Speaker 1: You were listening to Petlifradio dot com.
Speaker 2: Well, hello everybody, and thanks for joining us again once
again here at Ask the Vets with doctor Jeff here
on Let's Talk Pets on pet Life Radio, where I
am here for you. I am here to answer your
questions about your pets. You can reach us one of
two ways. Either send me a quick email to doctor
Jeff at petlifradio dot com or easier call us at
eight seven seven three eight five eight eight A two.
And we're here to answer your questions about your pets.
Dogs and cats are my favorites. However, if you have
a question about anything, ask it. We'll go ahead, I
will get to an answer and we'll talk about it
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get to the phones and questions, I get emails to
the show once again. You can drop me an email
at doctor Jeff at petlifradio dot com. And there are
one subject seems to come up a lot, and that
is concerns about diarrhea and blood in the stool. Now,
mind you, I know that anyone whose pet has blood
in the stool is cause for concern and alarm, and
a lot of people get very alarmed at seeing blood
in the stool. Well as it turns out that blood
in the stool is indicative of a large intestinal irritation
slash bleed because when stool is black or more like purple,
that lets us know that the bleeding is coming up
from either the stomach or the small intestine, which, believe
it or not, is even more serious. And blood in
the stool when it's red blood we call frank blood
which is coming from the large intestine. Another name for
that is colitis an inflamed large vowel. And that typically,
though looks pretty scary because you're seeing blood in the stool,
often mixed with mucus, is really not that serious as
compared to bleeding from higher up in the gi tracked
in the gas to intestinal tract. And one way to
tell the difference as far as how serious this is
is look at your pet. Usually it's in the dog,
and typically the dog is still going to be happy, alert, playful, active, eating,
can't wait for next meal. And as opposed to dogs
that are very depressed, very lethargic, not wanting to eat,
and will see that with small intestinal diarrhea or with
diarrhea coming from the stomach. So what usually stimulates or
causes colitis are things like it's in a number of things.
And when I especially when I say this some puppies,
I'll say, you know you're gonna listen to the next
five or six things that might cause is and take
your pick, because when it comes to pupps, I mean
or certain breeds of dogs, but here they are nerves, stress, anxiety, diet,
diet change, parasites, et cetera. Well, any number of those
things could be happening in most of our pets. I
mean I too. My dogs are labradors, and I like
to call them garbage can That is their joy in
life is to get into garbage, is to get into
something that's someone else's throwaway, pick things up, my puppy
lab Oh my god, if it's not bolted down or
doesn't eat him first, it's in his mouth. And does
he present with colitis large vowel diarrhea, sometimes of mucus,
non times of blood. He certainly does. But is he
still running around like a mad dog? Is he still
ready to jump in the pool? Is he's still ready
to eat his next meal? He is, and therefore I
am less worried. So if you have some dog with
colitis and you know that parasites are unlikely, if you want,
you can bring a stool sample in to your veterinarian
for evaluation to at least rule out parasites. But if
everything else is fine, he still wants to eat, He
still wants to play. Try a few of the following
things before you rush to your veterinarian. Add some fiber
to the diet. Fiber can be many shapes and forms.
We have two kinds of fibers that we recommend. One
is called soluble fiber, and those are the edible fibers
brand brand flakes, cooked oat meal, canned pumpkin, things like that,
brown rice. And then there's also the insoluble fibers. Those
are the non digestible fibers, and those are like sillium,
and that's the active ingredient of most of your stool
regulator powders like metamusolin, fiber, all and correct all the
quote unquote powder laxatives, and sometimes if the case is
really bad, I like a combination of both. But I
would say if you add some fiber to the diet
for you know, say a medium to large sized dog, Oh,
a couple of tablespoons of cooked oat meal or bran
or you know Baker's brand. Don't use raisin brand because
raisins are toxic to many dogs. Or some canned pumpkin.
They love can pumpkin. It's sweet and it's got a
lot of fiber. And on top of that, I'd mix
in a little bit of your insiluble fibers like yours,
cilium or any of the products that contain cilium, and
that should take care of the problem. If it doesn't,
and or if your dog is not happy, alert, playful,
active in eating, then it's time to see your veterinarian.
