I spent over an hour last night talking to my Vet about Liquorice and where to go from here plus that she also has spondylosis (spinal osteoarthritis). We are in a bit of a hard place with her right now for if we put her on Pred; should she get aspiration pneumonia which is believed to be inevitable with the Megaesophagus(& which at this time is believed she now has so we cannot put her on the Pred at this time anyway); we would on an urgent ASAP timeline to get her into the Hospital for the Pred would surely kill her if she did not get the pneumonia treated at the Hospital due to the Pred making the situation much worse. If we do not put her on Pred; she has no other medicine treatments available for her conditions. We will be putting her on some NSAIDS to help with her discomfort. The other thing is that to fed a Megaesophagus dog; you need to feed them as upright as possible yet in her case this is not possible as she has the Wobbler’s and cannot even lift her head to be parallel to her spine level which puts her at a higher risk of aspiration pnemonia. So, as her Megaesophagus worsens (whether idiopathic or auto-immune or cancer causing) she will not be able to eat and when she does will regurgitate irritating her esophagus and throat even more and also not be able to get the proper level of nutrition she requires. We talked in length about quality of life and that the Vet had the opportunity to discuss more of the UOG results and that she could also have Cushings or Addisons. I am just positively reeling over it all. For another $80.00 we could then determine if she has any of those conditions and I told the Vet that at this point, I just need to go home and ‘soak’ all of this up. Quality of life is always a must for me and for Liquorice, she cannot run or even remotely play normally(she does not even show any interest in even wanting to do these things BUT sure does love to nibble her Knucklebone treaties!), is obviously in some form of discomfort with back and throat and I need to see hard plus objectively just how much of a quality of life this girl really has. At her age she should be experiencing so much more life than she currently is and I have to either find a way to ensure that she does/can have an extended quality of life left or we need to end what is clearly a life of suffering at this time. The money at this time is nothing compared to the investment of my heart and emotions with this girl. To date, none of the other dogs have shown signs of Giardia and let’s hope it stops there. At least that was one thing that we could successfully treat Liquorice for and the added cost of treating the other dogs she infected has added hundreds more dollars to our current Vet Bills. I still am so floored that one wonderful sweet creature could be riddled with so much but all of the results and the second opinion is not something that I can just turn a blind eye to. My Vet told me before I left that I would truly not be ‘in the wrong’ or a ‘bad person’ in considering to let her go. What an utterly tragic situation.