Speaker 1: A lot of babe.
Speaker 2: This is pet Life Radio. Let's talk pets. We are
here live. You can hear me both things. We can
hear me. My request came in, so hello, b how
you doing, Stephanie, Hi, good morning everybody. So anyway, let
me just start my show here on pet Life Radio.
So we're alive here for the next thirty minutes, here
on Instagram and pet Life Radio. Here for you, here
for your pets. You know the drill, and if you
need to get a hold of me here on Instagram,
just type away, love to hear a Steve and your request,
I'm gonna is redmin key. I will accept it, but
I don't know a lot of people will hit that
for somebody's hit that button accidentally. Then when I say okay,
I'll take in, they said no, it's a mistake. I
don't want to do it. I don't want to do
it anyway. For here on cut Life Radio, you can
get me easily eight seven seven three eight five eight
eight eight two. They're the three eights eight seven seven
three eight five eight eight eight two and you can
ask away and hopefully you have some questions, things you
want to talk about. I always have things to talk about.
But hang on second, let me just review the request
and see if we want to go live and see
if they want to do it. How's the risk? Well,
the risk is I guess okay. I know my good friend,
my doctor Robbie, who is a hand surgeon. He is
I'm going in tomorrow. They're gonna take this. It's a
soft wrap, but it has like a plate in here
to try to keep my thumb. Unfortunately, if my patients
were as bad as I am as a patient, I'd
be in big trouble because I am terrible. So I'm
not sure to use it at all, and I cannot
not use it. It's impossible for me. So anyway, they're
gonna take this off. He's gonna take the stitches out
from the surgery, and then he's gonna put me on
a hard cast, which I won't be able to probably.
I mean this guy over time, who's a soft wrap.
So I got a little soft. I'm using the hands
way too much. I'm using my thumb way too much.
I'm not supposed to at all. So it is what
it is. But we'll see when he takes everything off
how it is. So anyway, what's the best way to
firmer dog's loose stool besides pumpkin great. In fact, that
is so perfect because that's one of the things I
wanted to talk about today. I'd say one of the
most common messages calls on air VET on anything we
get has to do with GI problems. Okay, it's either
gonna be vomiting and diarrhea. And what's the most concerning diarrhea?
Two people all right, when their pets have this, it's
my dog has soft stool and there's blood, Oh my god, blood,
and people panic and they think it's, oh my god,
it's an emergency. My dog is bleeding. And truth is
that it is ninety five ninety five percent of the
time not as serious as one would think because bleeding
from the lard's bowel. We call that colitis inflamed large bowel.
So what happens because of issues with here's the list
I run through with people so you can get a
better understanding, because I don't want you to panic. I
don't want you to run to emergency and spend it
thousands of dollars and have to wait six or eight
hours to be seen for something that wasn't even an emergency.
So what are some of the underlying causes. First, I'm
gonna wave as we talk. We're gonna wave glad you
guys are joining. So nerves, stress, excitement, anxiety, diet diet change,
eating something you shouldn't have, or possibly parasites if it's
a puppy. I put parasites up on that list. Adult
dogs very infrequent, unless, of course they're gunning a dog
park or playing with small dogs and maybe picked up giardia.
So bottom line, not that serious. So what is it?
So the bowel because of any of those things, stress, anxiety, excitement,
diet diet issues, it gets inflamed. When it gets inflamed,
it stops functioning. One of the jobs of the colon
is to absorb the last twenty five or whatever percent
of fluid that's left that was not reabsorbed in the
small lowel. So when it gets in flame, it stops working,
it gets irritated, and as in Jesta passes through, it's
sort of tearing some of the cells, the lining, which
is mucus, and that's why you're seeing blood when you
see red blood in the stool, that is coming from
the very end of the bowel, which is the large bowel,
which is the colon. You have it ascending colon, transverse colon,
descending colon. So that's not the bleeding I worry about. Well, ah,
what do I worry about? I worry more when it's
black tari stool. That tells me there's bleeding higher up
in the GI track, either the stomach like or ulcers
or this small bowel, which could be many things, also inflammation,
but it can be intestino lymphoma. It could be a
severe something that is irritated the bowel and made some
clutch By the time that bleeding comes out the other end,
it's black and tarie. That is the one that is
more concerning to us as veterinarians. So anyway, so what
happens is with that, we want to soften the stool
a little bit. We want to make it easy for
the stool to pass through. We want the colon de
heel and sometimes we can do it without even drugs.
