Speaker 1: You're listening to Petlife Radio dot com.
Speaker 2: Well, hello and thank you for joining me here on
pet Life Radio. Ask the best of doctor Jeff, and
I am your host, Doctor Jeff Werber, live at the
Central Venerary Conference right here in beautiful downtown Kansas City.
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Don't be bashful now. One of the things that we
talked a couple of weeks ago, we were talking about allergies,
and we were discussing all the different allergens, whether they
be Pollin's or which we called inhaled allergies, or atopy fleas,
biggie food allergies. We talked about how all of these
seem to manifest by skin problems as well as a
lot of the household allergens like tobacco, like kpok, like
wool feathers. Actually, we see dogs that are allergic to cats.
So there's so many different allergens out there, and the
challenge has always been a relieving the itch, the discomfort,
the inflammation, but also to try to diagnose if we can,
what the pet is allergic to them. As we discussed
remember with food allergies, it's so difficult to try to
find out what our pets are allergic to and have
to go through a major major types of food elimination
trials to try to identify what they're allergic to. Well,
one of the big arenas here in Deny medicine is
certainly when it comes to allergy, is allergy testing and
allergy treatments, and so much has changed over the years. Now.
If any of you, as did I had allergies as kids,
we would at these scratch tests, would they would We
did go to the allergist and they would take our
arm or on our back and make all these little scratches,
and they would put in drops of the anagen into
each little scratch and ject them in and watch for
the reaction. And of course if we were allergic to
that which they would inject into our skin, the reaction
was huge, and if we didn't react, then the assumption
was we're just not allergic to them. Well, things have
changed a lot. When I started practicing a few years ago,
I don't want to admit to how many we only
did scratch testing. And we didn't even do it. Your
veterinarian had to send you to a board certified veterinary dermatologist,
a specialist to do the scratch testing. I mean, there's
some bets general practitioners that if they did a lot
of testing, they could do it. But there was a
lot of what we call subjectivity. Two people can look
at the same scratch and decide, well, is that a
three or is that a four? So it's very important
to know that there are alternatives now that are fantastic.
And I have a special guest today in the studio studio.
It's called the speaker Ready room here at the conference.
Pam Use works with ACT it's ACTT and they specialize
in allergy testing, diagnosing, and treatment. And the way we
treat now is basically, as we call the band aid effect.
We are going to use antibiotics to control the secondary infection.
We are going to use some sort of immunomodulat or aminosuppressive,
whether it's cyclosporing, whether it's pregnance owned some sort of
cordico steroid. But there are better ways. Those ways are great.
If you have like an incident and it came up
out of the blue, it's not really been a problem.
Your doctor's going to certainly want to treat it that way,
most likely the first time. And if we get a response,
that's great. But what happens when you have to go
back again and again and again. These meds are not
that great for our pets. So with that I introduced Pam.
We're going to zoom pan in. Hey Pam, good.
Speaker 3: Morning morning, Doctor Weber. Thank you so much for having us.
And you know, you're right that allergies are such a
chronic problem for so many pets and pet owners. And
one of the tricks the tricky parts about allergies is
that every pets allergies a different They're allergic to different things,
so there's not one easy fix or a template that
we can follow for every patient, and so that's part
of the difficulty. And then, as you mentioned, they're allergic
to so many different things that we want to keep
them comfortable and treat those symptoms, but we have to
get to the root of the problem and identify those
specific allergens that they're allergic to. And you're right that
you know one way we could do this is to
do the skin test that you refer to, and that
requires shaving the pet and esthetizing the pet, and that's
an effective way to identify those allergens, but there are
other methods.
Speaker 2: Now, yeah, one of the things I want to talk
about also with this scratch testing, which by the way,
still might be considered the industry standard. But if you
have a dog or a cat who is currently on
treatment because of their severe allergies and they're miserable and
they need help, you cannot do the test if they're
on the medication. In fact, they have to sometimes with
depending on how much corticostereo they're on, they might have
to have a period of three or four weeks off
of the medication in order to do the test, and
for some of the antibotics and anti histamines it's a
shorter period. But so you can imagine while you're waiting
to be able to do the test, the skin test,
the skin test, your pet can be miserable, so there
is something new out there and pan which is going well,
that's right.
