Protein Losing Enteropathy in the Cavalier King Charles

Sadly, the anniversary of our dog Charley’s passing was yesterday, May 2nd, so I thought I would write a post about what it was he succumbed to, Protein Losing Enteropathy.

Charley came to us as a rescue. At the time we wanted to get Ginger a companion, so we decided to adopt. When we first rescued him we were made aware of the condition he was in.  He was used for breeding purposes and was horribly neglected.   He was born and raised at a puppy mill, which is basically a facility in which they breed dogs in the most inhumane way.  The conditions that these poor animals live in are horrendous.  This includes no socialization, unheated and filthy living quarters and poor diet.  The conditions are so unsanitary many of these poor dogs are matted and covered in feces.  According to the Humane Society of the United States, there are an estimated 10,000 licensed and unlicensed puppy mills in the United States, in total selling more than 2,000,000 puppies annually.

We adopted Charley through petfinder.com.  He was close to a year old at the time and was malnourished.  He was extremely thin and his white fur was yellow from laying in his own excrement.  He had a curvature in his spine due to being in a crate his entire time there and had open wounds on his foot pads, they didn’t even have the decency to put him in a crate with padding so the bottom of the crate dug into his paws.  Charley had already been through a lot and in 2014 he was diagnosed with Protein Losing Enteropathy (PLE), which came as a total blow to us.

As the words state, PLE is when dogs start to lose protein from their gastrointestinal tract.  According to PetMD, Protein-losing enteropathy (PLE) is defined as the loss of protein from the intestines due to intestinal disease. Often, this results in a decreased serum albumin concentration.  Because a number of diseases can lead to this disruption such as inflammatory bowel disease, intestinal cancer, gastrointestinal ulceration, etc. PLE is classified as being a syndrome rather than a disease.   It is more common in dogs then in cats and there are certain breed that it affects such as the Soft-Coated Wheaten Terrier, Basenji, Yorkshire Terrier and Norwegian Lundehund.  Some of the symptoms include, occasional bouts of diarrhea or chronic diarrhea, weight loss, lethargy, difficulty breathing and an enlarged abdomen.  If left untreated, PLE can be fatal.

In Charley’s case he was having bouts of diarrhea and vomiting as well.  When his Vet ordered a full blood panel he saw that his serum albumin was dangerously low.  The Vet couldn’t say for sure what was causing Charley’s protein levels to drop but he thought he may have IBD, inflammatory bowel disease.  They decided to put him on a high dose of prednisone.  I can’t remember what it was at the time but it was very high.  He was also placed on a low-fat diet.   We waited a month and had his blood taken again and his protein levels improved.   We had to bring Charley in every month for blood work to check his levels and as they improved the VET started lowering his prednisone dosage.

Prednisone is the most commonly used anti-inflammatory drug for treating IBD, and although cheap and effective this drug has many side effects when used at high doses.  For us it was a double edge sword.   We continued bringing him every month to check his blood work.  This continued for about a year.  Although his levels became stable we started to see the effects of the prednisone.

We will never know what truly caused Charley’s PLE, one can say it was the poor diet and care he received while at the Mill, but we will never know as we opted not to do any more testing, ultrasounds, x-rays etc……….Charley had already been through enough.

Sadly, there is no cure for PLE.  Without going into too much detail, Charley developed Cushing’s syndrome from being on the prednisone.  Soon after that,  an infection developed.  As you may know, you have to wean your dog off prednisone but due to his infection he was abruptly taken off it and put on an antibiotic.  They wanted to do a blood transfusion but there were no guarantees that he would get better.  He fought strongly for a year but his little body could no longer withstand and sadly passed away May 2, 2015.

There is a ton of information on Protein Losing Enteropathy on the Internet.  Doctors don’t seem to know much about it, our vet had only seen 2 other cases.  It’s rare that this affects Cavaliers, but in our case it did.

We have no regrets getting Charley, he brought us so much love and joy during the 7 years that we had him.  We saw him come to us as an ugly duckling and turn into this beautiful swan.  Below are pics of him during his healthier days.