Absolutely so. And one other something I see often. I
see it in small breeds, but it can really happen
with any dog. And you'll get a call. I get
a call on an emergency that my dog appears to
be drunk. His head is tilted. He seems like he's
falling over to one side and he can't keep his balance.
And again, if someone were to see that, they come
home and see there are doing that. You know, if
it's at night tim they're gonna get into the car
and rush to the emergency clinic. Well, slow down, because
often this is something that we see. It has a
very acute onset, even if the ears are crystal clean
and fine, and we call it idiopathic vestibular disease. It's
a disease of the middle ear. It's a balance and
equilibrium problem. Nobody really knows why it comes on. That's
why we joke and call it idiopathic, as we're a
bunch of idiots. We can't figure out why it happens.
And it is basically, it's almost like a person with vertigo,
a person whose world starts to spin and they just
can't seem to right themselves. They want to hang on
to things, and that's why these dogs often will present
with the head tilted to one side. And here's another
telltale sign that you're dealing with what we call IVD,
idiopathic vestibular disease, and that is hold your dog's head,
hold them kind of by the cheeks, around his ears,
and hold them up and look him straight into the eyes.
I want you looking into his eyes or her eyes,
and watch what's happening in your dog eyes. Chances are
if this is IVD, the idiopathic vestibular disease, those eyes
will be flickering back and forth, usually a fast component
and then a slow component. So might shoot faster to
the left and come back to the right slowly, shoot
faster the left and come back to the right slowly.
And that just helps us determine what side delesion is on,
whether you know the faster the slow component. But we
call that nice stagnus. So if you have a dog
with nice stagnas, you have a dog who is falling
to one side or kind of wants to circle to
one side, and everything else is fine, and everything was
fine an hour or two ago, you're probably dealing with
idiopathic vestibular disease. It looks worse than it is. Certainly
you might want to if you are one to panic,
you might want to go see your veterinarian and have
them check the ears make sure there's no ear infection.
But other than that, there's not a lot of things
that can be done other than tincture of time. Sometimes
the veterinarian might use a little cortisone. Some might use
a little bit of bonding or mechlasine, which is an
anti vertigo travel sickness medication if the ear are infected,
to clean the ears out. But those are some of
the things that that we do. So anyway, I see
that we have a caller, So why don't we Now
that we have our open phone lines, let's uh take
a look and listen and see who's trying to get
a hold of us. Hello, Hello, Hi, can you hear me?
I can? Who's this? Yeah?
Speaker 3: My dog?
Speaker 2: Stuff is from these all the time, given in everything possible,
for some reason, does not help every time. I come
back a few days later and you said suffering from fleas. Yes,
all right, So first of all, I have to say,
you know you said you're here in California. I know
in California because I'm here in California. The flea season
has readily begun, and they are quite the nuisance and
for those of you in other parts of the country
that are still a little too cold for fleas, just
you wait, because it seems like every season seems to
be a little worse than the season before. So first
and foremost, there are a number of aspects to treatment.
Number one, a quick kill. Quick kill can either come
from a good flea bath, medicated flea bath, or there
are some products out there that are One is an
oral product called Capstar and this will literally it's amazing,
within thirty minutes, will kill every single flea on your dog. However,
there's no staying power to cap Star. It's merely for
quick kill. It's for that case we're in lieu of
a bath where you're going to kill every flea on
the dog during the bath. It's going to kill them
with the pill. But we still need to work on
the pet. Now. We've learned a few things about flea
behavior in the past, and one of the things that
we used to promote years and years ago we used
to say the following that fleas are environmental more than
an obligate parasite on the pet. For example, we used
to say that for every one flea found on the pet,
there were ten or fifty in the environment. We have
since learned that that's not the case. The only fleas
that are in the environment are going to be freshly
hatched baby fleas. Once a flea jumps on the pet,
they become an obligate parasite, meaning they need that blood meal.
Something actually changes in the flea's digestive tracked and testinal
track that once they have that first meal, now they
need that meal and if they don't get it, they're
gonna die within several hours. So if you have a
flee that I mean jumped on the pet, took its
first meal, and then jumped off the pet and couldn't
find the pet again, most likely that fleet would soon
die on its own. Now, so the mechanics have changed,
we are less concerned about treating the environment than we
once were because we know that once a flea jumps
on that dog, it's either going to get killed by
that which we are using to treat the dog, or
it's gonna get killed. If it falls off the dog
and doesn't find the dog again, it will die on
its own. So our first and foremost, we need to
find good products that will kill the fleas on the pet.
