Speaker 1: You're listening to Petlifradio dot com.
Speaker 2: And welcome to another episode of Ask the Vets. But
doctor Jeff I am I'm going to be your host
for the next half hour here on pet Life Radio.
We are with me Jef Werber asked the vets, and
you know, interestingly, first of all, I'm gonna have you
a call in. If you want, send me an email,
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because they are sponsoring this show. So anyway, I got
into an interesting phone call. As I'm driving to work
this morning, I get a call, Yes I had it
on bluetooth, that was not using my phone and texting
and talking while I'm driving. I already got a ticket
for that, by the way. And I was my office
and we got a call from a client whose dog
with an emergency facility and was bleeding internally because of
what they diagnosed as a splenic mass a tumor in
the spleen. It's really not that uncommon, in fact, when
I have clients call me that late night phone call
and tell me their dog has been a pretty weak
in lethargic and the belly seems to be getting a
little large. I will ask them first of all, if
they are trying to vomit. And the reason I asked
that is dogs, especially large breed, deep chested dogs that
are bloating I have what we call gastric torsion. They
will have a big bloated belly, but they are continually
trying to vomit dry heave. Nothing comes up because the
stomach is literally rotated on its own axis and it's
blocked off, so there's nothing that can come up. But
with that not being a problem, I say this, I say,
do me a favor and lift up the lips and
tell me what color are the gums. And when you
hear the answer, as we heard this morning, well they're
pretty white. And you put it all together. Dog weakened, lethargic,
a dog who's got a big looks appears to be
a bloated belly with white gums, and right away that's
telling me we are bleeding inside the abdomens. So certainly
they did the right thing. They took to emergency, and
the emergency clinic actually put an ultrasound probe on the
dog and you can see fluid in the belly. Stuck
a little needle into the belly, and sure enough pure blood.
That is an immediate indication to explore under any circumstance, unless,
of course, you continue your search and you find that
whatever might be causing that bleed is also in the liver,
or there also might be metastass or masses in the lungs,
in which case you say to yourself, wow, it'll be
futile to put the dog, the poor dog, through that,
to put you, as the pet parent through that financially,
because you know the outcome is horrendous. But this particular
dog had no fluid, no masses involved with the liver,
the lungs were clear. Everything seemed to be just on
the spleen itself. So was a perfect candidate to go in.
The problem is is, as I'm sure some of you
have found out the past, that many of these emergency facilities,
and you know, we're so glad they're they're and they're
equipped the way they are, and they have the specialists
as they do this particular one as specialties on staff
and internal medicine and oncology, surgery, dentist, you name it.
So these places are really really expensive and the clients
just did not have that kind of money. So called
us and we fortunately were able to take care of
the dog. So I was sort of elbow deep in
this deep chested dog's abdomen this morning, taking out a
fairly substantial looking tumor well took up the whole spleen actually,
which we'll send off for biops because interestingly, and you
know this is you know often I will caution owners,
is that you can't always go by how ugly or
not the spleen looks. I've had dogs that had very
minor looking masses on the spleen that came back what
we call hamaggio sarcoma, which is a splenic tumor, and
our days are numbered. We can have a good quality
of life until the metastatic lesions start to show up,
and typically they're going to show up and deliver and
the lungs. I've had dogs with the ugliest looking tumors
that you can imagine on the spleen, and it came
back just hamangioma, which is a benign splenic tumor. And
when we took off that spleen, took out the spleen
stopped the bleeding of course at the same time, and
that dog went on to live a totally normal life.
And there's also another thing we'll sometimes see called a
splenic hematoma. Now any of you that have had dogs
with some floppy years, but it really could happen in
any dog. But an ear flap called the pinna itself
fills up with blood, that's called a hepatoma, and that
just means a blood blister. Well, interestingly, spleens can also
develop hematomas and the treatment of choice is to just
remove the spleen. So regardless of the cause, whether it's
the what I call the Big three, which is splenic hematoma,
splenic hamangio sarcoma, or splenic homangioma, the initial tree is
the same. The issue. The difference is with the hematoma
and the hemangioma. Your splenectomy is going to be curative
at the same time, where in a case of a
splenic hemangio sarcoma, we will buy this wonderful dog sometime.
