Speaker 1: You were listening to Petlife Radio dot com.
Speaker 2: Good morning to everyone, after good afternoon if you're on
the East coast. I was just we were talking to
it to Mark, our producer, and here I am in
usually sunny southern California and it's been raining. It's so
bizarre for us to get rained. My dogs are just
you know, came in earlier and they were sopping wet.
But I guess all that is good we needed. You know,
we have a lot of drought. There was a specialist
watching just Friday about the huge wine industry here in California,
California wines. I'm sure you everard all of you have
known that and how the wine the grapegrowers are in
such panic because we've had such a drought. In fact,
we were planning a river rafting trip in May and
we had to cancel because there was no water.
Speaker 3: So we're hoping that this year will be a better
year for that.
Speaker 2: So anyway, you are here live with Doctor Jeff Werber,
host for the next half hour on Ask the Beats
with Doctor Jeff here on pet Life Radio. We are
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So that's a hint. I want to hear from you,
give us a call eight seven seven three eight five
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and I will get that forwarded to me asap. So
once again we're here for you. We're here to answer
your questions, to help you make decisions whatever.
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and Target and a lot of the mass retailers. Anyway,
last week we were talking about allergies and it's a huge,
huge problem that we see in pets. I would say
this time, maybe you're certainly the number one problem. And
what I want to do is Over the next few weeks,
we're going to go through a series of some of
the more common things that pets are presented to us
or to me four And how serious could they be?
Speaker 3: Might they be? How nervous should you be if your pet.
Speaker 2: Starts exhibiting some of these signs? And I'm going to
try to help you sift through the process.
Speaker 3: Is this emergency? Is it not an emergency? Can it wait?
How many days can I give it? Etc?
Speaker 2: And I'll help you get through that. So again, first
and foremost we were talking about allergies. We had gotten
through a lot of the skin allergies that are caused
by for example, fleas, skin allergies that were caused by pollen,
and we had to stop the conversation right out of
time last week when we.
Speaker 3: Got to the foods.
Speaker 2: And as with the other allergens, flees, pollen's especially, the
manifestation in our pets is not the same as it
is for us. For example, well, yeah, of course fleas
are gonna be the same. When you're gonna flee jump
on all over you, and a bite, you're gonna get
attlee bite, You're gonna get a little irritation and I've
had clients come in and roll up their pant leg
and they have it looks like they have the measles
or chicken box. It's unbelievable because there are so many
fleas biting them. Typically, however, fleas don't take it personally.
Fleas like your pets better, and once an adult flea,
once a flea, a larva, hatches to a young adult. Okay,
those are the ones that are all over your carpet.
Once they make it to a pet and take that
first blood meal, there is some alteration, some change within
their intestinal track to where now they become obligate parasites.
They need that blood meal. So if they should jump
off of your dog or cat and can't find your
dog your cat again, within hours to a day, they're
gonna be dead. So most of the fleas that you're
gonna see on your carpets, on your furniture, that are
hopping on to you when you sit down, are probably
those young adult fleas that have not yet found.
Speaker 3: Their host that's your pet.
Speaker 2: Sometimes they're gonna find you, but once they do find
that pet, they become obligate. So the little labrashes the
secondary infection. That makes sense, Now the pollens, as we talk,
that's a different ballgame. When we breathe in pollens, if
we are allergic, if we have hay fever as I
did as a kid, the symptoms are gonna be respiratory.
They're gonna be coughing, it's gonna be itchy throat, it's
gonna be a chest cold. I mean, running knows something
that is more a localized respiratory problem because we inhaled
the allergen.
Speaker 3: Not so in our dogs and cats.
Speaker 2: When dogs and cats inhale their allergens, whether it's pollens, molds,
things around the house, dust, dust mites, tobacco, smoke, they scratch,
their manifest of allergies is skin related. So the best
we have, especially in the dog, as we talked last week,
is to be able to based on the location of
the skin problem, we might have a clue as to
what the culprit is. Not so own cats. Cats aren't
as nice to us, and with a cat it could
be regardless of the allergen. They can have lesions anywhere,
no rhyme, no reason. Now, now what about food, So
you would think what happens if we eat something that
we're allergic to or we're sensitive to. Probably we're gonna
have some intestinal issue. People who are severely allergic might
have an anaphylactic reaction. But again you can get if
I asked you, what do you think a dog's manifestation
is going to beat a food allergy? And hopefully you're
going to guess, as with pollens and everything else, skin
and guess what.
Speaker 3: You're right, it's going to be skin.