I mean, if I'm gonna use drugs, it might be
metronite as all flagile, but I like to try just
just dye it at first. So that's where the pumpkin
comes in. So you want to increase the fiber but
the problem is you don't want to do too much,
because if you do too much, then stool is gonna
say really soft. It's just enough a small amount, So
pumpkin cooked, oatmeal cooked, sweet potato cooked, the AMS brand
brand flakes. The newest one that really the GI people
like is silium silium husk powder purecilium. They're really careful
if you're going to use the cilium that comes as
a product like metamucil or fibro ol or correct old
read the label because a lot of times those companies
will put in xylotol as an artificial sweetener for people
to make it more palatable. Well for dogs, xylotol we
know could be very, very toxic, so you want to
avoid anything with xylotol. So basically just pure silium husk
powder is probably going to be very effective, and that's
what I would do that first. Then if that doesn't
work by itself, then I'm going to go to maybe
adding some medication like a flagile a metronitasol, and beyond
that we may even have to use some azulphidine or
some steroids. But as we go up in the aggressiveness
of treatment, I like to save those for a last
or not not my first choice. All right, it's just soft,
no blood. So if it's just soft and not runny,
then just a little bit of fiber should do the trick.
And that is really that's where I would start. And
if the pumpkin didn't work, you could dry sweet potato
or oatmeal or brand or just go straight to silium.
Silium powder seems to be the one that most of
the gi people like. The ear infects is more common
older dogs. I don't know if it's more or less. Hey, Lauren,
how are you? I don't know if it's more or less.
I mean, we see ear infections a lot. Is usually
secondary to allergy. Here's the thing about ears. There is
a beautiful co relationship between normal flora, which is normal bacteria,
and normal yeast in an ear, which is normal, and
they usually keep each other in check, and therefore you
don't really notice a problem because the bacteria are out
competing the east. The east outcome be the beer, and
they reach a balance. What happens usually usually not as
if all the dogs are catching reds of books, but
the yeast wins out when there's an imbalance. So that's
why most ear infections are going to be yeast related. Ah,
what causes the imbalance? The imbalance could be from anything.
It could be some sort of irritation, it could be inflammation.
Why from allergy. So we know that when there's allergic dermatitis,
the ears are affected not only from a dermatitis, which
could be related to atopy that's inhaled allergens or direct
contact with alergerisms. You know, like dogs like you rub
their ears on something of grass. That could be an irritation.
But the thing that we see most often when it
comes to ears that if we have a dog that
continually gets allergic ear disease leading to inflammation infection, we're
thinking that food. So when we think food, I think
when I see a dog, whether it's feet, ears, or face,
where they're rubbing their face, they're scratching and they're pawing
at their face, their feet, they're going after their feet
and their ears. That takes food member totally about fifteen
to twenty percent of all allergies or food related but
that brings food up to more of the top. And
I'll talk about feeding trials, hydrolyzed protein, maybe a novel protein,
getting something changing the food. So anyway, that is why
we typically see the ear infections. It is very common
a lot of times. In fact, now we're treating allergies. Interestingly,
as you know, we don't use steroid as much as
we used to. We have appicle, we have a side
a point, so we have other medications and they're new
ones out there now too that are going to attack
the Jack one Jack three enzyme that works with interluken
thirty one or side appointment to tax interluken thirty one.
So we're seeing more of those. But when it comes
to ears, and it's interesting because I went to a
talk two years ago. One of my favorite conferences to
go to is called sky Skie put on by the
Colorado Veteran Medical Association Skye ski CE and it is
phenomenal conference, really loose, really casual. It's the end of
the last week of January. I'm going again this year.
I'm a snowboarder as crazy as I am, and it's
a lot of fun. But he was a fantastic speaker.
He was a professor in dermatology at I think Iowa State,
and anyway, he said that even though we're going to
new treatments, when it comes to allergies, skin allergies. When
it comes to ears, don't forget the steroids. He says,
there's no way when you put the topical ear medicine
that it's going to really get to work. If there's
so much inflammation. We have to reduce the inflammation, not
to try to fight the outl energy that's already by
other things. To reduce the inflammation. When you do cider
point for example, that is anti allergy. It is inter
luken thirty one attacker, but it doesn't remove the inflammation.
When it comes to ears, we have to bring that
inflammation down. Thus, we still use good old fashioned steroids
and again work with your veterinarian and they're great topical earmdiscence.
There's also things we can put in that last have
a long lasting effect. So if you have an animal
that's impossible to clean, impossible to treat, we can use
things likecocernia or claro. So we have some alternative solutions,
but steroids may be the key. All Right. Can ear
infections increase due to diabetes. I'm just trying to think
of a leak. It's a good question. A link between diabetes,
high blood sugar and I don't know it could be
that indirectly, if the yeast feed on the sugar and
the high sugar in the blood, can it increase the
ability of the yeast to outcompete and the bacteria and
then cause in infection. Well it's not a direct cause
a relationship, but might it. It's a great question. What
I can do is I'll talk to some dermoids, the
dermatologists and see if they know of any direct correlation.