So now we're just gonna wait and see. But did
very well through surgery, and the owners actually inside visiting
the dog right now. And you know, it's one of
those one of those cases, one of those situations where
you really feel good as a surgeon because or as
a veterinarian because you get to really help an animal
another thing. And I made this mistake before, and man,
it really just got me. Typically when we see these
before we go in, we're basing our call on what
else might be involved on the dog's blood picture, on
the X rays that we take on the ultrasound, and
always had that beautiful clear picture to evaluate the entire
So what really upset me? And you know, again, it's
just obviously it's always upsetting when a dog is a tumor.
But I opened this dog up realized that there were
tumors everywhere, and I never and I didn't, and I
really kicked myself in the behind. I've never made the
mistake again. I didn't really stress to the owner before
dropping off, before us doing the anesthesion going in for surgery,
that this might be the last time he'll ever see
his dog again, because once they're bleeding like that, it
doesn't pay. You can't stop the bleeding. If you would,
then obviously we wouldn't even be considering anything else but that.
When he left the dog and we did the anesesia
and we opened the dog up, we were expecting the
dog to wake up and go home at least even
if it were turned out to be a hemangio sarcoma,
and the time he or she has with the dog
is somewhat limited. But when you get that phone call
and you say, gosh, I can't believe it. It is everywhere.
This poor dog is bleeding from every possible spot I
could bleed from. We really need to put him down
on the table. That's a tough call. So what I
do now, because all it takes is one of those lessons.
And every time I'm taking a dog in for any
kind of exploratory, I don't care what it is. I
tell the owner to let us put the catheterin, get
everything ready for surgery. We'll do the pre medication that
I'm going to put you in the room or in
a room with your dog and just relax and chill
and visit and hug because you know, you never know,
it's one of those sad things that it might be
one of the last times you're able to see that dog. Anyway.
Fortunately in this situation, we were in good shape. So
you know, it's rewarding when you get to help a
dog like that, And you know, certainly I feel good
that oh, and I realize also is that you know,
and again, there are a lot of veterinary medicines become
so specialized, and so many doctors are, especially younger doctors
don't have the same training. And I don't mean this
in a bad way. I mean that because there is
so much more information. I mean, literally, four years of
ED school isn't really enough. I don't think it was
enough back in my day, which was thirty years ago.
I think that VET school should be five years. All
these people are gonna hate me for saying this, but
there is so much to learn that a lot of
veterinarians when they graduate just don't feel comfortable with some
of the things that we kind of learned how to
do because we didn't have as much else on our plates,
so we had just a better feeling of surgery. And
when I talked to this particular client, new client for me,
and I said, well, what about your general practitioner? And
she said, oh, we definitely talked to them. They're the
ones that sent us over to the emergency facility, but
they won't do this surgery. They don't do this kind
of surgery. And so it doesn't surprise me that a
lot of our younger GPS have sort of limited themselves
to how much they'll get into surgically, and I never
learned how to do backs. I have a very good
friend of mine who graduated med school about five or
seven years before I did, and he actually does back
surgery as well, which I think is amazing. I mean,
the good news is as a veterinarian, you could really
do as much as you want. You just have to
learn and take the time and spend time to becoming
competent enough to want to do it on someone else's dog.
And here's what I always always recommend someone ask, and
that is, doctor, if this were your own dog, would
you do the surgery? And if the answer is no,
then don't let them do it on your dog. Because
I always feel that I would do nothing on a
client's pet that I wouldn't do for my own. So
if there's a particular procedure or surgery, maybe sometimes it's
not even a limited issue of my skill but of
my equipment, then if I wouldn't do it for me,
I'm not going to do it on a client's pet.
And I think that's a good rule of thumb to
live by in fact, but often I think I made
this point before here on Astevets with doctor Jeff on
pet Life Radio another plug different pet Life Radio, and
that is that it's always important to know what you know, okay,
and it's important to know what you don't know. But
what gets a veterinarian or a doctor or anyone like
that in trouble is when you don't know what you
don't know, i e. You think you know it, but
you're kidding yourself. You really don't. And that's where continue
education becomes important, and that's where criticism becomes important. And
I will tell all of my referring veterinarians, and I
refer to specialists in pretty much every field imaginable. And
of course I have a pretty decent working knowledge of
a little bit of everything. I say. I'm definitely a
jack of all trades, master of none. I probably can
handle roughly eighty percent of any case in any discipline,
but that top of the cream of the crop, twenty
percent on the upper echelon of difficulty. I'm going to
refer and I always tell the doctors wire for cases too.
