Speaker 1: Hey, this is Pet Life Radio. Let's talk pets.
Speaker 2: This episode of the Old Behave Show on Pet Life
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Speaker 3: It's Oh Behave with Ardenmore, this show that teaches you
how to have harmony in the household with your pets.
Join Ardina. She travels coast to coast to help millions
better understand why cats and dogs do what they do.
Get that lady scoop on famous faces, they're perfectly pampered
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and Tails Garner, great pet tips and have a dog
one for lying fun time. So get ready for the
pause and applause as we unleash your Oh Behave. Hosts
America's pet ed You, Janner Arden More.
Speaker 2: Pause Up, pet Pals, Welcome to the Old Behave Show
on Pet Life Radio.
Speaker 1: I'm your host, Arden Moore.
Speaker 2: Ah, home sweet home, but is it home safe home,
especially for your pets. Fortunately, our special guest today is
an expert. I'm keeping our pets safe, especially from hidden poisons.
Speaker 1: Working in our homes. So at this time it's going
to be a mouthful of a sentence. Here we go.
Speaker 2: Please give pause and applause to the medical director at
veg Er for Pets in Cambridge, Massachusetts, a remarkable veterinarian,
and she is doctor Katrina Abel.
Speaker 1: Welcome, Welcome, doctor Katrina. Thank you, Arden. I'm so glad
to be here.
Speaker 2: I love this v EG pause E A go ahead,
say what it stands for. I know I eat my
green beans and everything, but that's not what it stands for.
Speaker 1: That Nery Emergency Group is bad gr for a pet.
Speaker 2: There's quite a few all around. I'm in the Dallas area,
there's one in uh I know in Allen, Texas.
Speaker 1: They're everywhere, right, Yeah, So we have I think five
in the state of Massachusetts. I think there's all over
one hundred and thirty across the country. We just opened
up one in Canada, so definitely expanding and growing fairly quickly.
We're opening about thirty hospitals a year.
Speaker 2: Wow wow, I should say bow wow and me wow right,
bow wow. Well, before we dive into some of the
hidden o's that are lurking in our homes, I wanted
to have people get to a chance to get to
know you. We have one thing in common. I was
the editor at Tufts University's Catnet magazine for eight years
back in the day. Doctor John Berg was my advisor,
and doctor Nicholas Dodman. So you are a tough scrad
I am, yeah, I'm actually a double jumbo.
Speaker 1: So I went to under Gratituess with the intention of
going to VET school, and then I moved from Somerville,
Elt to North Grafton and finished up my grad school
there going to VET school. And I actually know both
of those people that you mentioned just for my time there,
so that is something in common. I did it for
about eight years. I loved it.
Speaker 2: I had to interview all the people with vana white
initials after their names, you know, board sort of fighting
specialties to be able to do the magazine.
Speaker 1: It was a big joy. So I'd just been doing my.
Speaker 2: Background and you're not just a veterinarian, You're a dog
mom telling us a dog Rudy Ruby.
Speaker 1: Yes, I'm right now. I'm a dog mom of one.
I have a five year old chocolate lab which we're
going to get into a little bit of chocolate stuff later.
So that's a good connection. Her name is Ruby, and
she's energetic. We were just out across country skiing actually
this weekend. We had some snow and Ruby likes, say,
there's trails right near my home and Ruby likes to
run alongside and as I'm skiing. So yeah, she's had
tons of energy.
Speaker 2: Like all labs isn't the same. I think doctor Marty
Becker Say's labs they chew till they're two and shed
till they're dead. She does both of those things fairly.
Speaker 1: Well, yeah, that's true. I love that.
Speaker 2: You know what got you into vetinary medicine and specifically
emergency medicine.
Speaker 1: Yeah. So there's not a time in my life that
I don't remember wanting to be a veterinarian. I remember
driving up to I grew up in Bangor, Maine, to
a little clinic Brewer, Maine, riding up there and sort
of saying, as I looked at my dad, like I
actually think I want to do this. And so that
was and yet that's sort of a common story. A
lot of veterinarians say that it's sort of a lifelong
dream or a passion. And then, yeah, and then I
had planned sort of always had in the back of
my mind, and that was I was very intentional when
I went to Toughs, knowing that Tuffs had had a grad
school program, a veterinary program, very good ones. Yeah, and
then you know, as I went through and I think
this happens to a lot of students in VET school.