While I'm waiting for more questions, let me some other
things I wanted to talk about. So first of all,
so we didn't you know, we talked about the some
of the problems that we see on a regular basis
that are more common. So a lot of times over
the years because we have new people joining the show,
I don't want to always talk about something we may
have spoken about in the future. I try to be careful,
but again I don't want to eliminate things that that
I know of our importance, or things that I see
or hear on a regular basis. And a lot of times,
even if I have spoken about in the past, if
anyone's like me, you forget them after a while and say, oh, yeah,
I remember he talked about that and you don't you
forget the details. I mean, I always joke that I
have a unique skill, a very unique skill, and that
is that I can be introduced to somebody, shake their hand,
and forget their name all at the same time. So
you know, it's one of other things. Being forgetful is
out the end of the world that as we get older,
sometimes it's worse. All right. While you guys get the
courage to come up and ask more questions, we have
to break for our show here at pet Life Radio
halfway through the show. Usually I run over time anyway,
So in the meantime, while you're here on Instagram, come
up with your questions and we'll talk about that when
we get back. I want everybody to share for it.
But we can talk to you during the commercial breaks
as well, So Mark taking away, you can have your
commercial break. We'll go from there.
Speaker 1: Oh sure, it's all fun and games until someone ends
up in a cone.
Speaker 2: That's right, we are animals.
Speaker 1: Deal with it.
Speaker 2: Atline Radio, Let's talk pets, Let's talk pats. Let's don
pets on Privy for.
Speaker 1: Radio Headline Radio atlin Radio dot com.
Speaker 2: And we're back here in pet Life. Araireer we just
had a question about food allergy testing. Is a glucus test? Correct?
Is it quite expensive? So what I recommend still, and
I believe if I spoke to the allergists, unless there's
something very very new on the horizon that hasn't hit
me yet, which is very possible because if I don't
have the case myself where we're discussing it, or I'll
wait for my next conference and go to a derm
talk where I can talk to my friends or a dermatologist.
I'm not sure about any test that's going to work
for food. When it comes to food, the best way
is one of the more difficult ways, and that is
an elimination diet. Now, the best elimination diet is also challenging,
cab be a little expensive, and that is complete antigen elimination.
And those are the foods that have basically they take
up the proteins, break them up, so there's no anigen.
So it's a hypo allergenic diet. So if you're going
to do that, then that is the best way, but
it's very impractical. So there's a food out there called
the ZD. Now, some of what we've now seen is
some of the HP hydrolyzed protein diets. There are a
number of them out there. They are pretty good as well.
But understand, during this trial, you're going to need to
feed nothing other than that food for eight weeks, and
I mean nothing, So no treats, nothing off the carpet.
They can't pick anything up on the garbage. You got
to be really, really careful. And if the symptoms, which
are mostly face, feet and ears, seem to improve, then
you know you're onto something. Then the next step is
to introduce proteins one at a time and see where
you get this reaction again, and then you know you
cross it off the list. Very time consuming, very difficult
to do, very difficult not to cheat, and therefore it's
often a failure. So what I recommend as an alternative
is looking for novel protein single anigen diets. What does
novel mean. Novel means proteins the dog has never been
explosed before, things like we've talked about this, venison, rabbit, bison, duck, alligator.
In some places you can still get kangaroo meat things
that are so unique. Soy protein then as a single
grain or single vegetable, and that can be again eliminating
the three things you want to eliminate the most in
the proteins is the poultry, which is chicken, turkey, and beef,
because most foods over the years have had those three
things and dogs can develop allergies. As far as the
grains eliminate, you want to stay away from corn, wheat,
and rice. Now you're left with things like barley and
oats and quinoa, things like green pea, broccoli, cauliflour. You
want to pick up things that the body has probably
never seen before. And as far as your proteins, as
we mentioned, anything but the big three which are chicken, turkey,
and beef, and start feeding small amounts of that and increase.
But when you do this test, let's say you choose venison,
let's say you choose rabbit. That means even the treats
that you give have to be rabbit trees and nothing else.