Speaker 3: That's the beauty of the serum test is that we
can give them those symptom medications to keep them comfortable.
We can have the veterinarian draw blood and send it
to the laboratory and we can be testing it during
that time to identify what they're allergic to and to
be preparing their treatment. And so that is one of
the nice advantages to the serum test. And then the
other thing about the serum test two is that any
veterinarian can draw blood and send the serum two to
our laboratory for this kind of testing. So any of
the pet owners out there can go to your veterinarian
and ask to have this kind of test. So what
we're wanting to do is to make it easy for
the pet owner and easy for the veterinarian to find
these answers to what is my pet allergic to? Because
that's the foundation in the first step to developing a
successful treatment program.
Speaker 2: Now, how many different categories and how many different things
can are dog typically allergic to?
Speaker 3: We test over one hundred different allergens. There's weeds, trees, grasses.
Those are the common pollens, the things that humans are
allergic to, but also molds and mites. Mites are often
found storage mites in their pet foods, and then they
can be allergic to things like indoor allergens like carpet fibers.
There's an allergen called kpoc and that's the stuffing that's
found in pets toys and in their bedding, and so
they carry these toys around in their mouths. Oftentimes they
chew and tear up their bedding, but they can be
allergic to that fiber. So it's so important to try
and figure out what those things are so that we
can either avoid them or begin to desensitize them with
immunotherapy and treat them so that they can build tolerance
to those allergens and get control of those symptoms.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 2: One of the things also that's interesting is that many
of the allergens are avoidable, and if we can remove
them from the environment, then obviously that's a great way
to do it. But in order to know what to remove,
we have to test and make the identifications. Now, for
those of you that are still smoking cigarettes, maybe for
those dogs, I'm going to make sure your dog's allergic tobacco.
So that's one great way that you're gonna stop smoking.
But you know, some of the things like the toys
or wool, I mean, when it's pollen's betting feathers, there's
only so much you can do. You're not going to
just put your dog in a bubble. So the diagnosis
is extremely important.
Speaker 3: So it's important and we can treat to those things.
Those are things that we can include in their treatment set.
So that eventually they'll be able to tolerate those things.
You don't have to get rid of your cat, you know,
and so we can make them comfortable. And I think
it's just important that we help educate pet owners to
know this, and it's not something that is just common sense,
you know. We have to educate people to know that
this is possible.
Speaker 2: So once diagnoses are made, and then it doesn't end there.
I mean, certainly there are some things that you could avoid.
So if you know what that is, then you obviously
try to get rid of them or do what you can.
But let's talk about the realities. The realities are that
many things that we're allergic to, many things that our
pets are allergic to, are unavoidable. We're not going to
put them in a plastic bubble. We're not going to
get rid of everything in our home. We're not going
to take everything that's wool and lift up everything, the
carpeting or whatever it may be. So realistically, now, the
goal is we can either continually treat the symptoms. We
can treat the redness, we can treat the itching, we
can treat the secondary infection, but that of course involves drugs.
Some of the drugs we don't really like to use
long term, for example, the cortico steroids. So the more,
if you will, naturopathic natural approach is, let's try to
build up the pets immunity specifically to those things that
they're allergic to, those items, those chemicals, those and allergens,
environmental allergens, household allergens, et cetera. So, PAM, how do
we go about that?
Speaker 3: That's right, Well, there's immunotherapy. It's referred to it a
couple of different ways, immunotherapy or you'll sometimes hear it referred
to as desensitization. And that's what we're trying to do,
is desensitize the PET to that specific allergen. And it's
we have it available in two forms. Initially and historically
we have had allergy shots, and I think many of
us recognize that because we've ourselves had allergy shots or
our children have had allergy shots, and it's a very
effective form of imminetotherapy. But most recently there's a new
modality that's been introduced and it's allergy drops. It's a
sublingual I know, that's a big word that means under
the tongue, a sublingual modality, and it's a drop every
day or twice a day under the tongue to build
up that pet's community. And so that's been a wonderful
alternative because you know, very often pet owners are not
comfortable administering injections to their pet, and so this has
been a very popular and effective form of treatment, and
it's equally as successful and desensitizing that pet and bringing relief.