If you're reviewing my records, if you are seeing my
thought process and I am totally off, you know, just
missing the boat. I want to know you need to
call me and say, Jeff, what were you thinking? Because
that's how your GP is going to learn. And you know,
if a GP is not comfortable doing something and refer it,
don't say, oh, come on, doc, I know you can.
I know you can.
Speaker 1: Please do it.
Speaker 2: Trust me. If they could do it, they would, And
I think that's very an important lesson to learn as well.
So anyway, I want to take a quick commercial break here,
we're going to come back. I have an email here
from Mark, so we'll be right back here on Pet
Life Radio. Ask the vets with doctor Jeff, and we'll
be back in just a minute. Once again, I want
to thank our sponsor, pro Set Pet Product, and you
can find pro Sens products at your mass retailers like Walmart,
like Target, like Walgreens. So go out and get yourselves
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Speaker 6: I'm Lisa Smith Putnam, the hosts of the new and
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Speaker 1: Let's talk past, Let's done, Pets talk about radio Headline.
Speaker 7: Radio, pet live radio dot com.
Speaker 2: So welcome back to Afterbats with doctor Jeff here on
pet Life Radio once again. You can call us at
eight seven seven three eight five eight eight eight two.
We'll just go ahead and send me a little email
or a little note to doctor Jeff at petlife Radio
dot com. And I am here for you to answer
your questions, to save you some money and actually to
send you some free products, and what could be bad
about that? That's actually ideal and that's good stuff too.
My dogs actually have five dogs, and I have my
dogs on the daily vitamin. I have my senior for
the regulars and my adult for my younger dogs, my
kind of my middle aged. I have two seniors, and
also my seniors take a glucosamine. Now again, I know
it's not fair to say this that they really love it,
because one of those is a labrador, and as anyone
knows who has a labrador is they will eat first
and ask questions later. They gobble up stuff so fast
you wonder what were you thinking? And yet he's the worst.
I mean, if I ever turn around and he's not there,
he somehow looks at me and sees what I'm doing
and sees that I'm occupied, and he literally to watch.
It's almost like he's tiptoeing out so nobody could see him.
And I'll find him in the kitchen. He's learned how
to open the fridge, he's learned how to open drawers,
and he is absolutely impossible. And I should have known.
I should have known because when we brought him home
twelve years ago, he was head body deep into the
fifty pound bag of dog chow and it tipped over
or he pushed it over, and there he was, and
he was so fat getting into that food. He was
like moaning all the way home. And I should have
known at that point, oh my god, I'm going to
have the typical Labrador garbage canhound. And the writing was
on the wall. Did I listen, Of course not, But anyway,
he's the best dog ever anyway, So I just know
the products are great and your dogs will love them.
So anyway, I did get a little note from Mark
in New York. And you know what's interesting is I
love this topic because there is so much controversy with
his topic. And I'm telling you, just the other day
I saw a very very well bred, beautiful dog, and
yet I was so amazed and shocked at the vaccine
histories that were brought in. Because I will tell you
that you could talk to ten different readers and you're
going to get ten different answers. So you know, I
really think that it's a very smart idea to listen
in as I'm we're going to start telling you how
we want stuff done or how I recommend it done,
and that is the following. I believe this is assuming
that really nothing's been done, or you have a breeder
that you're working with that hasn't really messed anything up
yet and they have a tendency to do so. But
we're going to go ahead and I'll show you my mind.