You go through your rotations and your clinics and you're
drawn to one area or another when an er for
me was like really exciting, really variable. And so I've
been a lifelong ear veut. A lot of people when
I graduated from school did one year internship. So I
did an internship and then I went into ear medicine
and I've been there ever since. I love it.
Speaker 2: Hey, everybody, we're talking to doctor Katrina Abel. She is
with the veg Er Group Vener Group, and we're going
to find out what we can do to keep our
homes safe for our pets. After we take this quick
break and you guys know the drill, we got to
sit stay, We'll be right back.
Speaker 3: Time for a pause. Four very ones, actually sit and
stay all behave We'll be right back.
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Speaker 3: Let's talk pets on Petlife Radio dot Com. All behaviors
back with more tail wagging Ways to achieve harmony of
the household with your pets. Now back to your vegging
host America's pet ed You, Janer arden More.
Speaker 2: Welcome back to the old Behay show on Petlife Radio.
I'm your host Ardenmore.
Speaker 1: I love it when I get an ear vet in
the house.
Speaker 2: And she is doctor Fittrina Abel and she is the
medical director for the vegain Ridge. That's Veterinary Emergency group
ER and you're in Cambridge, Massachusetts. What drew me to
you is that every month, every day, every hour has
some designation, right, but March is designated as National Pet
Poison Prevention Month. Yeap, But really this is something we
should be doing twelve months a year, three sixty five right.
Speaker 1: Yeah, absolutely, no, March is sort of an awareness month.
I think people start to dig out of the snow
and they start to look around them, and pets start
to get into trouble as the weather warms up, for sure,
and so it's definitely really a great month to start
thinking about that.
Speaker 2: And I know there's not hard facts, but the best
estimated guess from your point, because places like Poison Control
Hotline er veterinary clinics like yourselves. Do you have an
idea about how many h O cases are coming to
ers every year? Oh?
Speaker 1: I don't know that I know that number, but I
can tell you that in our clinic we see a
ton of toxicities. We said, dogs get into things that
require surgical removal, and we see dogs that get into
things that require medical care. Cats too. For sure. I
don't want to give dogs all the credit. But for
most of those things, the dogs are the curious ones
that are that are doing that kind of thing.
Speaker 2: Well, I've written the Dog Behavior answer Book and the
Cat Behavior answer Book, and I can tell you cats
are like, let me take my paw and test the waters,
and the dogs are like, oh, popping in my mouth?
Speaker 1: Oh is that right? One hundred percent true? Yeah, And
you know, living with the lab, I see that all
the time. There's nothing that doesn't go into her mouth.
So definitely in my household, we're off also super careful
about that kind of thing.
Speaker 2: So you kind of set the stage for two different areas.
So let's go with like things that are edible that
shouldn't be edible. Sure, then let's go to things that
maybe could cause them, you know, other harms. But people
know that the darker the chocolate, the worse it could
be sure to be ingested because of the theobromine. But
can you kind of give us Everybody says there's some lab,
maybe even a chocolate lab, that can eat a whole
bag of M and ms and be fine, and a
poor little shitsu has like two M and m's, and
uh oh, so what is going on with dark chocolate
and dogs and their sizes.
Speaker 1: What's the factors. Yeah, so definitely there's a lot of
variability there. So we have charts that we follow and
we look at the bell curve as to what the
signs we expect might be based on the dose. The
dose is key. It has to do with the size
of the pet, right, and so you mentioned a shitsu
versus maybe a larger dog like a lab. If they
ate the same amount of dark chocolate, they're probably gonna
have different signs because the dose is different. And then
there's also individual variability across pets and right, and so
some dogs can eat a certain amount and maybe they're
on the borderline of whether they might be symptomatic or not,
and in that particular case they aren't. And other dogs,
for whatever reason are more sensitive to it and are
going to show signs earlier. So there are those two
main parts of variability. And then certainly the type of chocolate.
We know that milk chocolate is much less concerning than
if a dog ate like, for example, a block of
Baker's chocolate or dark chocolate something like that.
Speaker 2: I know there's these chocolate toxicity calculators out there. Have
you heard about them where you plug in, my dog
ate two ounces of milk.
Speaker 1: Chocolate or dark chocolate.