Speaker 2: Now, the classic textbook manifestation of allergies food allergies in
a dog, the skin lesions are going to be chewing
at the feet, the front is easier for them to
get to it, maybe rubbing at the face and also
ears now, I remember we've ears now, We've talked about
ear allergies with pollen inhalation as well with atopic dermatitis.
So there's going to be some overlap, of course. But
if you have a dog that classically presents with licking
at its feet incessantly and is rubbing at its face,
rubbing it its ears, scratching ears, red and flamed ears,
you gotta think food now, How is a great way
to easily differentiate between whether their feet and ear chewing
and scratching because of food or pollen very simple. If
you haven't changed your pet's food, and this allergy is seasonal,
meaning it goes away during fallen winter, guess what, it's
not the food. However, if it's not seasonal, and even
though it's the same whether there it's summer spring or
whether it's fall winter, then for sure I would put
food much higher on the list. As a matter of fact,
as we're going to get to right now, it's so
difficult to really identify and diagnose food related allergies. I
will often tell someone if they're having a problem like
this time of year, we'll treat it symptomatically and we're
going to wait. I tell them, you know what, let's
wait until October, late September, October November, and if the
symptoms seem to go on their own, then let's not
mess with the food. Thing is it's such a pain,
it is so difficult to do, and let's just say,
you know what, if it went away, it's most likely
a seasonal allergy. So having said that, let's get into
some nuts and bolts. And if you have a pet,
and you're listening now and we're alive, and you have
any question about allergies, be it pollen, be it fleas,
be it ticks, be it, be it food, you name it.
Speaker 3: I want you to give us a call. I want
to hear from you.
Speaker 2: Guess what it costs you nothing, A few minutes of
your time. Our phone number is easy eight seven seven
three eight five eight eight A to pick up the phone.
And at the very least you're going to get a
free pro Sense product, So come on, you can't lose.
So what I want is to talk about this food thing. Typically,
the most common app gen that pets are allergic to
is going to be proteins. So in the perfect world,
if we want to try to diagnose a particular allergen
or allergens, we would need to eliminate all from the
diet for eight weeks, and we need to be very
very strict, and I mean that means nothing else other
than a non allergenic food. The problem is they don't
always like this non allergenic food. And a bigger problem
is you. Because I know, as with many, many, many clients,
I could tell you this till I'm blue in the face,
and it's not going to mean diddley.
Speaker 3: If you have kids in the house, forget about it.
Speaker 2: There's no way that you are going to have this
dog not eat anything else. But in theory, if we
can eliminate the antigens in this diet for about eight weeks.
Speaker 3: It used to be six.
Speaker 2: We're getting tougher on it, and now it's eight weeks
and food is the problem, then this pet usually it's
going to be in the dog is going to improve.
And when that dog improves, we're going to sit back
and go, Ah, that's it.
Speaker 3: It's food.
Speaker 2: We now have confirmation that it's food. So now what
So now what we start doing is let's start introducing
food groups, specifically proteins, one at a time, and then
we'll do some carbs and we're gonna make like a
checklist and see which protein do they start scratching. Now,
if they do, you don't have to wait another eight
weeks to not All you have to do is as
soon as you see the earliest signs of footooing, face,
rubby ears, whatever, stop that one. Wait about four or
five days and we should be okay. Now try to
introduce things that they've never seen before.
Speaker 3: And we'll get to that in a minute. And I'll
give you some suggestions.
Speaker 2: But the whole idea is that if it's something that's
been commonly in part of their diet, clearly there's a
good chance that might be the culprit. Why give it
to them again? So we want to first choose things
that they probably haven't seen before. And if you can
identify a couple of different proteins and they seem to
do well, then go to some carbs. Likewise, same thing,
things they've never seen before.
Speaker 3: Speak to your.
Speaker 2: Veterinarian about maybe some dietary supplement, so vitamins, because we
need to try to make a diet balanced, and you're
good to go.
Speaker 3: Now.
Speaker 2: There is another option. There is a hydrolyzed protein diet.
Hydrolyzed proteins can actually eliminate summer most of the antigenicity.
It tastes a little better than a non allergenic diet,
meaning in non protein the non protein it's really not proteins.
What they do is they will actually fragment the proteins
to destroy their antigenicity. So the pet could eat it
getting the benefit of protein, but antigenetically it's not the
same as normal and therefore the body is not going
to react against it. It's not going to have an
antibody to react against the actual protein. So what many
companies have done, which I think is a good idea,
is they've come up with what we call novel protein diets.