There are a number of products available for your veterinarian
and even some that are available over the counter that
are good products. Do you want to check with your veterinarian.
I mean ranging from the Bayer products Advantage or canine advanttics,
to the Mario products the Frontline, to the Siva products
Vectra on Vectra three D, to the Alanko lily products
of Trifexus and Comportis. There are a lot of good
products out there that some of them have other actions
in addition to fleas. Some do heartworm, some do intestinal parasites,
some do ticks. So you really need to look at
your evaluate lifestyle of the dog and decide which is
the best for your pet, and certainly talk with your veterinarian.
Some are topical that are applied or atopically to the skin,
like the little called spot ons. Then still others are
oral products which are very effective as well. Now what
about the environment. We used to think less of needing
to really work on the environment. What I would recommend
There are some good products out there. There's still some bombs,
some top premise sprays. There's a great premise powder which
is called fleabusters, which will kill the young adult fleas
as well before they've even had a chance to a
hatch or to jump on the dog. And some of
the premise phrase you want to look for something that
has in it what's called an insect growth regulator, that's ITR,
and those will actually prevent the pupil stage and the
larval stage from developing into young adult fleas, so that
it would be very effective if you are having a
situation where the fleas are just literally all over the place. Now,
one thing to know, I'm not a big fan of
the foggers. Why because one another thing we've learned about
fleas is that they are photophobic. They don't like to
be in direct sunlight. So when you have a for example,
light shining through a big living room window onto a floor,
that light alone, the flea larvae are going to try
to migrate for covers. So they're going to travel to
under the coffee table, under the couch, under the lounge chair,
et cetera, under the TV stand. So when you set
a foger where the mist goes up in the air
and then settles down from the ceiling down, it's going
to land on top of that coffee table, on top
of that couch on top of that TV stand, but
not under where it needs to go. So I become
more a fan of a premise spray where you can
actually direct the spray to go exactly where you want
it to go and where it needs to go. So
premise wise, I would look into a good premise spray,
or I look into the fleabuster's powder. So does that
help you? Yes, I'm going to give it a try.
And so you got some homework. So get your dog,
little Traua, on the flea medication, see your veterinarian. And
if you really have a lot of fleas, and it
sounds like you do, if she's having a lot of
problems and you're seeing fleas soon after the bath, I
think it's time to do something for your house as well.
All right, thank you, thanks for calling. Okay, so why
don't we take a break here and make sure you
come back and that number once again eight seven seven
three eight five eight eight eight two. Give us a call.
We're looking forward to hearing from you. I'm doctor Jeff
Werber with Petlife Radio dot com and we are asked
the vets with doctor Jeff.
Speaker 4: We'll be right back right after these messages.
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Speaker 2: So welcome back to Let's talk Pets at pet Life
Radio and I'm doctor Jeff. But ask the mets with
doctor Jeff and get us hold of us at eight
seven seven three eight five eight eight eighty two or
drop me an email. Would love to hear from you,
even if you're shy and you're afraid to call in,
just drop me an email. We will answer your question.
We'll read your question and answer it online and of
course give you and your pet credit for asking the question.
And that's doctor Jeff d R J E f F
at Petlife Radio dot com. So we have another caller
on the line, Carr. Can you hear me?
Speaker 3: Yes? I can?
Speaker 2: Hi? Who is this?
Speaker 4: Hi?
Speaker 3: This is Laura. I talked to you a couple of
weeks ago about our bulldogs.
Speaker 2: Okay, how you doing, Laura?
Speaker 3: I'm doing good.
Speaker 2: So with the eye cleaning thing. What was the question
about that?
Speaker 5: Right?
Speaker 2: That's right? So what's going on?
Speaker 4: Really?
Speaker 3: Well, I'm gonna have a kind of a weird question
for you.
Speaker 2: I love weird questions.
Speaker 3: We get duck eggs, fresh duck eggs from our neighbor
and they really they're pretty large, and so what we
do is, like at night, we'll cook it up and
we'll distribute it. We have three large dogs, so we
you know, split it up between the three of them
every night. And I didn't know, you know, giving them
one every night if that was okay?