Speaker 2: And my dog weighs this amount, and then there's some
little thing that says, uh, oh, go to the vet
or just monitored. Have you heard of those calculators?
Speaker 1: Yeah, we see them both digitally. There's digital calculators and
there's also these pretty cool wheels like the ASPCA might
put out which you line up the dog's weight with
what type of chocolate and the amount that they ate,
and it can help you show kind of gradations of
what kind of toxicity you might expect to see.
Speaker 2: So chocolate is not good, but I wanted to go
into a more dangerous ingredient, xylotol, And it's my understanding
that it's a lot worse than ingesting dark chocolate that
has steel bromine, but xylotol or birch sugar, which oh
that sounds so healthy and natural, but it isn't right.
Speaker 1: Sure, yeah, no, xylotol. We see it can be in
things like sugar free products, gum candy. The thing that
we worry about was xylotol mostly is the liver and
it's the same thing. It depends on the amount that's
what's ingested, and also the xylotol concentration of a particular product.
We know the certain products like we see it most
commonly with gum ingestion, but we know that some particular
products are going to be much more risky than others,
so to sort of stay away from those. So what's
the deal with sugar free peanut butter?
Speaker 2: Because I do know some people are on keto diets,
they're diabetic, or they're watching their carbs and they may
unintentionally give their dog some sugar free peanut butter.
Speaker 1: Have you heard about that? Yeah, so I know of
sugar free peanut butter. I've actually, in practice, I've never
actually seen a sugar peanut butter toxicity or actually even
had a question of somebody calling with that, and I
you know, I think the most important thing when you
have a sugar free product and your concern is to
check the ingredients, to check to see does it contain xylatol,
And then you could call, for example, pet poison control
and they can help you figure out whether that dose
before you go in and see somebody. If your dog
is not symptomatic, there's tools and resources that you have
to call to see if there's a risk to your
pet and whether or not you should be seen by
the er or not. So those are like important general
pointers about when you're not sure. But what do you
think when you hear the being changed to something that
sounds very benign like birch sugar when it really is xylotol.
That makes you really want to read the label? Yes,
one hundred percent. I think that the awareness of what
the different names of different things could be, and just
having a basic awareness when you have a pet in
your home as far as risks of all things that
we might see as completely benign and particularly delicious for us,
definitely it's not the same for our pets. And so
having that knowledge is really important.
Speaker 2: So we're talking about keeping our pets safe and you know,
the spring is coming. We've talked about chocolate, We've talked
about artificial sweeteners. What are some other poisons that are
lurking in and around our homes that we need to
keep our pets safe from.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean there's lots of things. If I think
about my yard as the as the weather starts to
warm up, you know, we do all sorts of things.
We start to mulch our plants. There's certain mulches that
are really safe for pets, shreaded pine for example, But
there's certain as we start to think about chocolate, certain
products which might be more risky, like, for example, a
cocoa bean mulch, which is made from the holes of
the cocoa bean. Oh, it smells really good, right when
it's fresh, it smells really good, and it might attract
our pets to it because it smells so good if
they eat a large enough quantity of that particular mulch,
and when it's really fresh, the fresher, the more risky
it is. You could have some of those chocolate toxicity
signs that we sort of had started to talk through
due to the risk of theobromine and caffeine being in
that product. So what are the signs? What are some
of the things? Oh, yeah, so some of the things
that we see with chocolate toxicity vomiting and diarrhea. Pets
often present with an elevated heart rate, so we sometimes
have to give medications to slow that down. They can
develop pancreatitis in some cases, they can start to develop seizures,
and in real severe cases, you can have death from
chocolate toxicity with the cocoa bean mulch. It's pretty rare
because you'd have to eat a large enough quantity. But
if we're just talking straight, chocolate toxicity, definitely, those those
are things to look for and just to be safe.
You know, I would avoid that product if I had
a pet, and you know, oh yeah, yeah, I would
avoid that product at home, just because of the risk.
Not to mention just eating mulch. We see that a
lot dogs will eat mult whether or not it's a
toxic product or not. It's not great for their gi tract,
as you can imagine, and they can develop bonding, diarrhea,
other things just as a result of puncture something. Sure, yeah,
sharp enough product, definitely it could. And so just being careful.
If you see your dogs munching on mulch, goes for rocks,
goes for really anything in the yard, maybe think twice
about whether you want them to continue to do that.
