Looking for insight into 11 year old dog’s symptoms
Hello. My partner’s 11 year old Aussiedoodle has been exhibiting a host of symptoms over the last few months and I’m concerned that the vet is missing something because “maybe parasites that we missed in the fecal test” doesn’t seem like a great assumption.
So, for months, our dog has had the following symptoms:
-Drinking and urinating a lot more frequently, and a few days ago urinary flow was very slow while volume remained high. There was one or two urinations a few days ago where the coloring was visibly dark while sitting a few meters away
-Frequent diarrhea (most days), sometimes with mucus
-7-10 days of liquid and solid melena (maybe a few days of normal stool in that timeframe but mostly black or dark liquid and two episodes of black, solid stool) a few weeks ago. Seems to have resolved.
-A few episodes of vomiting (mostly food but once was bile and a lot of it)
-Inappetence (sometimes has gone 24 hours without eating, and only wants to eat a minimal amount of his food most days)
- Gums look pale sometimes
- Lethargic
- Intensely, frequently itchy
We took him to the vet a month ago for an episode of unprompted intense crying and whining,as well as the diarrhea. They checked his spine and said he has spinal arthritis, and the lipoma on his back was larger and he has developed new one but that they were not cancerous. Sent us on our way (they did not do bloodwork then but did a fecal test then which was clear).
Anyways, this morning we woke up and he had escaped his gated area and had diarrhea three times in our kitchen (very abnormal to lose facility of his bowels, but he has definitely urinated in the house in the mornings many times in the last year). I suggested partner take him to vet and relay every single symptom and their frequency to the vet and asked him to insist on bloodwork. They did, and lo, he’s perfect bar a high premature red blood cell count.
Vet said, as stated above, after doing a fecal test, that it was probably a parasite that they aren’t picking up.
Maybe I’m overthinking all of this, but wouldn’t that have been evident if he has such a terrible parasitic infection that has caused these symptoms for months that it would be identifiable at this stage?
Attaching blood panel in comments for reference.
Any other potential things we should be on the lookout for?