Causal chat leads to canine connection Interventional therapy at UF

The grapevine is alive and well, as the Tampa-area owners of two young chocolate Labrador retrievers can attest. The dogs both are doing well after recently receiving unique interventional therapy at UF's Veterinary Medical Center to correct a life-threatening liver condition.

Robin Fish and Shiloh Schrantz met at a mutual friend's birthday party in July and began chatting. Turns out, both women owned puppies who both happened to be extremely ill from the same medical condition.

"We were at a jazz and blues club where there was live music and it was hard to hear because of all the noise," Schrantz said. "All of a sudden my husband said, ‘Listen to these people; their puppy has issues like ours.'"

"So I went over and said, ‘I don't mean to be snooping, but it sounds like your dog might have exactly the same problem that ours has,'" Schrantz said.

At this point, Schrantz's dog, Bear, had survived risky surgery in January but his veterinarians failed to locate the shunt that improperly diverted circulation. Schrantz said her vet pushed the couple to obtain additional tests but they were reluctant to pursue other options, partly out of worry that any new procedure would be hard on Bear.

"It was being managed through medication and prescription dog food, but we did stall," Schrantz said. "He wasn't thriving."

Fish, on the other hand, shared with her new friend that Delilah was awaiting a procedure at UF known as interventional therapy.

"Their dog was dying and here I was, with my dog about to get this procedure," Fish said. "It was a very atypical thing."

The Fishes knew almost immediately after Delilah was born that she was very sick.

"I saw she was not playing as much as the other pups," Fish said. "She was picky with her food and very listless. Then she began having severe fevers."

UF veterinarians verified through additional tests that Delilah had an intrahepatic portosystemic liver shunt in a hard-to-find spot within the central lobe of the organ, but could not receive surgery until her condition improved.

"They said, ‘we have to get her in a surgical state,'" Fish recalled. "So they put her on medication and on a no-protein diet, and we had to wait a month."

It was in that window of waiting for surgery that Fish and Schrantz had their conversation at the party.

"We were so surprised to hear all the good things they said, so we called the university and one thing led to another," Schrantz said.

The highly technical and sophisticated procedure UF performed on both Delilah and Bear is known as interventional therapy and involves close collaborations between veterinary radiologists and cardiologists to locate the problematic shunt, place a stent and implant coils within the specific vessel to reroute blood flow properly through the circulatory system.

Although UF's team had been trained in the procedure, Delilah was the first patient to receive it.

Bear now weighs 83 pounds and is "doing great" despite being a few months behind his companion dog developmentally.

"We could do with not going through the puppy thing twice, but we just sacrificed another pillow to the great god of puppies," Schrantz said.

Delilah now weighs 61 pounds — a 30-pound increase since her UF procedure.

"We call her, ‘Happy Girl,'" said Fish. "She is our little princess and she is so spoiled."