Speaker 1: You were listening to Petlifradio dot com and.
Speaker 2: Good morning in case maybe you are here live with
doctor Jeff Werber, the host for the next thirty minutes
on Ask the Bets of Doctor Jeff here on pet
Life Radio. And we are the only live call in
radio show here on pet Life Radio, something we want
you to take advantage of. So if you have any
questions about your pets, I always have an agenda. We're
talking about some different organ systems we're going through and
I think we're going to continue eyes today, but makes
no difference any question you have, give us a call.
Speaker 3: You can call us live right here.
Speaker 2: At eight seven seven three eight five eight eight eight two.
You can log on if you're with us right now
on the internet, you can just go on to pet
Life Radio, click on the Ask the Vets tab and
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our producer. We want more people on this chat. And
then lastly you can go send me a quick email
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We will send you out a free pro Sens product
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So we have I was two weeks ago if we
were alive from the North American Veterinar conference. Coming up soon,
we're going to be at the Western Veterinari conference and
then very shortly thereafter at the Global pet Expo. As
a matter of fact, a number of our hosts here
on pet Life Radio will hopefully be attending that conference
and we should have a lot of fun together. So
we've gone through a lot of organ systems lately. I
always feel that an educated pet parent is going to
be able to make better decisions, is going to be
a lot more comfortable with the things that they hear,
and more likely be able to engage in conversation with
a veterinarian, you know, philosophically. I get to stand on
my soapbox since this is my show. I am a
bit concerned, to say the least, at the quality of
veterinarians coming out today. And I don't mean knowledge, because
the knowledge is there, Oh my god, they're smart. What
I mean is that because of technology, because of internet,
because of all these factors, because of legal issues. I
continually find that young veterinarians are so afraid to commit
to the obvious that instead they want to test for
everything in sight. Heaven forbid they should miss something at
the first visit. And that's really not the way doctors
and I mean human doctors as well, should be practicing
medicine to do a good job. It's to get that
thorough history, do a good physical exam, and before you
even go to technology, and that by that, I mean
before you go to the ultrasum machine, before you go
to the X ray machine, before you go to the
laboratory for all the blood in your analysis, based on
what you see in front of you, based on the
physical exam, based on the history, how it came on,
where the pet lives. I mean, all these factors, you
should have a pretty darn good idea of what's going on.
And then you get to pick and choose the appropriate
tests to rule out those obvious things first, and then
after that you can go on to the B level
and ultimately the CEA level. I mean see with the
ABC not SEA. And what I'm saying is is that
you know little expressions that I find myself using every day.
If it looks like a duck, walks like a duck,
wacks like a duck, it's probably a duck. So rule
out your duck first before you start looking for other things.
And my favorite rule, I call it my favorite was
a kiss rule. And I don't mean some really great
tongue for that really cute retriever kiss, meaning keep it simple, stupid,
stop looking for the hard things, stop looking for the esoterics,
stop looking for that disease that the vest cann probably
see twice in his or her lifetime, and let's go
with the obvious stuff. And lastly is the expression I've
used it before you. I know many of you that
listen I have heard me say it. Obviously it could
be appropriate to anywhere you live, but you'll get it
when I talk about here in California. But if you're
running along the beach in Malibu and you hear hoof
beats chasing you from behind, what are you thinking? Horses
are zebras? And the logical obvious answers horses. We don't
see zebras running along the beach in Malibum. We can
see horses, So doctor I would say, why are you
looking for those zebras? Haven't even ruled out your horses yet?
Speaker 3: And that's kind of where it boils down to.
Speaker 2: So I've been going through organ systems for those of
you that may not have been joining us on Sunday
mornings here. And we finished some of the endocrine conditions.
Those are the glands, and we talked about thyroid, We
talked about diabetes, both kinds. We talked about Addison's disease.