Speaker 2: And I know this is really tasty question, but shouldn't
people bring in the evidence if they've hurled or it's
gone out the south end? Why is it so important
for veterinarians to be able to analyze I.
Speaker 1: Love that you called that out. We say that whenever
anybody calls and they have a question about a particular product,
a medication, whatever it is, please bring in the packaging
because it helps us figure out what the dose is
and what the active ingredients are. There's so many different
I'll give you a rodenticide for example. There's so many
different products that people use in their homes that if
we don't see that packaging, it can be very hard
for us to piece together how to treat and what
the next steps are if we don't know what the
products are. So yeah, absolutely goes for gum, goes for anything, candy, chocolate,
bring the rap or bring anything you have so that
we can start to figure it out and unsolve the mystery.
Is it good to asso bring in what they puked
up or pooped out to the three if you can
grab it.
Speaker 3: Yep.
Speaker 1: And you're not sure, absolutely, I think there's no such
thing as too much information as we're trying to figure
out what the next steps are. One hundred percent.
Speaker 2: When I'm behind the microphone, I'm actually a certified master instructor.
I have my own company, pet first Day for you
with a dog, a cat, and lots of veterinarians with
that are an er, critical care, internal medicine, feline medicine.
I'm always learning from you all, and one of the
things I've picked up from you that we share with
our students is take your phone and just do like
a three sixty around where it was, because you veterinarians
may find something that we live here every day and
we don't see.
Speaker 1: Can you expand on that? Yeah? I love that. No,
I think that's a great call for all of the
reasons you said. I also would expand that. And as
you started to talk, I sort of had wish I
had said, if you can't bring in the vomit or
take a picture of it, at least you can see
the volume. We can see what might be in it, colors,
that kind of thing. All of those things they may
or may not provide clues. But again, the more information
the better, especially if we're dealing with some of these
more scary potential toxicities.
Speaker 2: Now I do my laundry. I try to wear clean clothes.
But if I'm a dog, am I looking at those
laundry pods a little bit differently than what we look
at them.
Speaker 1: Oh sure, yeah, I mean I think there's a lot
of information that it's recently come out about those pods,
but definitely the risk of ingestion. Right, those might look
like tasty little treats, and absolutely the detergent and the
chemicals and the products and those are definitely at put
your pets at risk for toxicity. So I would definitely
be careful about where and how you store those products
in your home. So you said a.
Speaker 2: Crazy fun lab named Ruby, I mean, where do you
keep your laundry pads in relationship to your chocolate lab?
Speaker 1: Yeah, So, for better or for worse, my laundry is
in my first floor on my basement. Ruby doesn't go
down there, so that's okay. It's also stored up on
a shelf, so she not only does she not go
down there, but she doesn't actually have access to It's
too tall for her. So we definitely make sure. But
even the pods that we use, for example, in our dishwasher,
those are stored very carefully in our kitchen, and part
of mod the thing that I've educated my children on
is knowing what all the toxicities are in our household
and making sure they're safe as well with making sure
things are closed and latched and put away. That kind
of thing I.
Speaker 2: Think that's really important because kids love their pets and
they're like they're siblings and they're growing up together. And
I think that's a really awesome tip to share as
a mom and a veterinarian, the importance of getting the
kids involved right in the safety.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, Like, for example, we think about grapes, right,
we have our kid, they're like, you know, my kids
used to have grapes. They're older now, but they used
to sit at their high chair and have their grapes.
The risks maybe if you haven't. One of the things
we did is make sure they didn't have them until
they were old enough to understand the potential risks. But
grapes are a thing that could cause renal toxicity, right,
and so it's really important to be very careful with
products like that that we don't typically think of as
scary products when we're having them with our pets and
our kids mixed in that everybody's kind of aware of
what that risk is, so we can keep everybody safe.
It's also the shape to close off the airway, oh
for sure. Oh yeah, for a small child and or
a pet. One hundred percent. Yeah. The friendship help me, Yes,
I think That's a great call, is that things aren't
just toxic or problematic because of the chemicals they campaign contain,
but also shape and size can play a huge role.
Speaker 2: Man, I'm getting schooled in a good way, everybody. We
are speaking with doctor Katrina Abel.
Speaker 1: She is an er vet.
Speaker 2: She is also the medical director for Veger for Pets
and Cambridge, Massachusetts. We're going to dive in a little
bit more after we take this break. Sit stay, we'd
be right.