Speaker 2: Do or yeah? I mean eggs are okay. I personally,
I've never had a duck egg. I can I'm sure
an egg is an egg. The thing is as long
as the basic amount on a long term basis of
the yolk with the egg white. There's some important things.
You know, a lot of times people like their egg
white omelets and which is good, but you also want
to get a little yolk in there too, because there's
a balance between of having both of them together. So
if you have cooked eggs, I'm not a big fan
of raw eggs, but cooked eggs and you have you know,
they're getting their avid in, They're getting the yolk and
their albumin all together. That is fine as long as
it's again not in excess. And it sounds like if
you're doing for a big dog one egg a day,
that's not a problem. And you know, one of the
good things about dogs is that dogs will obviously have cholesterol.
Some of them actually have cholesterol issues where we'll do
a blood test and they're eating bad food or too
much fatty foods, and they have getting a high cholesterol.
I think a high normal for dog is like three
hundred and something three twenty four. That's some some of
the dogs get. These dogs with really high cholesterol. But
the issue is that in order for a dog to
end up with the artery problems the atheroscleorosis that people
get from having too high a cholesterol, they'd have to
live to about thirty or thirty five. And obviously, though
we'd love that to happen, I would say that would
be one of the best problems that we'd ever have,
is to worry about our dog's chlesterol problems and the
damage it's causing, because that means they're living till thirty
but clearly they're not, so I think you're safe. But
it wouldn't be a bad idea. You know, as your
dogs get older and you're gonna want to see your
veterinarian for the annual exam, and they take that blood test,
whether they call it a super kem seventeen or just
a full superkem, it's gonna test for cholesterol as well.
That'll be a great marker for you to see whether
or not cholesterol is too high. My hunch is it
might even even if it's a little high, it's just
a little high, and I wouldn't worry too much about it.
By the way, I was just gonna ask you, have
you ever had a duck egg?
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean we were eating them too. Really, I
don't really like them that much. They're a little bit
more rovery, you know. They're really really big there are.
They get a very hard shell. So I said, I
don't feel like eating these. But so we said, well,
let's cook them up and put them in the dog because.
Speaker 2: We have let's dog shill. They'll eat anything. It's like
the old commercial of life with Mikey. Let's get Mikey.
He won't eat it, you.
Speaker 3: Know, right, see a lot of stuff outside. So so
they really seem to like it with their food.
Speaker 4: All right.
Speaker 2: Well, there you go. I learned something every day as well,
and that's a good one. Duck eggs dogs. I've never
tried it, but it's fine. So when the big ones
get old enough, you know, usually it's seven for a
big dog unless there's a problem, of course, and usually
seven or even eight for a small dog. Before you're
going to go in for that routine. Even if my
dog is perfectly healthy blood test, you know before then
unless it's pre anesthesia, unless it's something wrong with a dog. Now,
if you have a perfectly healthy, nothing wrong ever kind
of dog and you just are going in for you know,
a routine annual exam, that's about the time we want
to start doing blood test. I'd be curious to know
what that cholesterol level is like, but short of it,
I think we're good. All right, Well, Laura, thanks for
the call, and if you now, you're not to get
ahold of us. And obviously Laura is not shy everybody,
because this is the second time we've spoken to her,
and she got us at eight seven seven three eight
five eight eight A two, And we do want to
hear from you as well. And once again I'm going
to take this opportunity to thank our sponsors, pro Sense
Tech Products, a veterinary quality products available to you the
consumer at your local retailer now. And one of the
things I was talking I see a lot of puppies
in my practice, and you know, one of the things
we talk about are some behaviors. It would be great
to have arden Moore chat about this as well at times,
and I'm sure she does, but it'll be great to
get different perspectives. But what I find is that going
over this with clients all the time, and that is
that the most overused word in puppy dum is no.
We are so fast to use the word no. And
what are the probably the cardinal mistake that puppies make, well,
certainly bathroom mistakes, and the second one probably would be
chewing mistakes. And what's interesting is when you look at
chewing as a behavior and when you look at relieving
a dog oneself as a behavior, they are both normal,
natural essential behaviors. So when you're dealing with a normal,
natural essential behavior, how could he possibly use the word no?
Because no really doesn't apply. And that's how I think
why we have so many these dogs with problems and
we're messing them up because we're just giving them mixed messages.