So now I'm sort of starting in that head end
and we're going to go through some organ systems and
one that has always intrigued me, one that I actually
I often joked that had I not wanted to get
into practice. Had I not been older relatively to some
of my classmates when I graduated veterinary school, I may
have even considered this one as a specialty. Fortunately well
I didn't because I really now hindsight, I love as
a GP getting to do a little bit of everything.
Speaker 3: I don't get bored that way. It's very exciting.
Speaker 2: I get long term relationship with my clients, which probably
for me in practice, the relationship I developed with my
patients and my clients is probably my thrill. Whereas when
you're a specialist, you work through that case, and once
that case is solved, unless that client has other pets
that end up needing that same specialty, you may not
ever see them again. And to me, that wasn't what
becoming veterinarians alt about. But we started with eyes, and
I really do like eyes, and I do a lot
of as a GP, I do a lot of eye work. Actually,
I find just talking to my associates and colleagues of mine,
probably more than many do, just because I enjoy it
so much. And a couple of weeks ago when we started,
before we had our guest host talking about hospice and
home euthanasia, and being at the show, we had started
talking about some of the eye diseases and we mentioned glaucoma,
and glaucoma, as you recall, is a condition where the
eye pressures inside the eyeball itself get very high. There
are two chambers in the eye. One is filled with
a vitreous and when the eye pressure, because of poor
drainage between these two portions of the eye start to
fail or because of certain diseases, the actual pressure in
the eyeball. Think of it as a thick walled balloon
water balloon. You can fill it up with water and
you can still push it, but you get to a
point where you're so tight you can barely push it.
You can't indent it with your thumb anymore, and we
need to, in a sense deflate. You can ask, you know,
the Patriots and Tom Brady how to do that, but
you know, we can deflate the globe if you will,
through medication, through surgery and control the pressures and ultimately,
depending on the underlying cause and the success of the
various treatments employed to try to reduce that pressure, whether
it's through medication, surgery, cryosurgery, whatever, laser those eyes or
that eye the effected eye often needs to be removed.
Much more traumatic, by the way, for us than it
is for the dog. Is a little side note. Not
a client coming the other day and she had a
little Chihuaha that she adopted. She just felt so sorry
for it. It was terribly abused. No one really knows
why or where, but it ended up at the shelter
and both eyes had to be removed. Now you would
think that given a dog where both eyes had to
be removed, meaning now we have a completely blind dog,
that this dog would be ull and MOPy, maybe unfriendly,
maybe fearful because it does can't see what's approaching. O contraire,
this thing, this little Chihuahua, is the happiest, the sweetest thing.
Love is being held, gives kisses. It is just unbelievable
to me how things it seem to bother us so much.
Pets are so resonant, they are able, they rebound so
well from these terrible situations.
Speaker 3: I was amazed.
Speaker 2: This dog I've seen a number of times now before.
It's like now that it's getting used to its new
home and is so well adapted, is even better, which
I can't believe it's even better because it was so
good to begin with. So on the subject of eyes,
you know, let's talk about some of the earlier conditions
that we see. And these are conditions typically if we
see them early. What does that typically mean. Well, if
you're seeing something very early, like in a puppy or
a kitten, then there's a good chance that it's a
congenital problem and something that they were born with maybe
has a hereditary predisposition, as in some of the diseases
that we see. Maybe not, but something that we early on.
One of the things would be, for example, we'll see
dogs that have adbarrant lashes and these are little teeny
lashes that are normal in position, but they're growing the
wrong way. And in other cases we're seeing multiple the
little hair follicle went astray and it's just putting out
all these little hair follicles with lashes growing in every
which direction. The problem there is that the lashes are
growing and rubbing on the eyeballs. So we see these
little dogs come in squinting like crazy, very uncomfortable, often
with corneal ulcers. These are abrasions, These are irritations on
the eyeball. Because of the rubbing of the lashes. And
what happens when a dog has this discomfort, this pain,
this rubbing, well they start squinting. So now picture this
as they squint and those eyes shut, the lashes actually
digging even more to huge, huge issue some fancy names
trickiasis distic iasis. And what we need to do is
those lashes either need to be removed, could be done
through freezing them like appellation, if you will. They have
to be surgically removed. That's via what's called a lid
splitting procedure where the actual hair follicle, the entire lash
and follicle is removed. Electrolysis could be done. I'm sure
many of you know or maybe have had that done before.
