one of my families has a 10 year old female that the vet has diagnosed with IMHA.
I have never heard of this in labs and was wondering if anyone else can share treatments that may help her.

I am so sorry to hear this. Sadly, I've had a dog succumb to IMHA. As far as I'm aware, the standard treatment involves blood transfusions and steriods, but I fear the treatments buy time only- and sometimes not even good time. If you'd like to talk more about it, I've provided my email. Again, I'm so very sorry. I really do wish your family and their girl success with the treatments.

Darcy

One of my families let me know last week that they had their 10 year old euthanized the day before. Their girl had been on meds (steroids and ?) but they didn't help and she grew too weak to eat, drink, or stand, so they let her go.
I am sorry for your girl and her people, too.

I know of 3 labs that developed IMHA after being infected with Lyme disease. Unfortunately the Lyme was diagnosed and treated too late.

Even though we did a trillion tests I don't remember anyone saying it was any special name except she had anemia and after bone marrow test found there were no red blood cells being generated. This was 5 years ago. She was pregnant at the time so we had do transfusions using blood from her matched full sister. This did not bring up the hemocrit but we did have her spayed and she lost her litter. She was abuot halfway through her pregnancy. Jean Dodds was contacted and got the blood results from my vet and she recommended Synthroid and vitamin B 12. She did real well and the Vets could not believe she lived so long after. Last week she started looking really down and lost her appetite. We fed her everything, but we finally did her a favor. We had bred her back to back and I firmly believe that it was not a good thing and will never do that again. I hope your girl comes along as well as mine did. We did not give steriods. Your vet may want to call Jean Dodds and go over her lab tests. My bitch took a mile long walk every and got the newspaper except for the last few weeks. She did, however, since she first became ill, had loose stools which was probably caused by her condition. I guess Anemia is anemia. We were too worried to ask what it was called, but I will look up her records when she had her catscan and ultrasound. The last few weeks we did give her mostly liver and it did help. It was the only thing she would eat in the final days. ellie We had blood work done on her regularly and if you want to see her results, I can email them to you.

I had a JRT that had it,and he was doing very well on Cyclosporine, Imuran(which was the least expensive of the medications) as well as steroids, prednisone.It took a while for him to respond but then he steadily got better and his lab values improved greatly.

He was actually back to near normal and was nearing the end of his steroid taper when he had a complication , basically a gastric irritation, even though he was on PEpcid to prevent it,(we think he chewed a bone and swallowed a peice that irritated his stomach but in his weakened state it made it worse, that he ended up hemorrhaging and we had to put him to sleep.It was heartbreaking

We have a girl who lived through it when she was 4; she is now 14. The treatment involved very high doses of prednisone. It was very rough. I can't imagine an older dog living through it. I personally don't think I would put an old dog through it. Sorry.

Mike

To those of you who have dealt with this, would you mind listing the symptoms your dog experienced when you have time? Thanks!

It just happened that my wife was out of town, so Molly slept on the bed with me. She woke me up in the middle of the night because she was shimmering so hard. That morning she was just acting really pewny.

I called my vet and she had me check her gums (circulation); not good. I took in her in and was diagnosed that day.

As it progressed she lost major muscle tone from the high steroid dosage. She couldn't walk more than about 20 feet without being so winded she was gasping for air.

Mike

Dean had been on Metacam injectable long term and he suddenly had very pale gums and was very fatigued, so I brought him in for labwork and that was how we found it.

I just read my last post about symtoms. Molly wans't "shimmering", she was shivering so hard the bed was shaking.

If I don't proofread who knows what I might have said.

Mike

thanks to all for your response, I will pass these treatments to owner to see if they are different from what they are doing.

sounds terrible but I know she is good hands and will get whatever she needs.