Your dog’s thyroid gland is a small butterfly-shaped organ in his neck, with one lobe on each side of his trachea. Hypothyroidism is a disorder in which the thyroid glands are underactive and don’t secrete enough thyroid hormone.
In response to this attack, the thyroid will first try to compensate by producing greater and greater amounts of the thyroid hormone Thyroxine. But after awhile, the gland becomes depleted. It’s at this point your dog develops symptoms of the disorder and is diagnosed with hypothyroidism.
Symptoms
- Weight gain without an increase in appetite
- Depression; also significant behavioral changes like aggression, head tilting, anxiety, compulsiveness, seizures
- Skin changes – dryness, hair loss, discoloration or thickening, bacterial infections
Treatment
Various tests can be performed to diagnose Thyroid or Hypothyroidism such as free T3, free T4, T3, T4, AAT3, AAT4 and TSH. Usually by the
time your pet has enough auto-antibodies to be measured on a blood test
there has been irreparable thyroid damage and synthetic hormone
replacement is almost always inevitable.
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