So we have to destroy those lashes and at the
same time, sometimes temporarily evert the lids so that means
pull the lids going backwards in the opposite direction, so
those lashes don't continually rub on the eyeball. The good
news is it's very fixable and once fixed, oh my god,
the difference that you see in these pets that have
had problems with their lids is dramatic. Now, well on
in the subject of lids. Let's talk about another very
very common problem that we see certain breeds more than others.
We'll see it often in Chow Chow's Sharpay's I'm gonna
giving you a hint, we see it in Rottweiler's. Truth is,
we could see it in any dog, but in a
much higher predisposition, and that is called tropyon. Entropyon literally
means an inward rolling of the eyelids. So even though
the lashes are normal, the hair at the lids are normal.
Because of the inward rolling, we continually again have hair
that's rubbing directly on the eyeball.
Speaker 3: And it's very interesting. Dogs don't seem to be.
Speaker 2: As bothered initially anyway by having something in their eye.
How crazy do we get when we have a lash
in our eye or a little dust particle, or for
any of you that wear contacts and get that little minute,
little dust particle under the lens, you're tearing.
Speaker 3: It's painful, it's irritating.
Speaker 2: Meanwhile, we have dogs that'll stick their heads out of
it's going sixty miles an hour and are totally fine.
Or I'm continually looking at a dog's eye and I'm
seeing all this crowd or I'm seeing something that doesn't belong.
Speaker 3: In it, it makes me fine.
Speaker 2: But once the abrasive action on the cornea has done
its damage, and I'll explain why just a Minutehen we
come back from our break, that's when we start seeing
the problem. That's when we start seeing more squinting and
more pain. So their ability to withstand the discomfort early
on with an indtact cornea is amazing. But once that
cornea is abraided, forget about it. So we're gonna come
back in just a few minutes. You know, it goes
very quickly. I still want to hear from you. I've
seen nobody joining in the conversation.
Speaker 3: That's terrible.
Speaker 2: Give us a call at eight seven seven three eight
five eight eight eight to two. We could talk about eyes,
we could talk about your pets. We can all about anything,
but we got to talk about it.
Speaker 3: So give me a call. We'll be right back after
the short break.
Speaker 1: We'll be right back right after these messages. Stay tuned.
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Speaker 6: Hey there, pet parents, this is Christy Vaughan, host of
The doggye Dish. Do you love your furry companion? Do
you love making him or her healthy treats but can't
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Speaker 1: Every week only on Petlife Radio dot com. Let's Talk Past,
Let's talk Pets, Talk about Life Radio, Headline Radio, pet
Live Radio dot.
Speaker 7: Com and welcome back.
Speaker 2: You are live with doctor Jeff Weerber here in my
home studio in gorgeous Los Angeles, California. Hope wherever you
are you are braving either cold winter or maybe like
lucky like me in a nice sunny day. Before the break,
we were talking about eyes. We were talking about how
the amazing ability that dogs don't seem to be bothered
by getting something in their eye, and yet sometimes they'll present,
they'll come in with this horrendous irritation. Conjunctivite is tearing
eye discharge because of something called entopy on an inward
rolling of the eyes. And the solution the answer is simple.
The cornea actually has seven layers. There are five layers
of tissue and two tear film layers. Interestingly, the nerve
endings are in the outermost tissue layer. So what happened
is when that layer is intact, it's a true protectant
and allows dogs to therefore not be bothered by dust
particles in the eye. Or that's why they could stick
your head on a windo over a moving car. They
could be hunting and get a little some bushes rubbing
against their eye as long as it doesn't a braid
erode that outermost layer. But once it does, we call
that an abrasion or an ulcer, a corneal ulcer, and
now those nerve endings are exposed and it becomes extremely painful.