Now what that means is they are choosing a single
protein and a single carb that are kind of bizarre
things that it wouldn't surprise me if your pet has
never seen, for example, salmon and potato, or they call
fish and potato, venison and green pea, rabbit and green pea,
or rabbit and potato. So you know, typically the most
common carbs in our pets foods have been things like
you know, wheat, things like oats. Well, certainly rice. So again,
thirty years ago, rice was a great one, and in fact,
the very first non or hypoelergenic diet on the market
was a rice. It was lamb and rice because all
the other foods had chicken or beef. So now it's venison,
it's bison, it's fish, it's rabbit.
Speaker 3: It's kangaroo. Edge a good one for you.
Speaker 2: I mean, when was the last time your pet had
a chance to eat kangaroo meat. So it's coming up
with these kind of bizarre proteins and these things like
some of the grains, some of the carbs, some of
the vegetables that most likely either they've never eaten before
or we just know from the dermatologists historically that they're
pretty low antigenicity. They don't usually cause the problem in pets.
So instead of going to that very difficult, not so
great tasting, unbalanced diet, why don't you try a balanced,
novel protein, novel carb diet and if it works fantastic,
stick with it, don't change, and it's a little easier
to do. The premise is the same. You're going gonna
have to go six to eight weeks. It can have
nothing nothing else during that time period, and then they
can start to if they do well, stick with that one.
If not, if you know you're into this four or
five weeks, there is no change, But I would recommend
to stop and wait, you know, a couple of weeks,
or just just start one of the other ones. Just
give yourself longer to see an improvement. And if that
doesn't work, then you're gonna have to go to the
non allergenic fragmented protein or the hydrolyzed protein diet.
Speaker 3: Now, one thing that you you know I.
Speaker 2: Should add to this is that unfortunately the gasloin intestinal
track is not typically going to be one of the
symptoms that we're going to see, so you can't use
that as a judge anyway. We're gonna get back to
some of GI signs just a minute when we come
back from our break. Thanks for joining me here on
ask the that's with doctor Jeff. I'm your host, Doctor
Jeff Werber, and we will be back in.
Speaker 3: Just a few minutes.
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Speaker 2: And welcome back to after that, Doctor Jeff here on
pet Life Radio.
Speaker 3: Uh and I'm.
Speaker 2: Your host, doctor Jeff. And you know, so we talked
about the allergies. Huge problem we see skin disease this
time of year, especially probably the number one problem we're
going to see our skin related fleas and ticks. Obviously,
flees especially a huge problem. The pollen and household allergens
are a huge problem inhaled contact also causing skin problems.
And we just finished talking about the foods problems. A
couple of other things to talk about as we are
on the subject of skin and allergies and irritation. Many
of these problems, many of the conditions that are causing
skin disease also cause what we call secondary bacterial infection,
and that is called a pioderma. They're usually superficial infection.
And interestingly, the bacterium involved is a normal inhabitant of skin.
It is a staff epidermitis. It's a staff lecoccal bacterium
that lives peacefully on the dog, on your cat. It's
just there us. So why why does this same bug
cause problems when it does. It's because of the self trauma.
It is because of the skin inflammation. It is the scratching.
So what happens is as soon as the protective barrier
of that skin is affected, is broken down because of
its inflammation, because of the dog scratching, the cats scratching.
Now this peaceful, happy, go lucky bug becomes an opportunist
and starts invading into the hair follicles, into the skin
and causing the skin infection. The point being that you
have to know that when your veterinarian is going to
treat these allergies with these skin conditions, more likely than
not antibiotics are going to be in. The equation is
we can't just treat the symptoms, the itching, the scratching.
Now we have something else to deal with, and that
is the secondary bacterial infection. We got to do it
now before we move on. There are one or two
other conditions that affect animal skin that are nothing to
do with allergy. Well, first of all, pioderma itself could
be primary it usually isn't when I see a pioderma.
When I see a skin infection, I am looking for
another underlying cause. We can't see it primary, but we
usually don't choose the secondary to something one thing. We
will see another primary problem again. Both with secondary potential
for pioderma are the manges most common demo dectic mange,
and scabies, which is sarcoptic mange. If I see a dog,
let's go back to ears for a second, typically a
young dog or a dog that has been mingling, playing
with a puppy. Especially typically it's gonna be a puppy
you know nothing about. They bumped up into each other
on the street. It was a stray dog on the street.
It was a little puppy of the dog park that
the owner got from some guy sitting on the street.
By getting at is using puppies that are not well
cared for, weren't well bred, and they can have something
called scabies sarcoptic mange. What you need to do about
scabies is, first of all, the lesion itself is intensely pterritic,
meaning intensely itchy, so miserable. These dogs are going to
be that I often joke.
Speaker 3: If you put him.
