Steroid induced Cushing's disease in dogs? Spinal cancer? I realize that this is very long, but I just wanted to be as thorough as possible as our dog is very sick right now. My sister's pekingese, Titan, has had back problems for a long time now. Earlier this year we took him to the vet because he was moaning when picked up. The doctor realigned his spine with a gun-shaped instrument. Then a couple of months ago we took him back with the same problem. The vet told us that realigning his spine at that time could cause damage and instead put him on prednisone to control the inflammation in the area and had us make sure he wasn't climbing stairs/jumping up and down. We followed her orders and he did okay while on the meds. As he came off of them, however, we noticed that he was walking a little awkwardly but attributed it to his back issues and just kept him from running around. A couple of days went by like this until my sister came home late one night and found him sleeping up against her door. Usually he would move out of the way, but for some reason this time he couldn't. She pushed the door open and found him with absolutely no ability to use his back legs. He dragged them along behind him to make his way around the room. We called the emergency number for our vet and were told to bring him in before they opened that morning. She told us that he was suffering from Invertebral Disc Disease, looked him over and found that he had deep tissue pain, giving us hope that he would walk again. She put him on rounds of dexamethasone and had us cage-rest him. He completed two weeks on the full dosage and one week of a daily half dosage and was supposed to move on to a half dosage every other day. While on the full dosage he had bloody jelly-like diarrhea. Our vet had us change him over from dog food to boiled ground beef and rice, which ended that. After a few days, he regained the use of his legs, but was/is still extremely wobbly to the point that we have to hold him up when we take him to potty outside or he will usually fall. Thursday was the last day of his daily half-dosage of the dexamethasone, but over the past week we'd noticed some changes in him and decided to bring him back to the vet. His bones had become prominent and his belly felt full like a water balloon even though he'd always been on the skinny side. The vet said that he didn't look good and kept him overnight to run some blood work, get x-rays and do an ultrasound. She called us the next morning and told us that his liver looked enlarged, he was severely anemic, and that his tummy was full of fluid. She said the only way she could wrap it up in a "neat little package" would be cancer of the spine, that the steroids might have helped fight the cancer but that after a while they wouldn't be effective. She said that she was new to the ultrasound equipment, however, and referred us to another vet in the area who would be able to get more thorough results. The new vet, Dr. W, did an ultrasound on him and showed us everything that was going on inside. Titan's liver was enlarged and bright, spleen enlarged, had pockets of fluid in his abdomen/tummy, and a thickening of the wall of the gallbladder. He said that there could be a number of things that would cause this: pancreatitis, hemio-something, a reaction to the dexamethasone, and said that cancer was a small possibility, but that he didn't think that his back issues really had anything to do with it. He recommended we get him a blood transfusion to deal with the anemia right away and sent us back to our normal vet, who would do aftercare for a few days. They did the transfusion last night and are doing another one today. He has been eating and some of the fluid in his tummy seems to have gone down. After we dropped Titan off at our vet for the transfusion last night we came home and did some research based on his symptoms and history. One of the things we found out about was Cushing's Syndrome brought on by steroids (Iatrogenic), which could explain all of his symptoms. I also read that it is common in dachsunds, which made sense to me as they are commonly diagnosed with Invertebral Disk Disease and have it treated the same way Titan's was. I spoke to the vet this morning and asked her if she thought this could possibly be what is wrong with him. She told me that it wouldn't explain his boniness, which is completely opposite of what every site I've read on Cushing's has said, and that she still wasn't ruling out cancer. She also told me that they had given him a higher dose of dexamethasone today in case he had problems with inflammation. She had never told us that this would be done, and it was done in spite of the fact that he was now only supposed to have a half dosage of the dex. every other day until it tapered off completely according to her original prescription. He had had none yesterday. She had also given him antibiotics in case he had an infection anywhere. Once I corrected her about the inability of Cushing's to cause the boniness Sorry Y!A keeps cutting off my question as it's too long. I'll try to shorten it & resubmit. Also just wanted to point out that my dog has seen a second vet but he is unavailable to consult with again until Monday & as my dog is receiving the blood transfusions from our regular vet, he has to stay in their facility for at least a few more days before we can take him anywhere else for another opinion.