I said, this is the chance, as I often say that,
I get to be on my soapbox, and this is
my opinion, but I believe there are many out there
that share it. The more I go to the conferences
and we talk about vaccines and what you should be
vaccinating for and how many vaccines you should give then
one day and all that stuff, I think I'm pretty
much now the norm. So here it goes Ideally, for
we're going to assume now a dog, a puppy in
your basic city, Okay, ideally, if they've nursed well when
they were younger, mom's immunity from the early milk we
call colostrum should last them ideally anywhere from eight to
ten weeks. Because I say eight to ten, and we
don't know which ones are eight and which ones are ten,
we recommend starting all the puppy vaccines at eight weeks
and what we typically do, at least what I do
for Los Angeles is the distemper with all the stuff
that comes with it, which is adnovirus type two and
power influenza and the parvo. And that's it. On day one,
which is eight weeks of age. Then four weeks later
count them four weeks. Now we're looking at twelve weeks.
I will give the second set of again the DA
two P plus the parvo, and I will add in
at this point because it's a core disease in my area,
So we're talking about core vaccines. Those are the vaccines
that are basically highly recommended for one's area, where they
live and lifestyle. And that is I add in the bordotella.
Now note note that I did not say anything about
the L and the L in the DA two P
L vaccine which many people use and should use is leptospurosis.
And that really it depends on where you live, what
the prevalence of the disease is in your area, and
whether or not you want to continue nually tax the
immune system by giving a vaccine for disease that they
may not ever be exposed to. So for us, if
you have the typical dog puppy. Obviously it's not going
hiking in the mountains, in the woods, no stagnant water
and running streams, and where wild animals are urinating in
the water and passing the Lepto spira disease. Then I
will go ahead and not give the l the leptos process.
And four weeks later, now we're at sixteen weeks of age,
I give what I call my final set, and that
is the DA twop again with the parvo and also
board oftella. Now in many municipalities, at sixteen weeks four
months of age, the rabies is also due. And again
shoot me. They can come after me, all you people
the Department of Animal Regulation. I do not like to
give the rabies then, not because of the age issue.
I think it's fine to give, but you're less set
of shots. You're find a puppy shots or do it
sixteen weeks and that is way too much vaccine to
give to any dog in one day. So what I
tell my clients, unless they're knocking on your door, unless
you're going to be having a board someplace where they
require it, unless you're going to be traveling someplace and
they require it, hold off on the rabies for three
or four more weeks, so I usually haven't come back
in about twenty weeks. Now does a dog really need
three sets of vaccines? And the answer to that is no.
So why do we give three sets? Well, very simply
because we know that as the immune system is developing,
we know that a vaccine is probably only good at
the beginning, maybe anywhere from three to five weeks, So
we say usually four weeks is going to be fine.
At some point between twelve and sixteen or twelve and
twenty weeks of development, the body is going to be
able to mount that long term immune response to last
the year before the first booster is given, and we'll
talk about that in a minute. So the issue really becomes,
then what do we need to give three Well, the
answer is no. If you are starting a vaccine series
on a dog, let's say you've adopted it from the
shelter and it's already twelve weeks of age, then you
only need to give two, twelve and sixteen. Let's say, however,
you adopt a dog from the shelter, no vaccine history
ever that you can prove that you know of, and
the dog is a year, how many vaccines should you
give And the answer I wish I could have a
guessing game coming in. So the answer is two not
why not one? The dog's already old enough. Just give
the booster, ah, because a booster has to work and
create what we call an amnemnestic response or a memory
response based on least having had one vaccine. Now that
vaccine could have been given when the dog was eight
weeks old, and now a year goes by, never had
other shots. And you want to give a booster, and
you could show that when that dog was eight weeks
of age it did get the first distemper parvo. Then
that's all you need is the one more. But if
you don't know, even if the dog is an adult,
you want to give a series of two. You give
it the first one, and then you wait for three
four weeks, and you give the second one. Now we
talked about the long term booster and all, by the way,
border tell it pretty much again for the same logic.
You're only really giving it because you're starting in at
twelve weeks, and you only really need two. If you're
starting a vaccine at twelve weeks, we only give two.
Before I get on the subject of cats. I want
to talk about one more thing we believe. I shouldn't
say we many of us believe that we as a
profession have been over vaccinating. There are a few different
camps out there with minor differences of opinion. As far
as the booster vaccines. The lead that I follow is,
I like, after a year, just in case there was
something going on with that immune system when they were puppies.
You just don't know, you're not sure. I would go
ahead and give a year booster after my four month shot,
my sixteen week shot, and that means about a year
and four months of age after that. I do not
routinely give vaccines. My recommendation. I do not routinely give
vaccines unless we tighter first and realize there is a
need for vaccine and there's a test that could be done.
