Lymes disease

She was diagnosed in 2019, she lived until labor day weekend of 2021. She had a great year and a half after the diagnosis,  she hunted and was pain free until it caught up with her again.  Lake Geneva Animal hospital was who suggested the herb. After originally getting it from them I found it on line for quite a bit less.

How recent was that Pool?  Just wondering if the herb is a recent discovery, or just wasn't well known when my Golden had it.

My golden also had Lymes,  it would read positive after she went on doxy. The vet monitored her numbers and as long as they stayed low it was ok. Oddly that's what got me to ask my rheumatologist if I had it , I tested positive we figured I had it almost a year. Nasty stuff. 
Or golden also got that tumor.  She went from ok one day to just terrible.  We took her in and the vet gave us a Chinese herb to try, it stopped the bleeding and shrunk the tumor.  Within three days she was a new dog. We got the pleasure of her for another year and a half. She was 10 when diagnosed.  Yunnan Baiyao was the name of the herb. 

good advice @PimplySwede

Hemangiosarcoma killed our Golden at 9.5 years old. Unfortunately we didn't see any noticeable symptoms until it was too late. The tumor burst and that was it. Really nasty disease that kills a lot of Golden's. Probably other dogs too.

Musky my dog has tested positive for lymes exposure and shows no symptoms so vet says thats kinda common.  no worries unless they show symptoms.  So i do have the vet give dog a annual Lymes vaccine every spring.

Yes, Migr8or is spot on, but I have some info to add.

Other illnesses can disguise themself as Lyme disease.  My dog had a couple bouts of Lyme, good/quick recoveries with the Doxy.  Same onset - lethargy, pain, some swelling (I assumed in the leg she had the tick).

As she got older (5 years, which is getting old for a Golden Retriever), we were seeing the Lyme symptoms on occasion, becoming more frequent.  Pour on the Doxy and she would recover.

Unfortunately, we found out the hard way that her recurring episodes were actually Hemangiosarcoma, cancer on her spleen.  The tumor would grow and burst, causing the lethargy and pain, the Doxy would help her recover, then the tumor would grow again.

So, watch for Lyme disease (the lesser of evils), but don't forget about other diseases that it could be.  Get your dog on the Doxy right away, and go see a vet to confirm.

I use a Sorresto Collar for the exact reason the Migr8r mentioned, if the tick is biting the dog there's a chance it while pass on the disease.  Sorresto and Frontline Plus work without the tick having to bite the dog.  During hunting season I could never get Frontline to last more than a couple of weeks so that's why I switched to the collar it normally last 6 months or so.  I know there was some bad press about sorresto's making dogs sick but I've always gotten mine from the vet and have never had issue.  I think a lot of the bad collars were from folks purchasing on-line and the collars may or may not have been authentic.

A couple other important things I need to add-

Regardless if your dog is on tick preventative or not, they absolutely CAN get a tick borne disease. The preventative only kills the tick after it bites. It had been thought that it takes a tick biting for 24 hours for a tick borne disease to transmit. That has been proven false and transmission is actually virtually immediate. So if your dog shows symptoms of a tick borne disease and you think that it isn’t possible because you use a preventative, you would be wrong. My dogs have all been on an effective preventative and all of them have had some sort of tick disease. 

The other thing is if your dog gets the lymes vaccine, it isn’t 100% effective and doesn’t prevent the other tick borne diseases. 

So again, if your dog shows sudden symptoms with lethargy being the main one, get them on doxy immediately. And unless you know there’s a possibility of something else being wrong with your dog, running random tests outside of possible tick diseases or X-rays is probably a total waste of money. 

@migr8r has it right. Its all about getting a vet who knows tick borne diseases. Doxy is the key, Lots of good stuff in this thread.

I am pretty well versed in dogs and tick disease just from experience. Dogs that do test positive but don’t have symptoms have it but it’s basically dormant. If I can tell you one thing it is this-

IF ever your dog goes from being completely normal to completely lethargic seemingly instantly like they seem injured but no obvious injury occurred, it’s most likely a tick disease. My dogs have it. One almost never gets symptoms, the other will have a flare up every year or so. 