So do that for eight weeks. If it's food related,
most likely, most likely you will get see some success
by doing these novel protein elimination diets. Now, also remember
one thing. If the allergy is year round and not seasonal,
then food is higher on your list. But if even
if it's ears, feet and face, But if the allergy
is seasonal, meaning it's not much during the winter, and
you don't change food seasonally, then don't even bother with
the food. It's not food again. Fifteen percent to twenty
percent max. Of allergies are food related, all right, My
cloud chaser Side of Point from a maliamet is two
dollars for projection daughter's critical care. VT doesn't not even
long term appicle because the increases cancerous need to reorder
your anti ith. So the anti H shampoo is called
what itch is good? I mean, yeah, side of point
is very expensive, but if you have a malamute appleicle
is expensive too. There is a new one out there.
I'll get to the information on it, and it is
supposedly a little safer. I again, I use a lot
of side of Point. I use a lot of Applical
as well. I have yet to see a problem. That
doesn't mean it doesn't exist. And you know when you
see cancer. If you have a young dog where cancer
is not super common and they're on appical and get cancer,
then I think this is a strong correlation. But if
you have an older dog, then cancer is going to
happen potentially anyway. So I don't know how you can
if there's just a direct causative relationship between side of
point and the cancer. I'm not saying it's not there,
but it's more difficult to prove. But when you get
as I said, malamute, you're looking at problems anyway. And
if you want to try something and it is seasonal
and you want to go you know, limited a little bit,
go back to pregnic zone. If you use pregnic zone judiciously,
if you respect the drug, if you quickly get onto
an alternate day or every third day treatment and still
controls it, then I mean we've used steroids for years,
thirty forty years and I haven't had issues. It all
depends on how it's used, how you respect the drug,
and the health of the pets. You know, a malamute,
older malamute should be checking anyway once a year, once
every's you know, six to eight months, if not every
twelve months, blood tests make sure they're okay. So anyway,
that's what I would recommend. Bumps on legs are more
indicative of topical allergies, right, Yes, when you have anything
that's feet face ears usually point to potential food allergy.
It could be overlapped. Trust me. I say, Joe, the
dog didn't read the book. Dog doesn't know what it's
supposed to, how it's supposed to have the allergies, what
the symptoms may be. But the general rule, those are
the big ones. Fee face ears for food. If you
have lesions, thighs, abdomen, lower back, lower back, I'm thicking fleas,
then there's a strong likelihood. And another thing, if it
is pollen's usually get a better response than is any
of the anti allergies other than the food ones. So
that's why I'm not Yes, it's possible, I wouldn't hang
my hat on it, all right, Hey, deb join me late.
Another thing you can think about if you're having a
dog and you are trying to eliminate the allergies, this
might be a good case for allergy testing. It's a
blood test, I don't know, depending on who does it,
anywhere from four hundred to four hundred and fifty bucks.
Find out what they're allergic to, get the serums and
start desensitizing. I mean that still is the gold standard.
Instead of using needing these drugs, do the test. Once
you have the test, you know exactly what they're allergic
to you start to desensitize with the serums or sumpling
will drops. I prefer the serums the injections. Why because
you start routine daily every other day. At think it's
not never daily, it's every other day. And then you
go up. You keep giving a little bit more, a
little bit more, and then you start spreading out from
every other day to once a week to two weeks
to a month. And then when you FAI and it's
that lower dose vial, you get more concentrated stuff, and
you start all over again, and you finish the second vide,
you go to the third vial, which is the final vial,
and that you do this thing again. You get the
point in about four to six months. Whatever it is.
Your maintenance is a shot of month. It's so easy.
Think about it. If you have a dog that has diabetes,
you're giving injections every day twice a day. So they
have to do it once every other day and then
once every three day, et cetera, et cetera. It's not
the end of the world. It's subcutaneous. It's easy to learn.
The needle is super thin, and that is the best
way to go. Now, what happens though you have to
understand that when you get to maintenance, then you're doing
once a month, which is the good news. Now there
is a new alternative. It's not new anymore, but it's
been around for a while, sublingual drops. But here's the
thing with the drops. Sublingual drops very convenient. It's a
drop under the tongue in the mouth once a day forever.
So you never get to start increasing the dose and
decreasing the amount of time in between. No, no, no no.
When it comes to the drops, it's one drop or
two drops whatever it is under the tongue for the
rest of the patch life. So three hundred and sixty
five days a year. I mean, I think that's more
challenging than the injections, because the injections a little more
challenging at the beginning. You have to learn how to
give a shot, and you have to do it every
other day. But it decreases the time between injections increases,
and then I think in the long haul my opinion,
And again, who am I to talk, I'm a bit ornair.
I give shots to animals every day. For me, it's
a piece of cake, but for others it maybe a
little more challenging. Or you have a dog, there's no way,
no way you're gonna give a shot at home, in
which case you can get the drops. But as far
as a long term therapy, that is the best way
to go six years old. It's to break the bank. Yeah,
six years old is kind of young, not young for allergies.
