Speaker 1: You're listening to Petlifradio dot com.
Speaker 2: And welcome to all of you on this lovely Sunday
morning here in Los Angeles, and just crack on that
afternoon time if you're on.
Speaker 3: The East Coast.
Speaker 2: I'm doctor Jeff Werber, your host for the next half
hour on Ask the Beasts of the Doctor Jeff here
on pet Life Radio.
Speaker 3: And we are, as.
Speaker 2: I believe, the only live call in show here on
pet Life Radio. We want you to take advantage of
it and call in. As a matter of fact, on hold.
Speaker 3: We have Frida.
Speaker 2: We're just going to talk to Freda in just a second,
and we're here for you. It's free, and you're gonna
get advice, hopefully good advice. And if I can't get
you an answer, I will and we'll talk about it
next week. You can reach us live here by calling
eight seven seven three eight five eight eight A two.
You can also send me an email to doctor Jeff.
That's Dr Jeff at petlife radio dot com. You can
also just click on the Ask the Vets tab here
on pet Life Radio. You go on to join the conversation,
and you can do just that join in on the conversation.
That's how easy it is, so we'd love to hear
from you. And for those of you call and this
goes for you to Freda. So after we're done, you're
going to hang on and talk to Mark. We want
to get your information. We're going to send you out
a free pro sense product. And one of our other
sponsors is Kong and we are going to send you
out a free congtoy just for calling in, just for
sending me an email. If we read your questions live
on air, you will get the same goodies. So stay
tuned for the next half hour. Don't be bashful, give
us a call. And Frida, how are you still.
Speaker 3: On the line?
Speaker 4: Yes, good, thank you Frida?
Speaker 3: Where you're calling Flida Florida? Okay, go ahead, all right.
Speaker 4: Yeah, go ahead. We have a new Border Collie pop
mixed uh huh, and she jumps a lot, and I
wanted to know what the best way to you know,
when we come home and she jumps up on us,
what the best way is to discourage that?
Speaker 2: Okay, first of all, congratulations of getting a new pup
and border colligues. Just so you know, I hope you're
really smart, Freda, because they are one of the smartest
dogs on the planet, So I hope she doesn't outsmart you.
Speaker 3: But because they are really great, and.
Speaker 2: You know, it's one of the few breeds and this
is sort of estimated with a lot of the.
Speaker 3: Hurting breeds that you know.
Speaker 2: Typically if you have a dog, let's say, I have labradors,
and they're you know, obviously very smart, very trainable, but
they know what they know and if you taught them something,
they're going to know it. What's interesting about the herting
dogs is they have the knowledge from what they learn,
but if they are faced with the situation that they've
never seen before, they seem to be able to draw
from that which they do know and make a choice,
and often the right choice. It's almost like they have
this ability to extrapolate, disability to deduce based on the
knowledge that they have. So they are just it's a
fascinating breed and they're so cute and you're gonna have
hopefully a lot of fun with this one. So as
far as jumping, the thing with jumping is that you
don't want to make it like it's such a bad
thing in the sense that they're happy to see you.
I think it's great they should be, but we don't
want to encourage it because if their small children. So
what you want to do the old school was, and
I'm sure you've heard this before, is you stick your
knee up in their chest. Okay, I'm not a huge fan.
I think there's two better ways to do it. Number One,
dogs are very good, especially when they're on their hind
feet because they've jumped up so they're obviously on their
hind feet. They can actually walk forward fairly well. But
they don't do such a great job working backwards. So
when you have a dog that's jumping up on you,
you should go forward rather quickly. Okay, they don't.
Speaker 3: Want to fall home.
Speaker 2: They don't want to fall backwards on their behinds, right,
so they're going to jump off. Now, whenever you put
a dog in a position that is uncomfortable for them,
they typically aren't going to want to repeat that behavior.
So if every time they jump up, you tell yourself
and you teach your kids and whoever, just walk forward
really fast. She might take a hop or two backward,
and after that she's going to say, the heck with this,
she's no fun. Yes, And the other thing you can
do is whenever you see it, you can if you
see it in the process.
Speaker 3: Keep going backwards.
Speaker 2: Yourself before she links onto before she attaches to you,
and that way she'll miss the target every time she'll stop.