Speaker 3: Back time for a walk on the red car.
Speaker 1: But of course, oh behave.
Speaker 3: We'll be backing up lash right after these messages. Oh sure,
it's all fun and games until someone ends up in
a cone. That's right.
Speaker 1: We are animals.
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Speaker 1: Everybody does. Stephen Whooper are relying you to always listen
to argue more on Obhay the Best Show on pet
Live Radio.
Speaker 3: We're back from the lot. Just check the paper and
we had our record showing at the box, the letterbox
that is now back to Oh behave, here's Arden.
Speaker 2: Welcome back to the Obie Hay Show on pet Life radio.
I'm your host, Ardenmore, I salute you. I mean, this
is an area of medicine that you never know what
your day's going to be like. And I'm talking about
emergency medicine for pets and dogs and cats don't speak English,
they can't tell you what's going on. So don't you
feel sometimes you're like a pet detective?
Speaker 1: Yeah, I definitely we feel that often, and we talked
about that just a couple of minutes ago. Having all
of those pieces, all of those pieces of information can
help you put things together. And sometimes people will say
that in some ways veterinarians have to practice similar to pediatricians,
at least for small kids who can't really say, you know,
express themselves. And I would say the same. We have
to take the clues from our physical exam, from what
our owners are telling us, our pet parents are telling us,
and also from what we're getting, you know, from our environment.
Speaker 2: We've covered grapes, we've covered some gardening things. We've covered
what was the first one we started with them, chocolate?
Chocolate chocolate, yeah, yeah, But other toxins that are in
our home could be our own human prescription medicine, and
so any tips that you can offer for people on
how to keep those pain pills and other needs out
of pause reach.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, one hundred percent. So I think you know
this probably goes It's same thing that you would apply
to kids, you would younger kids, you would apply to
your pets. Which is the best thing you can do
is make sure they're locked up, they're not mixed. Mixing
pills into one bottle makes it really hard if there
is a potential exposure because you don't know how much
of a particular pill. You don't know necessarily always what's
in that bottle, and so keeping them in their labeled bottles,
with their child safe locks and in a really safe
place in your home is definitely the way to go.
Having you know, pills on tables, even if you think
it might be out of reach of a dog. We
know dogs will jump up, I can potentially grab things down.
So always making sure you know where your pills are
taking them and then diligently putting them away is definitely
the way to go.
Speaker 2: So here's your question for two hundred. You probably will
win this if you're in jeopardy or something. Hydrogen peroxide.
What is the one and only safe use for hydrogen
peroxide for pets, and I'm speaking dogs, not cats.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so hy does peroxide we can use to induce
vomiting at home for pets. One thing that we want
to be careful of is that there's not an alternative.
So I don't recommend hydrogen peroxide if I know an
owner pet parent can get to us quickly and we
can safely induce vomiting, which is monitored in the hospital.
But sometimes, for example we're in Massachusetts, we have owners
that are in northern New Hampshire, Vermont, or there's a snowstorm,
or they can't get here. There's a variety of reasons. Right,
it's it, and so in that case we will sometimes
recommend a dose of hydrogen peroxide as a trial. One
of the tricky things for hydrogen peroxide is it has
to sort of be a fresh bottle. If you have
an old bottle of hydrogen peroxide and you try to
use it, it's efficacy is much lower, meaning it doesn't
work as well. And so having a fresh bottle on
hand is like actually a really good safety thing to
have in your home if you have pets.
Speaker 2: What about this idea when you change your clocks twice
a year, Yeah, why don't you look at everything your
monitors for CO two smoke everything for you and your
pet and see what needs updating.
Speaker 1: I love that. I think that would be a great thing.
Is to make sure that things are tucked away, you
have updated safety things in place. You've talked to your
kids about potential toxicities in your home that might be
put your pets at risk. That's a great call. The
other thing with hydrogen proxie what at least what we've
been told by my veterinarians that serve on my pet
First DAI program is have a vet on the phone
if you can.
Speaker 2: And now there's telehealth, you've got Veggier, you've got poison control,
you've got your own vet. So is there any tips
you can give people on how they report a uh
oh without freaking out so you can get to the
crux of it and give them good guidance to get
them safely to get treated.