Wait a second, you know, you go outside and you
want me to go, but in the house you don't.
I don't get it. So here's the perfect scenario, and
I get this all the time, Doc. I took him
out for an hour, one hour, and he would not go,
and I brought him back in the house. They put
him in his crate, and in two seconds, as soon
as I left the room, he went to his crate
and I said, well, what do you expect? I said,
has he ever made a mistake or had an accident?
I like to use that word better in the house
out of his crate, of course, So what do you do? Well?
I took him over to it and I said, no, well, guys,
that's thirty years old. We don't do that anymore. So
what happened was he then takes the dog outside and
trying to encourage his new puppy to go to the bathroom,
and he's saying, come on, Bowser, go, it's okay, it's okay,
And poor old Bowser's looking up and said, what are
you nuts? Go in front of you? You hit me
last time I did it. You yelled at me last
time I went. So anyway, this is why it is
so important to look and understand the behavior and say
to yourself, wait a second, is this really just a
normal behavior that is misdirected or is this truly an
abnormal behavior? When that dog chews your brand new shoes,
chewing for a puppy is normal naturally essential. It's good
for their oral development, it's good for their mental development.
They are going to chew, they have to chew. So
when they get a hold of something that wasn't meant
to be chewed on, whose fault really was it? He
was your fault because you left it out, You didn't
puppy proof the room, you didn't turn around before you
close that door, and that puppy inside the room, say okay,
what could he possibly get a hold of, And if
it's even remotely possible, lift it up, moving out of
the way, and just know one thing, and this is
so funny, and it's true. Given a choice, if your
dog has an option of an old, lousy pair of
bedroom slippers or your brand new, very expensive shoes, guess
which one he's going after. So my recommendation is, understand
it's all about positive reward, positive reinforcement. Don't try to
prevent the mistakes or the accidents before they happen. And
when an accident happens, just tough, all right, just tough. Now,
if you see a dog, for example, chewing on that
which is inappropriate, don't say no, get a loud whistle,
clap your hands, really loudly. You will get his attention.
You then calmly remove that inappropriate object. You give him
his appropriate tchewe toy, and tons and tons of praise
and excitement. And that's how you're going to get these
dogs to learn to do the right thing. Likewise, if
you walk in that room and there's an accident on
the carpet, tough, nothing you can do about it. Just
keep taking them outside, give them lots of positive reinforcement
for going outside, and ultimately he will learn. He'll get it.
So anytime you have any questions, please we love working
with the puppy problems because they're really not problems. There
are normal, essential behaviors that we need to just direct
them into the right place. And I think you will
have a lot of success with your puppies. And boy,
they are a lot of fun to have success with.
So once again it seems like our time is coming
to a near end. I want to reinforce that we
want to hear from you. I want to hear from
you at eight seven seven three eight five eight eight
eight to two. It's important to give us a call.
Anything you want to talk about, anything to do with
medical stuff, a surgery, your pet is about to have
skin and ear problems which are very pre coming into
spring and summer. Exercise topics during the spring and summer,
what to do, what's the safe thing to do? When
to do? End of life issues. I deal a lot
with end of life issues pet rescue. Tons of stuff
on pet rescue, so there's got to be stuff. I
know you're listening, you're tuning in to Let's Talk Pets
pet Life Radio, and you know and I know that
there are things you would like to talk about, and
I'm here for you. We are actually the only call
in show where you get to have a voice. You
don't have to sit there and listen. I hate talking
all day. I want to I want to talk to
you about some issues your pet is having. And we're live.
We're live on the air on Thursdays one o'clock pm
Pacific time, four o'clock pm Eastern time, and we want to, uh,
we want to hear from you or once again when
you're shy, if you're shy d R J. E. F
f at Petlife Radio dot com once again, doctor Jeff
at Petlife Radio dot com. So again, just want to
thanks for joining me, thank you for our callers, Gabe
and Laura. We want to hear more of you and
I want to thank our sponsors again. Process Pet Products
pro Tens pet products available at your local retailer. Go
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Field grades, spell grade, healthy, you name it, we have
it pro Sens. We'll see you next week Thursday at
one pm Pacific four pm Eastern. Until then, I'm doctor
Jeff Werber saying goodbye.
Speaker 4: Let's talk pets every week on demand only on Petlife
Radio dot com.
Speaker 3: Completely st