One last way you can do it if you have
a dog who's really bad and they have a tendency
even with this in a sit to want to jump,
is you have their leash on their training leash. Okay,
you want to step on it, just at the point
where the highest their head can get off the ground
is when they're naturally sitting.
Speaker 3: But anything above that they can't.
Speaker 2: They're like stuck to the ground because you're stepping on
the leash at that two and a half foot part. Okay,
so did you follow, So you're giving break, no play,
no play at all. It's like you're going to see
where how much where you the least needs to be
when they're at a sit, and that's where you step
on it. They're glued at that point. They can go lower,
but they cannot go higher. And uh. And the last
thing you can do is always when these are all
the things to stop them from exhibiting the behavior.
Speaker 3: Now we have to make.
Speaker 2: Sure they know that you appreciate the fact that they
are behaving well. And they're no longer jumping or stop,
so always ask them to do something where they can
earn their praise, like just a simple sit or stay,
and then give them a good pat on the head,
maybe a little tidbit of a treat, and let them
know how thrilled you are that they are not jumping.
So it's not just stopping the negative behavior, it's you
want to record the fact that they're no longer exhibiting
that negative behavior.
Speaker 4: Okay, okay, fantastic. Thank you so much.
Speaker 3: You're very welcome.
Speaker 2: Thanks for listening, and if you can hang on or
you can call back after our show, talk to Mark RP.
We're going to get you information and we are going
to send you out something.
Speaker 3: For puppy for your new border callie.
Speaker 2: What's her name by the way, Penny Penny, so Penny
will get a little treat on our behalf here and
ask the vets with the doctor Jeff on Petlife Radio.
Speaker 3: Thank you for listening.
Speaker 2: And by the way, Freida, anytime you need to call in,
you're going to hopefully have a bunch of training questions
and the house training and all this stuff as you
go through this puppy hook stage, which by the way,
as we all know, is probably the most challenging, including
the chewing. Please give us a call back. Feel free
to call and.
Speaker 3: We'll talk about it.
Speaker 4: Okay, great, thank you, Okay.
Speaker 3: Thanks a lot.
Speaker 2: So last week on the show, we touched upon some
things that we were going to I wanted to address.
We got a little sidetrack as we ended up started
discussing all of well not all, but many of the
household poisons.
Speaker 3: And we're going to talk some more about that.
Speaker 2: One of our future guests on the show is a
good friend of mine, doctor Justine Lee, who is a
double board certified in both veterinary toxicology and veterinary Emergency
Medicine critical care, and we're going to talk to her
about some of the many things around the house that
our pets seem to get into that have a toxic effect,
and what we need to do, how we need to
handle them, which ones might you be able to do
something at home? And Seasonal allergies are something that it's
called that seasonally because there is definitely a seasonality to
what we see affecting our dogs and cats, mostly our dogs.
And what's interesting is that with dogs especially, and this
does not hold true with cats. Which makes the challenge
of it greater when dealing with cats is we can
often tell by the location of allsion on a dog's
body what the culprit may be, sometimes even what the
culprit is, but at least what it may be, So
there are clues when we examine that dog. We look
at the dog and I can tell a client, well,
this is exe or a why allergy?
Speaker 3: And they go, how do you know?
Speaker 2: I said, because the look where the lesions are. So
let me be more specific. Now, understand, a pet who's allergic,
more likely than not, is a allergic to more than
just one thing. So basically there's going to be overlap.
And it's also important to note that one of the
biggest allergens affecting our pets are those that are inhaled.
We call that atopy. Atopy is inhaled allergies. Now, as
we all know for us, what happens if we have
hate fever as I did as a kid, and I
inhale a pollen that I'm allergic to. What are my
symptoms typically going to be? They're going to be respiratory,
I'm going to get that snotty nose, I'm going to
get stuffy. I'm gonna sneeze, I'm going to cough possibly
so that scratchy throat. Anyone who's had it you know
what I'm talking about. And that's how we typically react
to these allergens. And our dogs are pets. It's different,
not to say they can't have a sneeze from the
actual irritation of that pollen, those particles that they're inhaling,
but that's not typically going to be the manifestation of
their allergic disease. What is that manifestation going to be.
It's going to be skin problems. They are going to scratch,
They are going to scratch themselves raw. They are going
to create such a problem that the staff epidermitis the
normal bacteria living on a dog's body, is going to
become an opportunist and pathology. So it's going to actually
start creating a problem. And before this it lived fine,
totally at peace on the dog with the dog. So
there's going to be scratching, there's irritation, there's going to
be sores, redness we call pustules, which are little pimples.
