Thyroid

Once I've promised to write a post about the thyroid.
After watching a Webinar from Ute Blaschke-Berthold I think it's time now to start my post about this topic.

Due to Lisbeths multiple behaviour problems I was thinking about health issues as well. Checking the thyroid was one of the first ideas I had in mind. Therefore I went to the vet and asked for a full blood analysis including thyroid values. The first time I went there I trusted my vet that he knows what values to check but I was wrong. When I went a little bit deeper into the topic I realised the the values total T4 and TSH (these two ones are the standrad ones) are not enough. Therefore I had to repeat the test but as I know today I still checked to less values but I did a full thyroid profile.
The result was that Lisbeths values are okay a little bit low but totally within the range.

As I have learnt now from Ute B.-B. a correct interpretation of the blood values is almost impossible. They can give you an idea but you have to include other signs a well. I'will continue this post about the thyroid because I think it is an important topic, but I do not want to overload this post with information.
One important fact Ute mentioned in her Webinar is that most of the time behaviour issues are related to training mistakes. So always try to improve your training and asked someone to have a look on your training sessions.
But if you still think there might be something related to the thyroid and the blood values are a little bit low there is one thing you can try. Give your dog canned larynx meat. Larynx meat usually contains the thyroid of the animal and therfore hormones as well. When you feed it raw it contains the carrier hormone T4 but when you buy canned meat the T4 was already deiodised into T3 which is a lot more reactive. You can feed this canned larynx meat for 10-14 days and if you see behaviour changes in your dog its time to talk with your vet about thyroid hormone substitution. But just use this canned larynx meat temporaliy otherwise it can cause problems with the liver.
I've started this larynx diet today. I will take notes about possible behaviour changes and I will post about my observations.
The information about the thyroid will be continued but I will finish my post for today!