[gordner]

My rescue mix has cushings, we diagnosed about 5 years ago. She is atypical, and getting to that diagnosis was painfully expensive, however once we knew what was going on we have seen marked improvement on vetoryl. One thing I have learned in the process is that every dog presents uniquely, the biggest hurdle we faced was preconceptions as to what dogs can get it and what treatment means for them. My guy is 80 pounds, and currently takes a vetoryl dose more appropriate for a 10 pound dog, but it works for her. We paid for a lot of Stim tests to get that dose figured, initially she was on 30mg twice a day and time and testing brought her to 5 mg twice a day. Be your own advocate and do some reading, get the treatment you want. After three years on vetoryl, our vets decided that the dose was so low we should stop the treatment as she may have been one of the rare pups that actually gets cured. We took her off for a month and the subsequent backslide in her condition was so severe we are still fighting to get her back in shape 2 years late. Addisons disease is the other side of Cushings, the result of over treating cushings. Addisons can be deadly, so vets are very leery of treating cushings too far and inducing addisons. Cushings is a quality of life affecting disease, addisons is a life ending disease, so I understand the reticence, however for us the downslide in quality of life suffering from Cushings made me feel it was worth risking addisons to get her back to enjoying life. A long life panting on the floor is no kind of life in my opinion.

Getting the dosage right is the key, unfortunately not a cheap process as each stim test for us runs almost 1K. But once she was at the right level, I would say now it has almost no effect on her day to day, other than she is an over-drinker.