Ere Athema is the redness we are going to see
colaretes or target lesions.
Speaker 3: There are so many.
Speaker 2: Problems and typically, again, where are they going to appear,
pretty much on the underside of their bodies, inside, in
the backs of their thighs, and maybe also some of
their ears. They might have an ear problem associated with allergy. Now,
what happens when you see that dog and I'm sure
you've seen them wherever you are, especially this time of year,
that has crusts and missing a lot of hair or
very thinning hair at their rump, their lower back just
above the tail, going up about four to five inches,
and they're you know, they're stopping and they're scratching, they're
turning around. And when I see that, am I thinking
pollen as my number one source of allergen? And the
answer is no, because in that area, clearly in a dog,
it's gonna be fleas. So it is fleas until proven otherwise.
I'm going to examine that dog. I'm going to be
looking not just for live fleas, because hopefully the owner
has this pet on some sort of flea control and
we're not seeing a lot of flat life fleas, but
what I'm going to see, I'm going to see, hopefully
what we call flea dirt. Flea dirt is the flea excrement,
which basically is, here's the gross part dried blood. At
whose dried blood? Your dog's dried blood? So so much
so that when we see these dogs that have just
a horrendous flea load a lot of this crust, and
it feels it looks like pepper almost, And you put
him in the tub and the water coming off of
this dog is literally red. It is the grossest thing
you can imagine. And you can also imagine how uncomfortable
this poor dog was to have this many fleas on
him or her that the body's turning red when you
wash it off.
Speaker 3: It's disgusting.
Speaker 2: So so there are again this is you know, I
always joke when a dog comes in and he doesn't
follow these rules, or he's he's got fleas, but he's
got you know, all his leasions are on his belly,
or he's got no fleas and he's got leasions on
the back, and I say, wait a second, that's not
I always joke.
Speaker 3: We read the book, but the dogs didn't read the book.
Speaker 2: They don't know exactly where they're supposed to manifest their allergies.
So sure there's overlap. It could happen anywhere, but it
just gives us the starting point. Now, what about that dog,
And I get this in the history. All the time, Doc,
he is chewing his feet like crazy. You can actually
see the saliva stain on his feet.
Speaker 3: He is rubbing his face.
Speaker 2: He'll go down the carpet, he'll go up against the
wall and rub his face. And also often because of
the face thing, he's going at his ears.
Speaker 3: So what am I thinking?
Speaker 2: Now, Well, we've already talked about the fleas and the rump,
lower back, the backside on the top of the dog.
Then we talked about the ventral surface problem and the
inside thighs in the inguinal area we call that, and
that's the pollen, the inhaled pollen problem. And of course,
by the way, it also could be something more topical
in the sense that we have a contact dermatitis. Sometimes
dogs lie down if they lie down on a carpet
that was just treated with some sort of carpet cleaner,
and they are sensitive to that carpet cleaner. We can
see that problem as well. But what about the fate
the feet, the face, and the ears.
Speaker 3: What am I thinking?
Speaker 2: I'm thinking food allergy. So just as insane as an
inhaled allergen doesn't typically present with respiratory problems.
Speaker 3: Wouldn't you know it that.
Speaker 2: A food allergy clearly doesn't necessarily, in fact hardly ever
present with an intestinal problem. It's not like they get diarrhea,
it's not like they get they vomit. When they are
allergic to foods, they also scratch. So these poor dogs,
no matter what the allergen, pretty much they are going
to scratch, whether it's inhaled, whether it's flea, whether it's food,
whether it's contact. They're just plumb out of luck. So again,
now it's time to start evaluating what to do about food.
So anyway, we're getting to that point now, and it
is time for a quick break, So keep your station
right here, don't move here on pet Life Radio assebat
with doctor Jeff and we'll be back in just a minute.
Speaker 1: We'll be right back right after these messages.
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Speaker 8: Hi, this is too d Anderson and I'm the host
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Life Radio.
Speaker 4: Let's talk about Let's done pets, talk about Life.
Speaker 1: Radio, Hetline Radio at live radio dot.
