Symptomatic Treatment in Dogs: Would I Ever Treat a Symptom?

Symptomatic treatment is not an uncommon approach.

Treating based on symptoms can offer two benefits.

  • sometimes the body just needs a little help to heal itself
  • how your dog responds to treatment might offer helpful insight into finding a diagnosis
  • don’t underestimate the benefit of removing your dog’s immediate pain or discomfort

On the other hand, long-term symptomatic treatment isn’t likely to heal anything if the issue keeps returning. Further, you might be masking the real problem. That prevents proper diagnosis and your dog from getting a treatment that would make them better. Meanwhile, the underlying problem can continue to get worse.

Symptomatic Treatment in Dogs: Would I Ever Treat a Symptom?

To treat or not to treat

The temptation of treating a symptom is high. When your dog gets bad diarrhea, what you want is for it to go away. Now. Sometimes, a therapeutic trial can be part of the process of diagnosing the problem.

For example, when we took Jasmine to a vet with an acute cough, we were presented with two possible diagnoses. One hypothesis was that the cause behind her cough and enlarged lymph nodes was an infection. The other theory the veterinarian offered was cancer.

One of those diagnoses was easy to confirm with a therapeutic trial with antibiotics. The other was scary and would require extensive workup.

It made sense to us to try the antibiotics and see what happens. The antibiotics worked within days. Jasmine’s cough resolved, her lymph nodes shrunk to normal size, and the issue has never returned.

Treating symptoms willy nilly

What is a symptom? A symptom is a manifestation of the dog’s body trying to deal with whatever the problem is. If you interfere with the process, you’re interfering with the body’s attempt to restore order.

Secondly, by suppressing the symptom, you might never figure out what is causing it. And the cause is where the cure lies. So it’s important not only to notice what is happening by asking why it is happening.

On the other hand, it doesn’t make sense to allow a symptom to torture, harm, or even kill your dog while you’re looking for a diagnosis.

Severe diarrhea or severe vomiting, for example, can cause substantial damage or even kill your dog unless you treat it symptomatically, regardless of what the diagnosis might be.

These are important decisions

It would be best if you did not decide on symptomatic treatment without your veterinarian.

My dog has had a diarrhea for a week, can I give them Immodium?

I’ve seen people ask such questions too often. Please don’t do it. See a vet. Get it diagnosed. Get it treated. And then, if your vet deems it necessary to suppress the symptom along with the treatment, that’s a different story.

Yet, this time I armed myself with Immodium to potentially give to my dog.

However, for me, this was a once-in-a-lifetime deal. After Cookie’s violent reaction to sedation, I was very concerned about the repeat of the situation. And because she was to be sedated yet again in a week, I was going to try to make sure that we took all steps we could to prevent this from happening again.

We took several measures for the days before the sedation and the day of the procedure. However, one of the vet’s recommendations came unexpected, “Have loperamide (Immodium ) available if needed.”

In this case, it made sense

Whether the effects Cookie suffered were from stress, the sedation drug(s), or a combination of the two, addressing that in itself under such circumstances was logical, particularly since she would be on her five-hour ride home.

So we made sure we had Immodium on hand.

Not just any ol’ Immodium, though. Some of the products put all kinds of stuff into them. And these days, one even has to watch to make sure there is no xylitol added.

What we needed was straight loperamide by itself and nothing else.

The Immodium I had at home for myself actually seems to contain very little of the loperamide itself and a whole lot of something else altogether (simethicone). So what we needed to get was loperamide only, 2 mg tabs.

If that is something you wouldn’t know, it is another reason not to experiment.

Fortunately, our local pharmacy, however small, has always had any strange thing we came up with needing.

Thankfully, we never needed to use it because Cookie had no ill effects from the sedation.

But if there were a time to treat a symptom directly, this would have been one of them.

Related articles:
Does Your Vet Listen to You? Cookie’s Post-Sedation Complications

Further reading:
Why understanding the difference between Symptomatic Treatment and a Diagnosis is important

Categories: Dog care • Dog health advocacy • Symptoms • Working with Veterinarians

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Jana Rade

I am a graphic designer, dog health advocate, writer, and author. Jasmine, the Rottweiler of my life, was the largest female from her litter. We thought we were getting a healthy dog. Getting a puppy from a backyard breeder was our first mistake. Countless veterinary visits without a diagnosis or useful treatment later, I realized that I had to take Jasmine's health care in my own hands. I learned the hard way that merely seeing a vet is not always enough. There is more to finding a good vet than finding the closest clinic down the street. And, sadly, there is more to advocating for your dog's health than visiting a veterinarian. It should be enough, but it often is not. With Jasmine, it took five years to get a diagnosis. Unfortunately, other problems had snowballed for that in the meantime. Jasmine's health challenges became a crash course in understanding dog health issues and how to go about getting a proper diagnosis and treatment. I had to learn, and I had to learn fast. Helping others through my challenges and experience has become my mission and Jasmine's legacy. I now try to help people how to recognize and understand signs of illness in their dogs, how to work with their veterinarian, and when to seek a second opinion. My goal is to save others the steep curve of having to learn things the hard way as I did. That is the mission behind my blog and behind my writing. That is why I wrote Symptoms to Watch for in Your Dog, which has turned out being an award-winning guide to dog owners. What I'm trying to share encompasses 20 years of experience.

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