Speaker 1: You're listening to Petlifradio dot com.
Speaker 2: Well, hello and welcome, Welcome, welcome, You are here with
doctor Jeff Weerber, host of Askedvats with Doctor Jeff here
on pet Life Radio. Here to help you with your pets.
Answer questions you may have, talk about behavior problems, medical problems,
surgical does ease, whatever it is.
Speaker 3: Just go give us a call.
Speaker 2: You can reach us for easy, get a hold of
pick up that phone eight seven seven three eight.
Speaker 3: Five eight eight eight two. We'd love to hear from you.
Speaker 2: You can also join us in conversation just you can
log on here at pet Life Radio to ask the
vets with doctor Jeff. You can also send me an
email to Dr Jeff. That's doctor Jeff at Petlife Radio
dot com. We'll be here for the next half hour
on this lovely Thursday one o'clock smack in the middle
of the day here in very nice and sunny southern California.
I have nothing to complain about. I'm sure that many
of you are joining us in cities that are not
as warm and sunny in the seventies as we are
here today in LA. But again, it gets cold for
us at night. Now you're gonna laugh when I say
cold for us is fifty five degrees, but I just still.
Speaker 3: Have to wear sweater.
Speaker 2: But heading up to the mountains this weekend, heading up
to Mammoth Lakes, California, where it is believe it or not, freezing. Yes,
it does freeze here in California as well, and I'm
just hoping the conditions are good for my snowboarding. But anyway,
we're here for you, so pick up that phone, and
I want to thank our sponsors as always, pro Sense
Pet products available at your big retailers like Target, like Walmart,
like Walgreens, and pro Sense products for your pets. That
the only other place you're going to find products this
good is at your veterinarian at probably two or three
times the price. So if you want something good, you
want to keep your pets healthy, go on and find
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Speaker 3: Dog or your cat.
Speaker 2: So before we as we get started, we had an
email sent to us that we want to I just
want to talk to you quickly about and basically this
is coming from someone who listens to our show, and
I'm going to read it. It's just basically labeled to us,
just from Nancy, and it starts, please help, Please help.
My bird acts like he's itching, only one side of
his wing underneath, but no signs of blooderbear, spots of flesh.
Speaker 3: He is. I love to hear this. He is forty
years old.
Speaker 2: One thing about birds, if you're going to get a
large citizen of a car or a parrot, you better
be prepared a cockatoo that these birds are very very
possibly are going to outlive you, so you have to
make some arrangements in your wills.
Speaker 3: These birds.
Speaker 2: I've seen these birds live to eighty plus years. So anyway,
this bird is forty. He started picking when he moved
from Oregon to Washington. That's important. We guys to that
in a minute in two thousand and three, and then
he started picking his beak in two thousand and seven.
He scratches until he almost falls off his perch and
screams and ruffles his feathers.
Speaker 3: Afterwards.
Speaker 2: He's had the same cage, large size, five feet high,
dimensions armor, it's fairly large his whole life. Also a
small medium cage that I put him into to keep
hi in the kitchen a living room with me, so
he is not locked up in the one room all
day or night by himself, nor veterin aaran and Gaithersburg, Maryland,
did all test possible and did a hormone implant. Still
no change. One doctor gave him prosact, which didn't help.
He stops picking at approximately three am when I take him
out at midnight and am upreading or writing letters, So
that's very important. He's in a room where there isn't
any sun through the window. He gets some sun in
the spring in summer. So I'm going to pass this
on to two of my very good friends and colleagues
who who pretty much specialize in birds, do a lot
of bird work. But meanwhile, there's some things that I
picked up here, Nancy, that we can talk about. Number one,
this started with a move from Oregon to Washington, d C.
Birds are very sensitive to change, and when they start
what we call feather picking or this type of scratching behavior,
it oftentimes is nerve anxiety related and some other things
that struck me. As he's been in the same cage
his whole life. That might be convenient, but it may
not be the best thing for the bird, because sometimes
they do like change. Also the fact that he gets
no sunshine, and I would take him out even if
you can.
Speaker 3: You can get harness this for these birds.
Speaker 2: You can teach these birds to walk on a leash,
believe it or not, and get him outside and give
him more outdoor time. And one last thing, notice that
he stops picking approximately three am for some reason. Something's
going on at that time of day. So he's on
his own clock when I take him out at midnight
and in the morning, or when he's up when I'm
up writing letters, which means when he is not sitting
there bored a stiff by himself. He doesn't to behave
this way. It's only when this anxiety strikes and he
knows what he likes.