Speaker 1: Yes, so at VEG you can just call us at
one of our founding foundational spikes we call them at
VEGE is if you call us, we're going to get
right on the phone. So it's not that you're speaking
necessarily to less medically trained teammate. You're going to be
talking to a vetnarian when you call, and so we're
and be able to give you the most up to
date advice as to how we think you should proceed
now in the next five minutes, in the next twenty
minutes to keep you and your pet as safe as
possible so you can get the care that you.
Speaker 2: Need and your veg are not your ordinary vet entrances.
Can you kind of touch upon how you kind of
bring the people involved. I mean it's it's very open concept.
Speaker 1: Yes, one hundred percent. So vege is built on a
transparent model. We're an open concept model and we want
people to be We think that people do better when
they're with their pets, and pets do better when they're
with their people. Yeah, the lower stress and all that yeah,
all that stuff. Yeah, that emotional piece that can be hard.
And so yeah, when people come in with their pets,
they get seated in our treatment area and they are
able to stay with their pet throughout every step of
the way, including to the hospitalization step. We'll set people
up in our hospital with CODs. They can stay over
with their pet if they want. Nice. It's lovely. We
don't have visiting hours. People can just come when they
want to come. It's always open so that we can
keep it as many pets and people happy as they're
recovering and getting better in our hospital.
Speaker 2: You talked about the emotional component, so there could be
a nervous nelly and you could have a person with
a pet that's pretty calm. You know, we teach people
permission to freak out later. So is there any tips
you can give people when they're bringing in their dog
their cat they're kind of oh, and the dog or
cat is smelling their emotional state is I know it's
easy to say, but is there any advice you can
give us to keep us at and even keel while
the pets in an oh position?
Speaker 1: Yeah? I mean I think knowing that you're on your
way to help, I think helps some Right, you call
and you have a plan and you know what the
next steps are. I think sometimes for me it just
helps to know, like step one, two and three, It
helps me stay calm if I have a plan. So
if you're stressed, call us. We'll give you the plan
and then when you get here. Often we'll meet you
at the door, we'll bring you in. We'll make sure
that you're as comfortable as possible. Things that we can
do to try to make you comfortable. Sometimes, you know,
we're not going to be able to always eliminate, you know,
the sick part of the sick pet visit, but we
try to do as best we can to make it
comfortable as comfortable as it can be.
Speaker 2: How important is it to have really purposeful breathing instead
of shallow breathing when an emergency happens? And don't worry,
I'm not going to sing, lady, God got shallow?
Speaker 1: I think breathing you mean having humans breathing deep when
they're stress. Yeah, yeah, I mean I think just sometimes
even just sitting down and taking a moment or separating
yourself so you can have some of those breaths and
just take a step back is really important. Yeah. I mean,
I think those are all key to do that too.
When you're getting ready to take on a case, how
do you do it? I mean I have a little
bit of a ritual where I it depends right, So
some it's hard to prepare when you're in the er
because things, man, But what I do I think for me,
I have a ritual of when I come to work
knowing that you know that anything could walk in the door.
I have my my specific I have the music, I
have my tea, I have a very specific thing that
kind of readies me for work. And then I have
the same kind of exit strategy when I leave, which
is like you know, now I'm leaving my work and
I now I get to to Now it's relaxed time.
And so I think for a lot of care professionals
it's really important to have those boundaries and protect that time.
So so you kind of scale in and then you
kind of scale out from your shift. That's important. Yeah,
one hundred percent. We have a really cool room in
our hospital called the Zen Room, which is an employee room.
That's just a room where if there's a if anybody
needs a moment, they can there's a couch in there,
there's some books they can go and just and take
that time, have the breaths, have the separation, all those
things that we all need as humans, because r can
be hard sometimes for sure, for pets, for people, for employees.
Speaker 2: Now we've alluded to Ruby, So time to say what
has Ruby done that you were you were glad you
were an er vet.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I'll give you one. I mean, Ruby's done some things,
but there's a golf course near house, and I spoke
of it. At the beginning. We were cross country skiing, well,
we were at the golf course, like in a it
was it was cold. I think it was November a
couple of years ago, and things were freezing, but there
was no snow, and we were doing our walk around
the golf course because nobody's golfing at this time, and
I saw her sort of digging up, sniffing around a log.