Speaker 2: Com and welcome back to at Life Radios. As the Doctor, Jeff,
I am your host, Doctor Jeff Werber, And before the break,
we were talking about allergies and how huge a problem
it is this time of year and how complicated it
could be because of the various manifestations of allergens where
they are in the body might give us some clues
as to what the main culprit might be. But of course,
as overlap and I continue to allude to cats and
how they are really a challenge. Why because cats don't
give us the luxury of the source of the allergen
based on their presentation. In other words, a cat can
be allergic to any of the things we talked about,
whether it's food, whether it's the inhaled allergens, the pollens,
the weeds, the grasses, whether it's fleas, and they will
present any way of all of these or a combination thereof,
and their condition they often present with is called miliary dermatitis.
They have these little scabs and sores and thickened skin
and very uncomfortable, very itchy. But their the location of
their lesions gives us no clue necessarily to which of
the various potential allergens can be affecting them, So it
makes us more difficult for cat. The good news is
and when he gets treatment in a minute, cats respond
pretty much the same the same treatment. They respond very well,
so they're a little easier for us to deal with,
to treat So before the break, we just started talking
about the different food possibilities food allergies, and how even
though a dog or cat might be allergic food, that
manifestation of this allergy is via skin. So and typically
they're going to do a lot of foot licking, a
lot of face rubbing, and a lot of ear scratching. Now,
mind you, if you remember we talked about the pollens,
they will also go after their ears, So there is
going to be some overlap feet.
Speaker 3: How about the.
Speaker 2: Dog who is continually walking outside on grass or something
some surface that there is a contact sensitivity. Of course,
they're going to look at their feet. So you're going
to say to you the way second, is this food
looking at the feet? Or is this contact the allergy
of looking at the feet, or is it a weird
manifestation of inhaled allergies? So understand, it's not a slam
dunk by any means, but it gives us some clues.
So where do we go from here, Well, the easiest diagnosis,
at least, in other words, the cause of the problem
for any of the allergens is going to be fleas.
Because all you need to do is look at the dog.
You're going to see live fleas. You're going to see
flea dirt, preferably the location of the lesions at the
lower back, and you're going to say, oh, flea allergy.
Let's work to control the flea allergy. And for that
there are many many good things you can do. You
need to speak with your veterinarian. A lot of products
out there, some I like, some I'm not so thrilled about,
but you want to check with your vet start with some.
There are two aspects to this control. Number one is
we need to obviously ConTroll the fleas, and there's some
great oral products out there. There's some really good spot
on products out there, and as I mentioned, there are
some products out there that I do not recommend. They
are using old technology. One of them out there the
experts might be actually seeing resistance. But the bottom line
is check with your veterinarian.
Speaker 3: Now.
Speaker 2: There are also now, as I mentioned, because of the
initial allergy and the scratching and the irritation and the erythema,
the redness and the thickness, the skin's natural body defenses
all right are now compromised. So normal bacteria that typically
have not created a problem for a dog skin are
now creating a problem. So need to control the actual
symptoms before us, meaning we have to control the redness,
we have to control the secondary bacterial infection, we have
to try to control the actual allergic disease. And again
for that, clearly bathing very important. Any type of emolience
or things that you can apply topically to soothe the skin,
antihistamines topically might help. How about, obviously, antibiotics to control
the secondary infection. Where we get into some discussion and
some problems is that since histamine is not a major
player of the canine allergic response, antihistamines are not going
to be really effective.
Speaker 3: In fact, it's.
Speaker 2: Estimated that maybe up to maybe twenty percent of the
entire allergic response might be histamine mediated. It's usually less
than that. So you're not gonna shouldn't expect the same
result by giving a dog antihistamine to treat their allergy
as you would us taking any histamines to treat ours,
because histamine is a major player in the symptoms, the manifestations.
Speaker 3: Of our allergic disease. So what does that leave us with?
Speaker 2: Well, I still don't mind antihistamines, especially the old fashioned ones,
the chlorophin aeromines, the diphenhydromenes, because they do have a
mild sedative effect, so we might not get the actual
true anti allergy effect. But you know what, they are miserable,
scratching like this. If we give them something it just
chills them out a little bit, calms them down, that
would be good. Then we have to therefore resort to
a broad spectrum class of anti allergy anti IT medications,
and that leads us to the corticosteroids medications, drugs that
we really don't love using. What I often say about steroids,
probably one of the number one drugs that we use
in vernam medicine, so it's the number one used drug,
or certainly one of them, but also unfortunately one of
the top abused drugs in veternam medicine. Because we need
to respect the drug itself, we need to respect its
side effects. We need to pay close attention to are
we using it properly? Are we using them safely? And
for that you really need to work closely with your veterinarian.