Speaker 3: He's forty.
Speaker 2: At forty, I think he knows what he likes and
doesn't like. So those are some of the simple things.
I was joking that I would throw my two cents in.
I probably can only give you one and a half
because that's about my bird. Repertoire when it comes to
these behavior problems. But of all the things I do
and remember and read about, birds are extremely sensitive to
this type of behavior issue. And I think we're going
to get to something so well, next week we're not
going to be on live, but the week after that
I will have had time to talk to a couple
of my buddies who specialize in birds, and we're going
to get you some more specific answers. So certainly we
want you to stay tuned. Another thing that I've had
an interesting run this week, and interesting in the sense
that there has been some news.
Speaker 3: Oh.
Speaker 2: I'd say it started about a month to month and
a half ago about a new virus in town. They
call it a circle virus, speaking of birds. We've seen
it in birds and in swine and pigs, and it
was the first noted in Ohio affecting dogs, and not
many cases here in California, in fact, hardly any until
recently we've heard of some cases in California as well.
Speaker 3: Well. I have five.
Speaker 2: Dogs and my old labrador who's twelve and a half
and up until this point had been doing amazingly well,
except of course, he's slowing down on his hind end.
And he did have a cancer, a tumor called masked
cell disease when he was younger, actually four and a
half years of age.
Speaker 3: We removed it. We got good margins.
Speaker 2: It was a what we call grade two, and we
left it alone, and he to this day has been
doing great. So he starts out of the blue, vomiting
like crazy, diarrhea, anarexic, not wanting to eat, no strength.
I mean, he was going downhill and he was so
weak and depressed. And here I am worried. Okay, what
did you get into? What could you have possibly eaten?
Why are you vomiting? Is there anything stuck in your
intestinal track?
Speaker 3: Et cetera.
Speaker 2: So I brought him in, of course, to my office,
took some blood work, put him on IVS. The bloods
came back perfect, absolutely perfect. So now, oh my gosh,
now I'm worried. When you have a case like this
and the X rays are perfect, the ultra sound is good,
and you have perfect bloods, you start worrying about, well,
maybe it's more of a mechanical issue.
Speaker 3: Maybe it's an issue within.
Speaker 2: The intestinal tract itself, something that would not be of
evident on a blood work. There's no blood test to
test for the stomach wall or the intestinal lining, especially
if this infiltrative disease, meaning a cancer. So I'm thinking, oh,
we got to get him scoped, we got to get
some samples, and I'm worried that this mass sell disease
that he had when he was four and a half
is finally starting to catch up with him. Then, literally, miraculously,
within a day on IVS treatment, etc. He starts perking
up to his old self, starts eating, still had some diarrhea,
but we've gotten better resolved in about a day or two,
and I'm feeling great. Take him home, and what happens
the next day One of my French bulldogs comes down
with the same symptoms, So bring him in. Now I'm
feeling maybe they both got into the same thing. These two, interestingly,
are the two two of my five that seem to
think that the cat turds in the litter are a
delicacy and they will attack that cat litter every chance
they get.
Speaker 3: Somethink. Okay, maybe it's that.
Speaker 2: So treat my second one, my little Denzel, and then
a day later Herbie and Tommy, my other friends, he
and my other lab so now I'm thinking, you know what,
this is too bizarre. I'm wondering if we don't have
circa virus, which seems to be well I've obviously left untreated.
It can be deadly, and there were cases where it
was deadly. But I think if you get it and
you treat it well and you be aggressive, it's nothing
more than a really bad intestinal infection, and that's what
it turned out to be. But I really want to
know out there how much of this is something we
need to worry about. So I know a lot of
you out there afraid to call. You're afraid to hit
us with your questions. Don't like picking up that phone
and dialing those very simple numbers eight seven seven three
eight five eight eight A two. But I want to
know any of you out here listening to our program
have had issues recently with nonspecific, unexplained cases of vomiting, diarrhea, anorexia, depression, lethargy,
sort of just non specific gas toine testinal problems that maybe,
just maybe we might be seeing this virus. Unfortunately, there's
no way to test for it. There's no testing, there's
no specific treatment for it. So it's not like parvo
where we can give a parvo vaccine. So I want
to know, so please pick up the phone, don't be shy,
don't be embarrassed, and let us know. And of course
just for responding, free pro sense product going out your
way for your dog or your cat. But thankfully they're
all doing great. Took the last one, last two home
last night and they're back to normal, back to their
own mischievous behavior, and I'm feeling pretty happy. But it's
a big concern. Another thing I wanted to talk to
you about that you know, I don't sometimes realize how
little people know about things. And I'm talking the really smart,
well versed pet owner when it comes to certain conditions
that they hopefully will never see in their lifetime with
their pet, and if they've never had it before, they
have no idea of knowing. So instead of waiting until it,
Heaven forbid happens to you, let's share from other people's experiences.