It can be done either sent to the lab, it
can be a test that you can run in house,
and it will tell you if there is enough antibodies circulating,
do not give the vaccine. Enough is enough is enough?
So what we do is we recommend, strongly recommend the tighter.
If the tighter is low, I'll give the vaccine. And
what I do here because I don't want people spending
money twice and hating me. I will give the vaccine
for free. If the vaccine tighter is adequate, showing adequate
and protection. Do not give the vaccine now the bordertell
vaccine you can't really tighter for And the other vaccines
like Corona, like lime disease, like lepto, these are what
we call the optional vaccines depending on lifestyle. It is not,
at least in Los Angeles proper not one of the
core vaccines that everybody is giving. So if you hike
a lot, if there's risk of you know, near ticks,
you travel a lot with your dog where there's ticks,
if you are up in the mountains, then you might
consider doing lime disease vaccine. You might consider giving the
LES vaccine, etc. But to do it corona, I think
Corona's a waste. I mean Corona, you're taxing the immune system.
That's like giving a vaccine for the twenty four hour
stomach flu where maybe somebody gets it maybe once every
few years. Right, And if you have a dog who's
at risk and is getting Corona disease all the time,
obviously some sort of susceptibility. Then of course we're going
to go ahead, I give it the vaccine, but to
do it as a routine absolutely in my book, positively
not cats. Cats also around the same time. Interestingly, since
cat's immune systems, it is believed, seem to develop a
little quicker than dogs, most feel, or at least many feel,
that a cat's immune system is well enough developed by
twelve weeks. Therefore, per our discussion, if you've been following,
the cat only needs two, eight and twelve. What I do,
and I'm just a little neurotic, I will give a
sixteen week just to be safe. But what I saw,
the reason I started this conversation, is that this beautiful
dog came in and the breeder and they look like
they knew exactly what we're doing, gave great information. They
were giving vaccines every two weeks since the dog was
six weeks of age. Everybody out there, that is absolutely unnecessary,
ridiculous in my book, and it's only going to hurt
the immune system. Potentially starting that early is going to
interfere with mother's immunity. Absolutely, positively unnecessary. So again, if
you see that question it you do not need to
give vaccines every two weeks. That is so old fashioned
back in the day when they used to give vaccines
at six eight and ten or eight, ten and twelve.
That was not enough. Too many vaccines, number one, and
you're finishing in twelve weeks. We've already learned that's not
good enough for a dog. You gotta finish around fifteen
sixteen weeks of age. And they also only gave one
distemper measles which supposedly shouldn't interfere with mom's immunity in
six weeks, and they were just kept giving the dog
with four months of age never got another distemper shot.
I am not a fan of that either. So anyway, Mark,
I do thank you for the email. I hope that
answers your questions. Stick with eight twelve sixteen, stick with
the core vaccines in your area. Just check with your veterinarian.
I would recommend when the puppy is a year four
months of age, give a one booster and after that
don't do it again unless you have to for some reason.
I would recommend your veterinarian draw little blood every year
every year and a half, depending on how well you've
been doing. Let me just give it one adendum to that.
There are many in my community that are pretty much
anti vaccine. They just don't like vaccines for themselves, let
alone their pets. So I've been doing the tighter testing
now on certain dogs for up to over ten years,
and guess what, many of them, if not most, are
continually maintaining protective immunity ten years after a vaccine. So
the bottom line is your dogs, probably for at least's
temper and parro, do not, I repeat, do not need
vaccines every year. So don't do it maybe every three years,
every four years. Stretch it out as long as you can.
And interestingly, I'm not going to name a manufacturer by
name in conversations. They only on their labels talk about
their vaccine being good for a year, but they will
guarantee their vaccine for three years, just like the one
or two companies out there that do put out a
three year vaccine. So anyway, I've given you plenty of
food for thought, and I look forward to seeing you
next week here on Ask the Bets with doctor Jeff
at Petlife Radio dot com. I am doctor Jeff Werber,
your host, looking forward to hearing you send me some emails.
I will give you free product even if you send
me an email to doctor Jeff at petlife radio dot com.
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