| Advice Needed
Hi there,
I will try to explain everything I can here. Our dog is female and 8 years old. We are pretty sure she is a Austrailian Shepard/Spaniel mix. When healthy she was about 55-60#'s. She started displaying unusual weight gain over the last 15 months. We do regular vet visits, about 2-3 times a year. This past summer she began having issues with peeing in the house and was diagnosed with a UTI with urine samples. At the moment she weighed in at 92#'s and the vet also asked us to switch her diet and obviously restriction of serviing size. We blamed much of the weight gain up to having a toddler in the house that would feed her scraps or she would steal her food. Anyway, a few weeks later she had gotten an ear infection and we went through the treatment process with that. During her check up she had lost some weight was good. For the remainder of the year we kept up with diet and excersise with some success, she is currently down to about 75#'s. During the urine test it revealed she had elevated liver enzymes and we should check it after the first of the year. However, in Decemeber she had a tooth that needed to be extracted. During which time we did another urine test and also discovered yet another ear infection. Everything has been treated with prescribed medication. She then began tons of water drinking, very bad breathing and basically struggles getting up the stairs, remember she is heavy and is not easy to move. Then began peeing all over the house with routines walks every 45 mintues or so. We took her back to the vet last Monday after doing research and suspected Cushigns disease as did the vet. Btw, the ear infection still will not go away. We did 3 days of urine testing to test for Cushings and while waiting for those results it has been diagnosed as diabetic. Today she has deterioted pretty bad and will not eat, and is not willing to come up the stairs. Then this evening we got the call back from the bloodwork stating that she does have cushings as well. We have spent close $2,500 in the last 6 months and the well is has run dry. Now, her quality of life is starting to suffer much more than we had hoped, rather quickly. The treatment of cushings and diabetes is not in the budget and we are not comfortable calling it quits either. There are some other financial issues that are playing into this that I will not bore you all with the details, however it is reality.
It feels better writing this all out and seeing everything we have done for her. However, I do not want to be the one to make a poor decision or feel like we are quitting on our dog.
Would anyone mind sharing their thoughts or experiences? Feel free to ask any other details that I may be leaving out. Thanks for reading this long post and I tried to include all relevant details.
Our family loves Maddie Dogs deeply, especially my 8 year old son and we are trying to do the right thing, but....We are broke. If money were not an issue, I would still feel like we may be keeping her alive for us. | 