What are some of the things when it comes to
parenting you should know about. And that which I want
to talk to you about is a condition that we
see in cats and it's called fatty liver syndrome that
can be potentially deadly and why does it happen?
Speaker 3: When does it happen? How does it happen?
Speaker 2: And if you know this and you know what to recognize,
and you know how serious the ramifications are or could be,
then maybe you won't wait till it gets to this point.
Speaker 3: What am I talking about? What ramifications?
Speaker 2: Dogs can probably go five to seven days without eating,
as long as they have water, they can go without eating.
Cats not a chance. Cats, if they don't eat within
three days, they potentially can develop this condition we call
fatty liver syndrome. And once fatty liver syndrome hits a cat,
it sort of sets up a negative spiral because they
start feeling so lousy, their liver enzymes, especially their billy ruben,
start elevating. And when billy ruben goes up, what you
notice is first of all, the inside of your cat's ears,
the whites of their eyes, that even the light pink
part of their gums and tongue start looking yellow. We
call that jaundice, and that when we see a jaundice cat,
that is a very serious problem. There is a it
sounds terrible to hear, but there are certain conditions that
when we say if a cat develops this, their chances
of survival are slim. And one of those conditions is jaundice.
So when a cat starts having gastrointestinal more specifically livered
so much so to the point that they start getting yellow,
a yellow cat is serious. Well, that's what happens in
fatty liver syndrome. They're billy ruben, which would normally be
oh less than one. It's usually maybe point five to
you know, point four can be as high as six
to nine, to ten to twelve. Even this is really
serious once they start feeling that lousy. Now, for whatever
the initial insult was that stopped them from want to eat,
which could could have been simply behavioral. It could have
been you were gone for the weekend. It could have
been you changed their diet. It could have been you
you got a new dog in the house, you put
their litter box in the wrong whatever that they wanted
to go on a little hunger strike. You can't let
your cats go on a hunger strike for much more
than three days. They must eat or else we have
to consider running the risk of fatty liver syndrome, and
this could be extremely serious. So when you see it happen,
you must take your cat to your veterinarian asap. But
your veterinarian will obviously do some workup, take some blood
work and start some force feeding. And when we come
back from our break in just a minute, we are
going to go through some of these methods of force feeding.
So here it is through our midway through our half hour,
so we're going to be back in just a second.
Don't go away. Stay tuned. You're here with doctor Jeff.
Ask to bets with doctor Jeff. You're on pet Life Radio.
We'll be right back.
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Speaker 2: Well, welcome back and thanks for joining me once again
here at Asktabets with doctor Jeff.
Speaker 3: I am your host, doctor Jeff.
Speaker 2: Werper, here in Sunday, Southern California. And before the break,
we were talking about a very serious condition that unfortunately,
fortunately we don't see often, but unfortunate when we see it,
it's often very difficult to pull these cats out of
this condition. We call it fatty liver syndrome, often brought
upon by cats who aren't eating. And the really sad
part is is that when the reason for their not
eating is something behavioral, something that was easily preventable, the
ramifications of that not eating and developing fatty liver syndrome
could be so serious that often a otherwise healthy cat
can succumb to this severe, serious condition. Now, when the
not eating is brought upon by another serious condition, say
you know, kidney failures, say already having some other type
of liver disease, say it cancer, say severe oral disease,
something else that is preventing this cat from wanting to
eat well, then you have really two problems to deal with.