I see a lot of problems not just with the
initial disease, but with the treatment as well. There are
some new medicare there is a new medication out there.
I will be able to talk more about it when
it becomes much more available. It is out there now,
but very difficult to find, and I don't want to
tease you at all about how.
Speaker 3: Phenomenal this particular drug is.
Speaker 2: If you're lucky enough to have a veterinarian who has
a stash, has a supply, and you have a pet
that has severe allergy, then you might want to ask
your vet about that new drug for itching, because don't
feel badly if they don't have it, because it's just
it's not out there yet in enough numbers to satisfy
all the pets that need it. But when it's available,
you will know about it and it is going to
be a game changer for sure. So the flea allergies,
take care of the fleas, treat the secondary problem. What
about the pollens? I mean, come on, are we gonna
put our pets in a plastic bubble? Of course not.
So what are we gonna do? How do we treat
and control the problem with allergies? Well, here's where you
need to work closely with your veterinarian. We need to
make a diagnosis. We need to find out just what
your pet is allergic to. And there are some really
good tests out there now. First of all, there are
well typically in the past, the best test out there
and still probably is the best, is the skin scratch tests,
and these are typically done by board certified veterinary dermatologists
and they are probably the most sensitive a test, which
means they're probably going to be the most specific and
accurate now of late in the last ten to fifteen years,
blood tests measuring levels of IgE, the antibody that is
most active when it comes to fighting allergies, and this
is a test that a number of labs do.
Speaker 3: It's not probably.
Speaker 2: As a specific and effective and accurate as a scratch test,
but the tests are being perfected and they're coming closer
and closer, and they are well easier to give, they
are less expensive, and I guess the real beauty is that,
unlike the skin scratch test, that your pet has to
be off of steroids for up to three weeks before
the test, which means potentially three weeks of misery, even
off of certain antibotics before the test, even off of
antihistamine before the test, So you need to check with
your veterinarian or the specialists, depending on the test that
they use. So the issue is that you there is
a period that these pets cannot be treated or treated
in limited effect. So I think that there is a
plus I think to the blood test, which we do
a lot. But as I said, if you see a dermatologist,
your veterinarian wants you to see a dermatologist, and they
recommend because dermatogists can do the blood test as well,
and they actually for whatever reason are recommending the scratch testing,
the skin testing.
Speaker 3: Then that's the way.
Speaker 2: So what this test will do is come back and
tell us with fairly strong likelihood seventy five eighty percent accuracy,
what pollens, what allergens, what weeds, what grasses, what trees,
what environmental allergens, whether it's wool or cotton or capoc
or dand or I've had dogs come in they're allergic
to cats and vice versa. So these are the results
that we expect to get from these tests. Then the
companies that are doing the test can actually make up
a serum that you can give injections at home that
will actually build up your pet's own immunity. Like as
a kid, how I beat my hay fevers? I had
allergy shots, and I mean when I went to bed school,
I was still giving myself shots and I had tested
positive for dogs, cats, horses, sheep, goats.
Speaker 3: Cows, and hay. So I was a wreck.
Speaker 2: But it worked and I'm not a wreck anymore and
I'm not allergic to anything, which is amazing. I grew them,
so I mean I was alerts of cats and now
I have eight. So anyway, once the anigens, the solutions
are made, and then there are a number of options
as well to giving shots. And it is here that
I'm going to leave you in suspense. We're going to
pick this up next week and we're going to talk
about the various ways to actually treat allergies once they
are determined and identified. And we're also going to talk
about probably the most difficult of all to treat, to
even diagnose, and that's the food allergy. So thanks for
joining us. I expect to hear from you. I want
to thank Frieda for calling once again. Frida is going
to get a free pro Sense product for her new puppy,
Penny say that ten times fast and for.
Speaker 3: A and a contoy. And we will be back.
Speaker 2: Here next Sunday here on Catline Radio, Past the Bets
with Doctor Jeff, have a great week.
Speaker 1: Let's talk pets every week on demand only on Petlife Radio.
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