She initially had none of these.
When we think of pancreatitis we instantly think of an unhealthy diet full of high fat treats. My dogs are all raw fed and occasionally get totally natural dog treats (like dehydrated tripe, liver etc.). She was never overweight – in fact she was slightly underweight. At 6 months old she contracted the campylobacter stomach bug and was very sick with this. She was given a course of antibiotics. Initially she recovered however the bug kept coming back time after time with longer and longer courses of antibiotics.
In October 2018 she was very, very ill and was admitted into the Glasgow Vet School with gastric haemorrhagia. She was so ill we were told to expect it that she wouldn’t last the night. As you can imagine we were distraught. They took bloods and did x-rays thinking she had contracted the parvo virus. Thankfully she had not contracted parvo BUT the campylobacter bug was back again and started her on treatment for this again. This is where here problems really started and we think that campylobacter bug and all the medications she had been on had upset the natural balance of her gut and she was in fact having a pancreatic attack.
From then on in she would go off her food at least once or twice a week; if she wasn’t off her food she had diarrhoea or vomiting. She consistently lost weight, we get our dogs weighed monthly and she went from a healthy 6.5kg puppy to a dangerously thin 5kg in the space of 6 months. We tried everything to get her to eat but her stomach had started gurgling (we initially thought this was because of hunger) and we learned pretty quickly if she waked up with her stomach making noises that it was going to be a very bad day for her and she wouldn’t eat.
We were desperate she was wasting away before our eyes. Our vet had treated her for all the usual things, stomach upset, infection etc. but absolutely nothing worked. In July 2019 we couldn’t even get her to eat a tablespoon of food a day and were frantic. We took her back to our vets who took a barrage of blood tests. It came back she had pancreatitis. Finally we had a reason for her symptoms and instantly changed her onto low fat chicken and turkey meals. The vet gave her ranitidine and what a difference she went from eating only a tablespoon of food a day to eating 1kg of food in 2 days. Eureka we thought she is cured and she is going to put on so much weight at her next weigh in. Alas no for all that she was eating vast amounts of food she had put on absolutely no weight.
Obviously when you find out your pet has an illness you go straight onto google to see what you can do to help alleviate the symptoms. I had read about EPI in dogs but it was mainly German Shepherds that had this genetic problem hard wired into them. However all the symptoms of EPI in German Shepherds were exactly the same as my Cavalier. I approached my vet and they said clinically she doesn’t have the classic symptoms of EPI but as she is eating and not putting on weight she may well have it. EPI means the stomach does not produce the enzymes in the dogs pancreas to digest and get the nutrients from food so no matter how much she would eat she got absolutely no nutritional value from her food and in theory if left untreated she would die from malnutrition.
The vet prescribed enzyme capsules that we need to mix thoroughly through her meals. We were sceptical as we had tried so many different so called cures for her we really didn’t expect this to work.
She went back for her 4 weekly weigh in and she had put on 500g – it doesn’t sound a lot but in a tiny dog like mine that was 10% of her body weight in 4 weeks. We were over the moon and to date she is now up to 6kg.
She will never be cured and at such a young age to have this lifelong condition we understand that she will have many times were she isn’t going to be well but with the fantastic tools you can now find when on line we at least have action plans we can take when she does get ill.
EPI is an incredibly difficult disease to diagnose – purely because it can mask itself as so many other diseases. However if your dog is losing weight although eating normally, has vomiting and diarrhoea, stomach making gurgling noises ask your vet to check this out for pancreatitis or EPI.