As a matter of fact, there are different depths to ulcers. Clearly,
what we call a superficial ulcer is the one that
if our pets are going to have one, it's the
one we want them to have. However, superficial corneal ulcers
are believe it or not, actually more painful than deep
ulcers because the deep ones have already gone past that nervoting,
so you can have a For example, the deepest of
the deep of ulcers is called a dysmeticeal because it's
penetrating Decimet's membrane, which is the last membrane there, and
it's just it's the last protection between that and the
front part of the eye. Okay, so we call the
anterior chamber. Well, those dogs are walking around with dys meticeals,
where that's very serious, very dangerous because the eye can
actually pop rupture, and they are in less pain less
discomfort than the dog who's just got a little superficial scratch,
which something that's very treatable, healable, et cetera, unless, of course,
they have some sort of defect called the Stromold defect,
which actually impedes it slows down their healing, and then
we have to do some fancy footwark to get those
cells to want to heal again. So the entropy on
problem over time. It's not the first time the dog's
eyelashes or hair from the eye lids hit the eye
causing the problem, but it's over time with every time
they blink, every time they open and close their eyes.
Is that finally it takes its toll. It starts a
braiding and now they get painful. Now we get the
ulcers now that because of that, now they want to
squint even more. And of course, just like with the
distic isais, the trick isis the more they squint, the
more damage they cause, and it's a vicious cycle. So
we need to fix these eyes now. Sometimes I'll see
these dogs sharpey puppies, chow chow puppies, roddy puppies that
have already some degree of entropy on. And yet you
don't want to fix those permanently because we need to
wait until these dogs stop growing. Because picture this. In
order to fix the inward rolling, okay, we need to
kind of bring those lids back. But as a dog
grows picture of the Sharpei is a perfect example into
their face, things are going to kind of tighten up
on their own. Well, if you fix or you have
the lids fixed as a puppy where you now made
the lids perfect, and then that dog continues to grow
into their face. Now we have the opposite of enentropyon.
We have something called an ec tropion, which the.
Speaker 3: Eyelids droop outward. You get these heavy lids.
Speaker 2: Think of the Bloodhound right, or the Saint Bernard or
the Newfoundland where they have these huge heavy lids and
you look down at them, all you see is a
big pockets of pink, right, the pink content tybal tissue.
Speaker 3: That's a form of x tropyon.
Speaker 2: So what I recommend and don't ever let a veterinarian
talk you into having your pets eyelids fixed prior to
full growth. And what we do is a temporary fix.
It is a temporary lid tack where we're not removing
any skin, we're not allowing for the healing into a
different location. All we're doing is temporarily everting the lids,
bringing them out so the dog is more comfortable. We
can now treat the ulcer, we can treat the irritation,
and once they are full grown, now we can take
our tax away and see kind of where we're at.
And it's amazing how many dogs, after being tacked and
then complete their growth, never need surgery anyway, So be
very very very cautious about that.
Speaker 3: But so entropyon ectropion. Those are eye lid issues.
Speaker 2: And speaking of premature surgery or inappropriate surgery, this brings
me to another very very common problem, again very breed related,
something we'll probably see more in the cocker spaniel, the
English bulldog, the lassa, the sheitsu, and many of you
that no eyes or have had these breeds.
Speaker 3: You might be thinking to yourself already, oh, I got it,
I know it, I know it.
Speaker 2: And that is called a prolapsed gland of the third eyelid.
But we all call it the late term, even veterinarians
call it the late term. And that is cherry eye.