Speaker 2: Now when we give shots, first of all, I know
you know personally, yes, when I was a kid, I
did have allergy shots. In fact, when I was a kid,
I tested positive ready for this guys for dogs, cats, horses, sheep, goats,
cows and to top it off, hey, so you can
imagine me going through venerary school where especially large downal rotations, right, horse,
goa sheeps and hey, yeah, I was quite the reckon.
In fact, anybody who ever needed a tissue a Cleane's
knew all they had to do was find Jeff and
I had a backpack full of them. But the truth
is a lot of you I know, do not like
to give shots. So I have clients when it came
to the injections would actually come in and we would
give the shots for them in the clinic h but
early on in the course of treatment, as you're building
up the important that building up their own immunity, you're
giving shots every other day. And you know true, once
you hit a maintenance, which could take a few months,
then you might get to the point of giving injections
every four weeks three to four weeks five. It do
all depends on the dog. I mean, the truth matter
is there's so much individuality and the need is often
to make adjustments based on your pet. And the adjustments
are in the amount of extract allergen you're going to
inject and the time in between the injections. So it's
true though that with this new modality of drops. In fact,
I just read an article from a veterinary dermatologist who
was talking all about the sublingual drops and how effective
they are. I guess if there is a there's no
such thing as free lunch guys come on. So with
the good has to come a little bad, and that
is that with the drops, you're looking at one initially
and then two times a day for probably the rest
to the pat's life. Now it's easy, I mean, certainly
you get up every morning, and you're gonna brush your teeth,
and you're gonna get up, and you're gonna take your vitamins,
whatever you do, you're gonna drink your coffee. So we're
certain we get used to routine and we don't think
about it anymore. It's just you do it because it's routine.
So we can easily get to the point we're putting
a drop under a dog's tongue and make it routine,
but it's still something you have to be aware of
at the beginning.
Speaker 3: And that's true. But there you know, many of us
have pets that require other medications twice a day.
Speaker 2: I know I have to.
Speaker 3: My dog has pain relief that she needs twice a day,
so we're already giving her medication. And so I think
there are many of us that that becomes part of
our routine. And so you know, when we're deciding which
kind of treatment we want to take into consideration our
lifestyle and can we follow on everyday modality and the
temperament of the pet. Some pets and pet owners don't
have problems with injections. They both work, and so it's
just nice that we have two options now for that,
and the nice thing about the drops is it's actually
pretty easy. It doesn't have to go under the tongue,
it can go inside the gum line by the teeth.
The nozzle. It's a very easy little metered pump, so
it's just one pump, so it's very doable. The drops
are actually manufactured in glycerin, so they're sweet, so palatability
and taste is not a problem. So it's been very,
very popular and very successful, and you know, it's just
really nice to have another option for treating our pets.
Speaker 2: We want to help them absolutely. We have to take
a quick break in but you just mentioned something and
I want to talk about when we get back, and
that is how many other medications we are currently giving
our animals, which then will also can dictate what else
we can give and why it's important if we can
to get to the basis of our pets allergies and
not continually just cover them up with other medications. And
with that we'll be right back in about a Thanks
for joining us here on Asterbats with doctor Jeff here
on pet Life Radio. And if you have questions about
allergy about your pet skin problems, now is the time
to give us a call. Eight seven, seven, three, eight, five, eight,
eight eighty two online assbats doctor Jeff joining in the conversation,
or send us that email and we'll be back in
just a minute.
Speaker 4: We'll be right back right after these messages. Stay tuned.
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Speaker 2: Allergies and I have a special guest, Pam Hughes from
ACT Allergy, and you know it's amazing. Before the break,
we were discussing the importance of trying to desensitize, treat
the source instead of continually covering up our canine and
feline allergies with medications. And you know, one of the
things that I think you should know that allergies are, interestingly,
just as some people inherited. And you know, my dad
had allergies, and I knew I was going to have
allergies and I did, so it's no different dogs, that's right.