But I see what you're talking about. I would think
about doing the allergy test. We do it, we send
it off to the lab, we get a result, they
make the serums. We teach you how to give shots
big malnut to be a problem. That way you will,
as you said, in the long haul. The hope is
to build up the dog's own immunity to those allergens.
And then I mean I had allergy shots as a kid.
In fact, I tested positive as a kid. Dogs, cats, horses, sheep, goats, cows,
and hay. Also wheat and which I live on. I
love pasta, also some fruits and vegetables eggplant for example,
I love eggplant parmesan. So I have zero allergies now
for me, I don't know why did outgrow them all?
You know, through vet school though I was still allergic.
But my best thing for me because cats were my
biggest allergy. I got a cat. I've had as highs
as many as five. I just lost Ali, which is
probably well. I lost one Monchie about a year and
a half ago. I lost Ali about two months ago.
And so I have three now, and yes, looking for
one or two more. My wife will kill me a
few years me say that. But anyway, I five dog.
It was so perfect, went out of balance of five
and five that nobody can't accuse me. Oh you're like
dogs better? No, I com both the same. It all
depends I just getting the right one. But yes, now
I have the three cats, the five dogs. So anyway,
I basically outgrew my allergies or I think honestly getting
a cat how was the best? Yeah? For date, because
I think getting that exposure every day to single cat.
His name was Gimpy. We adopted him because he was adopted.
He had some sort of leg injury and he had
a little subtle limp. But it wasn't so much the limp.
It was every time he would take a step in
a quiet room, you could hear the click click, So
something in his joint was clicking, and he had that limp.
So we called them gimp beat. He was such a
great cat. And then after that we just started getting
more and more cats. And you know then, as I said,
as many as five. So again, when you talk to allergiests,
interesting they say that some people when they hit adolescents,
they could outgrow their allergies. But I still had my
allergies as a twenty year old, twenty four year old.
I mean I started vent school when I was twenty five,
I still had the allergies. By going to vet school
and having to go through my large animal rotations where
I was getting the horses, sheep, goats and cows and
betted on. Hey, I was a little bit of a wreck.
But now I have zero so I have no idea.
I can't say. All I know is I'm being a veterinarian.
I am way happier not being allergic to all these
animals than being allergic. Because when I was in med school,
I was a wreck. Everybody knew if they needed tissue,
let's go ask Warbur because he definitely had tissues. Every
pocket on my coveralls had tissues in them, all right,
were getting towards the end of our show. We're actually
at the end of our show. Any last questions before
I see you next week and again had to get
home me during the week and get a hold of
me anytime. Very easy to get a hold me on
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Tell your friends here in pet Life Radio. Pet Life
Radio a wealth pet information and it's not just my show.
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are five shows you should listen in because you're going
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Most of our shows are going into podcasts, so you
can call them up anytime. Listen to old shows. I
have more cow many five hundred shows than they can.
I think so because I had my five hundredth Yeah, yeah,
about five hundred shows. There's so many things you can
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so you know, tune in, tell your friends about pet
Life Radio as well. And then those of you who
know me, well, you probably have my phone number. Yes,
I'm pretty easily give out my cell phone, much to
the dismay of some of my family. And much other
veterinarians who think I'm insane. But I got to tell
you something. The best way to develop long term relationships
is be accessible. When my clients know in a pinch
they can reach me, then that's phenomenal and it makes
me happy as well. And of course air vet you
can reach of a veterinarian twenty four to seven, So
anyway easier to get a hold of can catch me
here every Sunday morning on Instagram. You can also send
me direct messages on Instagram, on LinkedIn, on Facebook. I mean,
it's all there, so there's no excuse not to get
a hold of me. I don't want you running to
emergencies because I will tell you most of my clients
that are frustrated with the emergency situations, the emergency hospitals
that we have, especially in Los Angeles, they're frustrated because
they went there, they spent a fortune and they found
out after the fact that they overspent. They didn't need
this test, they didn't need that test, they'd need to wait.
As a matter of fact, they probably didn't need to
go at all. So take advantage of the wealth of
information that's out there online on air, bet here, on
pet Life Radio and you'll definitely save yourselves a lot
of money, a lot of headache, and a lot of time. Anyway,
don't go away. I would go away now, but we'll
be back next week, same time, same channel, here on
pet Life Radio, here on Instagram, and would love to
have you join the show. Tell your friends and come
equipped with questions during the week. If you think of
something you said I want to ask Werber, just write
it down, come on on Sunday and now we everybody
can benefit as well. Have a great week. Everybody see
it next Sunday.
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