And as I went over to her, I saw a
frozen tail and two frozen legs go down the bellet,
and so, oh no, what did she eat? She had
eaten a frozen mouse that had passed away the golf course,
and so for lots of reasons, we needed to get
rid of it. She couldn't. It wasn't going to digest well,
I could have potentially caused them.
Speaker 2: She told her that it wasn't kanine sushi I did.
Speaker 1: I told her, we can't do that, Ruby, And we
actually had a fresh bottle of hydrogen peroxide at my
house and I felt very pretty comfortable being an air
area to administer that, and I took her outside. It was.
It was, like I said, it was pretty cold, and
kept taking her out. Nothing was happening, nothing was happening.
Finally we came back in to settle in, and as
soon as we were inside, of course, up it came
right on her bed. Oh wow, it is. The hydrogen
peroxide worked, you know, and we were able to get
rid of the frozen mouse. So that's kind of a
fun Rube story.
Speaker 2: And that's how do people find out more about your clinic,
where you are and Veger in general.
Speaker 1: So go online check it out. If you go on
to the VEG website, you're going to see all you're
gonna be able to look for, so number one is VEG.
The search engine will search you by your location, so
you'll be able to find where you're located, and they're
going to show all the clinics that are nearest to you.
You can look at what services we offer. You can
find out, you know, the medical directors at the hospital
that you might be interested in, phone numbers. We're open
twenty four to seven, so there's really no hours posted.
But yeah, I mean, the the website's probably the easiest
and them from the main website, it'll take you to
all the different locations.
Speaker 2: I've been having a great time talking to you, doctor
Katrina Abel. I hope handled our questions very well. I
have one final question. Sure if you could have some
trait that dogs or cats have, what would it be
and why?
Speaker 1: That's a great one. I think for me at this age,
I would love to be able to sleep like my
lab sleeps. So you know, she goes for a walk,
she comes home, she's in front of the fire, she
sleeps for five hours the afternoon, she goes for a walk,
she hangs out with us a little. She sleeps like
she could sleep anywhere. I think that would be my
trade as I would love to be able to just
sleep anywhere. Well.
Speaker 2: I have so enjoyed having you on our show, Doctor
Katrina Abel, and everybody please be careful. I know March
is designated as National Pet Poison Prevention Month, but we
need to be on our toes year round, indoors, outdoors, gardening, kitchen.
You named the bath everything, so just look at it
from the standpoint of your dog or cat, right, Doctor Katrina, Absolutely,
I would.
Speaker 1: Say absolutely keep that in mind. You know, for us
in New England, I know you're in a warmer climate,
but for us. Everything is about to like sort of
unleash as the warmer weather starts. All the products are
going to be out, the composts, the fertilizers, all the flowers,
all the things that are beautiful and helpful but can
potentially pose risks. So it's always important to know what's
in your yard, what's in your home, and to keep
your pet safe. So thank you so much for having
me arden. It's been really fun.
Speaker 2: Hey, I appreciate that, Doctor Abel, And I also want
to do a shout out to my producer, Mark Winter.
He is the executive producer of Pet Life Radio, the
largest network of pet shows. Humbly, you are tuned into
the longest running weekly pet podcast on the planet. We
have been on the air since two thousand and seven,
when no one knew what a podcast was. Now I
think my water Bottle has.
Speaker 1: Its own show. Who knows?
Speaker 2: So when I'm not behind the mic, please go to
Pet First Aid for you and check out what I do.
I love working with er and critical care veterinarians and
I have a pet safety dog Kona, pet safety dog Casey,
and we have a pet safety dog in training Nova
six toes that will help you get more realism on
how to find a heartbeat, how to do things, and
how to get that pet stabilized and safely to the
veterinary clinic.
Speaker 1: Please call ahead, right doctor Abel one hundred first time,
call ahead, No surprises or if you can't come in.
But calling ahead helped you with the plan, it helps
us with the plan. But if you're on your way,
we'll see you.
Speaker 2: When you get here, all right, So until next time,
this is your flea free host are More delivering just
two words to all you two, three and four leaguers
out there.
Speaker 3: Oh behave coast to coast and around the world. It's
all behaved with art and more. Find out why cats
and dogs do the things they do. Can get the
latest buzz from Wagging Tongues and Tails and rin ten
tinsel Town from famous pet experts and best selling authors,
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behave with America's Pet Entertainer are more every week on
demand only on petlive radio dot com.