What I do is keep a supply of doxycycline on hand, all the time. The instant that I see one of my dogs go from 100% normal to being totally lethargic and seemingly in pain, I give them doxy. Within hours, I will see improvement. I keep them on it for 10 days at that point. There’s no other treatment and if you detect and treat it immediately, there is zero reason to even go to a vet.

Now, if your dog does have symptoms and you do go to a vet, absolutely no matter what the vet says and no matter how many tests they want to run, get them on doxy immediately. If it is a tick disease, you will seriously notice improvement within a few hours. If they aren’t improving within 12 hours, then it is something else. But giving doxy immediately is absolutely the best thing you can do for your dog when those symptoms arise. A lot of vets aren’t well versed in tick diseases and will want to run all sorts of tests just because they can and know people will generally pay for them. But seriously, demand doxy or find a new vet that will. And always keep some on hand for future use.

Just an example, I take one of my dogs to work with me virtually everyday. He just chills in my truck while I’m working. When I get back in my truck to leave, he goes nuts. One day, I got done working, he went nuts like he always does. Got home 20 minutes later, I let him out of the truck and he just sat down and looked at me like he was in pain and couldn’t move. I thought initially that he had injured himself somehow but felt all over and didn’t detect any injury or him wincing from pain at all. I knew it was a flare up and gave him a doxy. Within 2 hours he was noticeably better and by the next morning, he was 100%. I then kept him on it for 10 days. Happens once or twice a year. I have a particularly good vet who knows tick diseases and gives me an ample supply of doxy. Doxy is very inexpensive as well. 

My dog tested positive for anaplasmosis last fall but didn't have any symptoms.  My vet said she may never show symptoms but it probably wouldn't hurt anything to give her a cycle of antibiotics so that's what we did.  I think the same line of thinking could apply here.

Yeah could be. I mean we don't even have a vaccine for humans, so I have to imagine the dog vaccine probably helps keep it at bay to some degree?

Thanks for the info.

I forgot to add my dog does get the vaccine, so may be it helps.

Not a doctor
Not a veterinarian

But will tell you of real life experience I have had, involving both a human and a dog. The first two paragraphs here are about my human brother.

My brother was bit by an infected black legged (deer) tick many years ago, and due to the way he was living his life at the time, any symptoms that might have indicated Lyme disease went undetected for close to a year.

When symptoms showed up, it nearly killed him  (a rare late infection symptom called Lyme carditis in humans) and he was in the hospital for several weeks to recover. Today, probably fifteen or so years later, he is largely okay but still has some lingering strange symptoms from time to time.

Okay now on to dogs, I felt the human part was important for context.

I have also had a close relative who had a ten year old chocolate lab that was diagnosed with lyme in the same fashion as your dog. They were told the same thing for the next two or three years as that dog lived on. That dog has since passed on, but trust me, it was from old age, not Lyme. But their vet told them the same thing, that the dog would be fine etc...and largely, it was.

However, we vaccinate and treat our dogs for Lyme each and every spring, and also pull uncountable amounts of dog ticks(commonly referred to as wood ticks) and Eastern Black Legged ticks (commonly referred to as Deer ticks) off both our dogs relentlessly each spring.

I feel treating our dogs with frontline/your-favorite-tick-treatment has worked okay for us, and we do like to get the lyme vaccine for them every year. So, I do think prevention is step one, but depending on where you live, its not always obvious or cost effective. We knowingly travel to deep Northwestern Wisconsin multiple times a year where these assholes (infected ticks) live, feed and breed. So for us, it make sense to vaccinate and treat our dogs.

If you say to your vet "well, I don't like this constant positive lyme diagnosis, and I would like to take pro active action" and they say " well there is nothing we can do" then I would say, call around, and find a vet who wants to take pro active action for you. Or at a minimun, this gives you multiple opinions from qualified vets.

I hope this helps, feel free to PM.