One is the underlying disease and also secondly is the
fatty liver syndrome. So we're mentioning that it's serious enough
that when your cat goes more than three days without eating,
now we're talking serious. You can't sit back like a
dog and wait another two or three days. Figuring out
as long as they're drinking water, they could probably go longer,
which a dog most dogs can, but not cats. Not cats,
so your veterani will of course takes some lab work. Typically,
what you're going to see is a very very high
billy ruben and some elevated liver enzymes, the ALT possibly
the ast GGT. These are all of enzymes alkaline phosphatase,
and something obviously needs to be started ivy fluids, supportive care,
but most importantly, we must get food into.
Speaker 3: These cat's stomach.
Speaker 2: Now, these cats are feeling so lousy because of the
high billy ruben, the fact that they're jaundice meaning yellow,
by the fact that they're having other liver enzyme elevations.
They just don't want to eat, so it's sort of
a vicious cycle. Now, the less they've eaten and started
this condition. The higher these values get, the worse they feel.
The worst they feel, the less they want to eat,
which just contributes to the problem.
Speaker 3: So we have to force feed these cats.
Speaker 2: Now, some cats that aren't nauseous, aren't vomiting or spinning up,
might be amenable to having one of these. It's kind
of like a syringe with a curve tip, and you
can feed like a soft, moist, mushy gruel, taking like
baby food or ad or or you know, hike max
cow pet food and sticking to a blender with some water,
making it into like a very smooth like soup in consistency,
and actually force feeding the cat, putting it to their mouths,
slowly letting them swallow, and doing this several several times
a day and slowly getting their nutrition back, which could
help the problem a lot of times. However, if this
isn't possible, or the cats are just fighting you too much,
and let's face it, anyone who's had cats and is
trying to even get them so much to take a
pill or to brush their teeth, No, when a cat
doesn't want something, it's not happening.
Speaker 3: You do know that.
Speaker 2: So we might want to put an NG tube that
stands for a naso gastric two. This is a very small,
say maybe a three and a half to five French
red rubber tube that we actually pass up the nose
all the way through the sinus. It goes back to
the back of the fittingnagel pharynx, which is the back
of the throat, down into the esophagus into the stomach,
and we go ahead and we can push oh, like
a liquid diet through this tube directly into the stomach
bypass the swallowing reflex. These cats typically, even if they
are a little nauss, probably won't spit up, and that's
how we get them their food. Lastly, we can do
a farngostamy tube we also call a peg tube or
an et tube. In an esophageal tube, this is where
a little cut is made in the back of the
neck into the mouth, into the back of the oral cavity.
And then what we do is we will pull introduce
a much much larger tube through this incision, and then
we take that tube pass it down the esophagus. So
we do it on the left side because the esophagus
typically sits on the left side of the trachia. And
of course we don't want to cross the trachea because
that can cause a lot of problems. And then we
pass this tube down into the esophagus and we feed
them that way. So that's another way that we take
care of these cases. But it is very important that
these cats will have an opportunity to eat, because if not,
the condition is only going to get worse. And once
it gets worse, there's not a lot that can be done. Anyway,
I just what happens, I believe it or not, And
this is it's weird that it happened, is way. I
have two cats in the hospital now that are both
being fed through engtubes and both have severe jaundice, fatty
liver disease. Not sure on either one whether it was
these are behavior related or some other insult that stopped
them from eating in the first place, or some other
underlying disease. And you know, unfortunately, you take your test
and you see liver ands and elevations, You're not sure.
Wait a second, with the liver enzymes and liver disease
there first, which then caused this cat to become anorexic?
Or did this cat become anorexic for some other reason,
and now it has fatty liver syndrome, so the liver
enzymes are elevated. Sometimes we'll never know, We may never know,
so in the meantime, these cats need to be tre
it need to be treated and fed aggressively. And if
this has ever happened to you, or you know somebody,
or you're talking to somebody in there and you notice
that their cat has not eaten, or they can play
on'm my god, my cat's sort of under the weather
has eaten in a few days. Please please please make
sure that they see their veterinarian. If it's one of
your cats, make sure you see your veterinarian asap.
Speaker 3: In fact, i'd like to know you know it is.
Speaker 2: Whenever we have these rare cases, we always wonder how
rare have any of our listeners had a cat or
known somebody with a cat that has either had fatty
liver syndrome. Is in the midst of about of fatty
liver syndrome and what the outcomes were. Was it positive?