And if I were to ask you, and if I
could see your hands going up, how many of you
have heard of cherry eye? How many of you have
had pets that have had cherry eye? I can just
see it already, all these hands going up. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
And it's a very common problem. It is so common
that I have Back when cocker spaniels were even more
popular than they are now, I would go sometimes through
in a week see five, six, seven puppies where I
was doing cherry eye surgery. And the reason why I
often say inappropriate twofold number one when that gland they
Let's talk about the mechanics first. The dogs and cats
have what's called a third eyelid. If you ever want
to see the third eye lit how it works when
they blink. They have a lid that comes from the
inside corner and it comes up to the outside corner.
If you want to see it in action, if you
go to your dog or cat right now and just
very gently let me repeat that, very gently, take your
finger on top of the upper eyelid and then just
kind of push down on the eye so the eyelid's
not closed. You're just using that as you you don't
want to touch the eyeball with your finger, so using
the lid, all right, And as you push that eyeball
in just a little, you're gonna see that lid that
flap come up. And it's an extra protective mechanism. It's
that mechanism that has protected the eyes from getting all
the scratches for the you know, animals that are going
through thick brush, animals that are playing with each other.
Speaker 3: It's that extra protective lid.
Speaker 2: Well, on the inside of that lid is a gland
called a gland of the third eyelid or the nictitating
membrane the nyctotans, and this gland is a lymphoid type
follicular gland, and like many others, it's very reactive. So
when a dog has an irritation, when a dog has,
for example, any problem, that gland gets very large and
it gets very red and filliicular, very bumpy. Well, in
some of these dogs, it actually gets so big it
pops out. It prolapses, and we call that a pro
lapse bland of the third eye lid or cherry I
and I mean when I started practicing was working for
my ex boss. The treatment back then was to remove it,
and they did fine. They do totally find post surgically.
Speaker 7: Ah.
Speaker 3: But there's a problem.
Speaker 2: We've learned that this gland has more function than just
a protective land, just a reactive gland, all right. It
also provides an accessory tiar a supply. Now, when you
have these young dogs.
Speaker 3: They have their tear glands are working just fine, so
they don't need accessory, they don't need extra. Ah.
Speaker 2: But when the dogs get older and their tear glands
start to dry up a little bit, if you will,
now we need they need the extra tears produced by
that nictotan, that nictotating membrane gland, the third eyelid, the
third island land, the cherry ee. And if you removed
it when they were puppies, guess what. Now these dogs
as they get older don't have enough tears and get
a condition called KCS corado conjunctivitis sicca cicca, meaning dry
also known as dry eye. And that one, ladies and gentlemen,
that is a tough one to deal with. So we
have learned that we cannot remove that gland. We actually
have to come up with a way to tucket or
depending on the ability to blink and.
Speaker 3: Keep it moist. It's all aesthetic.
Speaker 2: That gland can stay out there as long as when
dogs blink that they cover it with tears. It stays moist,
it stays nice and pink and smooth. It doesn't need
to be fixed, but cosmetically, let's face it, most of
us want to have this gland fixed. So we are
at that time. Time flies by when you're having a
good time. So next week when we come back, we're
going to talk about the techniques, the importance of actually
not removing that gland, and also then none let me
repeat that non emergency nature of this problem, and I'm
going to tell you a very interesting story that happened
to one of my patients with cherry I and an
emergency clinic.
Speaker 3: So anyway, thanks for joining me. I want to once.
Speaker 2: Again thank our sponsors, prost sensepetproduct Com. If you want
to get hold of me during the week, if you're embarrassed,
if you're shy, or if you there's a subject matter
that you just want some help with, go ahead and
send me an email to DRJF. That's doctor Jeff at
Petlife Radio dot com.
Speaker 3: We'll talk about it.
Speaker 2: I will hopefully educate you, ease your mind. Whatever I
can do to at least make you more aware and
understanding of whatever problem you're having, or if you get
the courage next week, join us log onto the show
at petlife radio dot com, ask the bets with doctor Jeff,
or give us a call eight seven seven three eight
five eight eight A two. Have a wonderful week, and
we'll see you next Sunday.
Speaker 1: Let's Talk pets every week on demand only on petlife
radio dot com