Speaker 3: They're an inherited trade. And we actually even know that
there are certain breeds that are predisposed to allergies. For example,
many of the terrier breeds, anything with a terrier in
it is probably predisposed to allergies. That includes boxers, but
also retrievers, Golden retrievers, oh terrible are common.
Speaker 2: So yeah, and you mentioned terriers. I have a fan.
But you know, a lot of the terriers interestingly are
hypo allergenic to us. Let's say, for example, the wheat
software to wheatn terrier. Everybody talks about them is if
you have a child with allergies, get a wheaten. The
funny thing is, even though they are hypoallergenic to us,
they themselves are one of the most allergic breeds I see.
So many wheatons with skin problems, West Higland White Terriers,
the Terrible Terrible Caring Terriers. Toto, Poor Toto. Toto was
covered analogies. If you look real closely when you're not
next time we watch the movie, you're gonna see so
the keys are that there are certain breads and something
is very important, and you mentioned with your own dog.
We see a lot of allergies in the retrievers, especially
the Goldens the boxers. But there's another problem that we
are continually treating in our large breeds, and that's arthritis.
And of course one of the most common medications we
are using to treat the arthritis in our large breeds
are the n sets, which are the non steroidal anti inflammatories,
whether it's moloxicam, whether it's carprofin, whatever. But the issue
is when your dogs are on these non stroidl antin inflammatories,
you do not want to use. Your steroidal anti inflammatoris
your prednis owne, for example, to treat their skin problems.
So you're kind of stuck. If you want to treat
the arthritis with the one, then it's sort of obviously
you can't use that. You don't want to use. It's
not really that safe to use the steroid lantine inflammatories
to treat the skin, so on these dogs, it's even
more important to do what we can to avoid the
need for these medications for the steroids. And that's why
I think this allergy testing is so important. Now. I
think it's also important to note that the testing and
the desensitization is now the fact that we can use
serum allergy testing desensitization as simple as something drops that
you can put under your dog's tongue or inside the mouth.
There's really at this point no excuse, in my opinion,
not to have your allergic pets tested. And if your
veterinarians aren't doing it, you should look into it. Talk
to them about it. You can tell them you heard
it here by doctor Jeff himself. Here on ask the
best of doctor Jeff and they can call me. They
can email me at doctor Jeff at pet Life Radio
just the same, because I have been doing allergy testing
for my patients for a long time and I absolutely
seek results. Now. Are the results one hundred percent? Absolutely not?
In fact, there is what percent PAM is the specificity
and sensitivity of the test. Let's go to the test first. Well.
Speaker 3: And actually the best way to know if the test
is accurate is if the treatment is responding. And so
we see seventy five to eighty percent of the patients
that respond favorably to treatment, and what that means is
that their symptoms are greatly reduced, their comfort level, they're
itching and scratching, it's reduced visits to the veterinarian for
ear infections or skin conditions and the things that are
the symptoms of the allergy. So when a pet owner
is administering immunotherapy and really staying with the program eighty
percent of the time, they can see dramatic improvement. And
one of the things that we talk about that's really
important is the team work. The importance of teamwork and
treating allergies because, as we said, every patient is different,
so every patient responds differently and needs may need tweaking
an adjustment to their treatment. So it's important for the
veterinarian and the pet owner to work together to find
that sweet spot that's that right formulation and that right
amount of treatment for that pet and the communication that
if the treatment is not working, we want to maybe
administer treatment a little more frequently, or maybe they need
a stronger concentration. So it's just important to work with
your veterinarian and stay in communication and watch your pet
closely and to get them over the hump and get
them feeling better.
Speaker 2: And you know, one of the things that you just
mentioned that a lot of slips, a lot of our
minds as veterinarians even and that is the ear problem.