Were the cats pulled through or was it negative? And
unfortunately the cats weren't so lucky. So you can just
give us a call eight seven seven three eight five
eight eight eight two. You can also go ahead and
send us an email to Drjef doctor Jeff at Petlife
Radio dot com or directly to my email which is
Dr Jeff, doctor Jeff at drgeff dot com, doctor Jeff
at Doctorjeff dot com. We'd like to hear from you
and anybody else you have, you know, coming to the holidays.
I want to know, let's get cute and too much
serious stuff for a half hour. What are you planning
to get your pets for the holidays. I want to
know how creative our gift givers are out there. Certainly,
certainly I would imagine your pets are not going to
be left out. I mean I certainly know my pets
are not left out. And I want to know what
are types of cute things, fun things are you giving either.
Speaker 3: For your pets or how about this? How about some ideas?
Speaker 2: And it's great because that way we can pass some
ideas back and forth, because there I'm sure some people
sitting out there right now don't have a clue what
to get their pets. Or if you have friends or
family that are really major league into their pets, especially
if they don't have kids, you know that they're thinking
about something.
Speaker 3: So, what do you give to someone who.
Speaker 2: Has pets for their pet or what type of gift
do you give to a pet enthusiast, a pet lover
and insane crazy pet lover, especially one that doesn't have kids.
What might you think about getting them for the holidays?
I want to know how creative, what types of cool
things are out there? I know if you you know,
you can go online, you can watch some of these
pet shows. There are a lot of fun things out
there for your pets, things that and not only for
the pet, but things for the pet lover. How much
fun can you have shopping on some of these catalogs
specific to pet lovers, to pet enthusiasts. I want to hear,
so you can certainly send in that info.
Speaker 3: I will share it.
Speaker 2: If you don't want to call in, that's okay, that's okay.
I will share it with our listeners. You can send
me the email to doctor Jeff at Petlife Radio dot com,
or just give us a call eight seven seven three
eight five eight eight A two. Remember remember that we
are not going to be here live next week. That
gives you an extra week to muster up the courage,
the guts to pick up that phone and share your
pet stories, give us a call, let us know how
things are going. So let's see, we're here now at
the two twell, two thursdays from now is the twenty six,
that's going to be the day after Christmas.
Speaker 3: That's perfect. That is perfect.
Speaker 2: So by the day after Christmas, I expect I expect
a lot of phone calls from you, because I really
want to know how you did, how you fared with gifts,
what you did for your pets, what you did for
your friends pets, what you did for your friends that
have pets. And I think that'd be great, that'd be
fun things to share here on our show and ask
the vets with doctor Jeff, and also to just let
us know in pet Life Radio in fact that the
ideas are really good.
Speaker 3: We can post some of these things.
Speaker 2: On the website here at petlife radio dot com. So
I'm just trying to think before we go in about
the last minute, if there's anything else that has affected pets.
Remember ticks. Ticks like the winter, unlike flea. So if
you live in cold parts of the country, ticks love
whated areas, I know you're going to be walking your dogs,
so take the necessary precautions, make sure you maintain tick control.
And another thing I know there are a lot of
places where snow is on the ground already. Keep in
mind that a lot of local municipalities do put some
either chemicals or salt on the ground to help melt
the snow, to keep the roads clear, to keep the
sidewalks clear, and these can be very very irritating to
your pets pads.
Speaker 3: Say that ten times fast to your pets pads.
Speaker 2: So very important to either every time you come back
from a walk, wipe down your pets pads, wipe down
their feet and make sure you know there's no residue
of that salt. Or think about two things you can
actually accomplish two difficulties. Number one is just the ice
cold ground and the snow and the ice. And two
is the irritation from that which is placed on the
ground to melt that snow and ice. And that is
get them booties. There are really cool booties out there, lightweight,
some of them have great little rubber bottoms for good traction.
Most dogs will tolerate them very well. So what I
recommend is getting some booties out there, and every time
you take your pet for a walk or for a
run during this time of year. Throw some booties on,
protect their feet, and I'll make them happy and comfortable.
Speaker 3: So our time is up here. That's with doctor Jeff.
Speaker 2: We will see you in two weeks, that's the twenty sixth,
the day after Christmas. I expect phone calls eight seven
seven three eight five eight eight eight two, And have
a wonderful week, a wonderful Christmas holiday, and we'll see
you back here on the twenty sixth.
Speaker 1: Let's talk pets every week on demand only on Petlife
Radio dot com.