You look at your Golden retriever, you look at your
Labrador retriever as do. I have two of them, and
we see a lot of ear infections. Well, interestingly, they
can have their only symptom of allergy might be continuous
ear infections. They're persistent, they respond to treatment, but then
they come back. And it's important to note that that
can be allergies. It could be either food allergies and
it could be inhaled allergies. So a lot of dogs,
you know, if you remember when we talked about these
different allergies a while ago, we were discussing the overlap
that there are certain parts of the body that just
typically are involved in analogy. For example, if the most
of the lesions of scabs the sowords are in the
lower back, you gotta think, please please number one. If
it's inside on the belly, or inside the thighs or
the back of the thighs. You want to think out
of the air inhaled allergies, but then you get to
things like ears and face and rubbing. A lot of
these could be food or inhaled allergies, so it's not
fool proof. And therefore, if you have persistent if your dog,
especially if you're a large breed, is having persistent problems
with the ears, or your terriers persistent ear infections, and
as they said, that might be the only symptom. Very
possibly we're looking at analergies. So instead of just going
back to the vet and getting more ear cleaning and
more medication, and it's usually going to be steroid, why
don't you think about having your pets allergy tested and
actually get to the source of the problem.
Speaker 3: And that's right, because so often, you know, when we
have these breeds and maybe they swim and their ears
are wet, and we think, oh, they have an ear
infection because they've been swimming. We didn't clean their ears properly,
and as pet owners, we feel like we're not doing
a good enough job, you know, taking care of their ears,
when really the problem is allergy. And it doesn't matter
how much cleaning and so forth that we do, We're
not going to be able to really resolve that ear
issue unless we're unless we're desensitizing them. And so that's
really important. And not everybody knows that the ears could
be an allergy symptom.
Speaker 2: And you know, one thing that we have to you know,
drive the point home if you have allergic pets, there
is a solution. It's not one hundred percent, but then
nothing is hundred percent. What we don't want to do
is continually give our pets steroids of steroids as steroids
or the cyclosporine. Is it okay? Short term? Yes, we
have to make these pets comfortable. But if you see
that this is good becoming a chronic problem, there are
better ways, safer ways for your pets, and you know
it'll make them much more comfortable and there's nothing worse.
I mean, I see these dogs that with chronic allergies
and they're coming in. Their skin is dry, it's flaky,
sometimes it's greasy and oily. They smell. You know, my
dogs can be better with me. I don't know how
that you know you can have a dog that uncomfortable
and not want to get to the root of the problem.
And it's something that really nowadays is so easy to do.
There are a number of companies out there for information.
They can either go to my side doctor Jeffordoctorjeff dot com.
You can also log onto a CTT allergy that's actllergy
dot com with a lot of information. And if your
veterinarian hasn't discussed this with you, you should discuss it
with your veterinarian. There are easy ways. There are treatment
kits that you could receive take to your veterinarian even
and they can draw the blood. And by the way,
let's talk cost effective for a second. The testing, as
with anything any lab work, full panel off something can
be expensive. But in a long haul, besides the safety
factor to your pet, you will end up spending less. Well,
that's right, then you will if you continually treat the symptoms.
Speaker 3: That's right, because you know with the symptoms, you know,
there's like we just talked about that there's this what
we call a cumulative effect where at first it might
be their ears and so all these earsh products and
then they may have skin you know, flare ups or
hotspots and so it requires antibiotics and topicals and special bats,
and so it just starts to build up and build
up the expense and to mention just the discomfort for
the pet and for the pet owners. And so with immunotherapy,
this can alleviate all the need for all of those
extra expenses. And you know it's per month cost. It
would be far less expensive than all of these other
products you buyd that's great.
Speaker 2: Well, I want to thank you for joining us and
educating a little bit about allergy. Now you know there
is a solution, I think, a better solution to treating
our pets with chronic allergies, making them more comfortable, letting
them share your bed with you as they should and
or I should say, actually sharing your bed with them.
My dog's beds are too small for me to fit in,
but my bed's plenty big enough for them anyway. I
once again thank our sponsors, pro Sense Pet Products and
cong and anyone who if you want to send me
an email about allergy, you too. I will read it
next week and we will send you out a free
pro Sense product and a contoy just for having the
courage the guts to reach us here and ask the
bets with doctor Jeff here in pet Life Radio, and
we will I want to thank you, I once again
thank Mark went into our producer and we will see
you here next week nine am West Pacific time zone,
noon Eastern time zone and anywhere in between the penny
where you live. See you next week.
Speaker 3: Thank you.
Speaker 1: Let's Talk pets every week on demand only on petlife
radio dot com