Speaker 2: In front of you for ten minutes, he's going to
scratch for a the ten And the lesions most commonly
are going to be on the head and neck, the ears,
especially the ear margins, and I'm gonna give you a
little trick about that one. And in the axilayer area
which is under the arm and the armpits ventrally on
the bottom. So your lesions are going to be face,
head and neck, ear under the acceller of the armpits,
and the venu from the bottom. In other words, very
little on the back, unlike what fleas. So we know
that flees, the skin disease related to fleeology, likes the
back of the dog, and this one is usually on
the ventrom it's on.
Speaker 3: The lower side.
Speaker 2: It is a contact driven parasite, meaning direct contact given
from the.
Speaker 3: Culprit the host, whoever that was.
Speaker 2: And we also know that they live very superficially on
the pet, which means guess what they can also attach
to you.
Speaker 3: So if I have a.
Speaker 2: Dog coming in with this intense pariitis, one trick is
you can gently tickle the edges of their ear of
the ear flap okay, And if that sets up an
intense reaction where they start scratching incessantly with their back leg.
We call that a pedal reflex. There's a good chance
there are scabies on board. And the reason I mentioned
some of these things is that unlike the demodectic mange,
the scabies might, even though it could be there in
huge numbers, is often very difficult to find. So if
we were going to base our diagnosis just on finding
these mites on a skin scraping, we may fail. So
we have to look at the other clues. Is there
are very strong pinel pedal reflex are the lesions around
the axilla, So I see a lot of scabs and
rednisce sowres in the armpits around the face and the belly.
Speaker 3: And here's the clincher.
Speaker 2: If you the owner also is scratching typically the forearms
and at the belt line, then I'm treating for scapies
because there are very few other things that can do that,
whether I find them or not. I mean, you can
do ten scrapings and they all can be negative, even
though the dog has the might. And also when we scrape,
we usually scrape more superficially, and we scrape a larger area,
and that is because it's so hard to find. We
want to increase our chances of finding this mage.
Speaker 3: Might and that's scabies. Now.
Speaker 2: Demodectic mange, on the other hand, can affect a dog
of any age, and it's often linked to the immune
system when we see immune suppression. It's not uncommon to
have a flare up of demodectic mange infection if there
is a stress to the body. We can see a
flare up, for example post surgery, for example, post whelping.
A mama dog can have puppies and she can end
up with demodectic mange. What's interesting about demadecs. First of all,
it's non contagious. Not only is it not contagious to you,
it's not contagious to other dogs. Well, now you're going
to scratch it as way a second, where'd it come from? Ah,
we'll get there in a second. It's gonna blow your
mind too. And it's not contagious. It in of itself
is not itchy, but very commonly it's associated with that
you got it secondary back cural infection, and that is
really itchy. So we have a secondary bacural infection. We're
gonna have the itchiness that Prietus usually much easier to find, however,
since they live so deeply down in the hair follicle,
which is why the lesions associated with demo dectic mange
are usually what we call patchy alopicha. There are patches
of either thinning or no hair. The skin collection actually
look pretty good. You might see a little some pustules
or a little scabs because of the dog scratching, but
you don't see the same redness and erythema that you
might see with scabies. So you have to scrape deeply
enough to draw blood. Why because they're hiding down deep
in the hair follicles and that's where we have to scrape.
They are much easier to find if they're there, so
we don't have to do a very wide scraping. We
can scrape just a smaller area. But you gotta go deep.
So when your veterinarian brings that pet of yours back
out and it's bleeding, don't yell, don't be upset. You
have to We must get deep enough to cause some
bleeding in order to get the unaccurate scrape.
Speaker 3: So the clincher, though, is this.
Speaker 2: When I was in school, and this is thirty plus
years ago. We guestimated, or the guestimate was from the dermatologists,
that about seventy percent of dogs had the demodetic maine
might on their bodies as a normal inhabitant of skin,
and it was the immune system that caused them to
start congregating in certain areas, invading the hair follicles, infecting,
eating out the hair, et cetera. That guestimate is now
up to one hundred percent. So why does your dog
get it. It doesn't get it from another dog, It
gets from himself because they are normal inhabitants of skin.
They live there one hundred percent. And it's whatever. It
might be causing stress, anxiety, immunosuppression, et cetera, might be
propagating the actual infection that we're seeing. When these dogs
present with their pati alopecia, you don't have to worry
about it. As far as contagion also difficult to treat
with antibiotics, there are a few treatments out there. They
usually involve a medication called ivermectin or an ivermectin cousin
like celimectin, And we have to be careful with certain
breeds that have a known hyper sensitivity to the ivermectins,
like the Collie dogs, like the Australian shepherds. A lot
of the hurting dogs seem to have a hyper sensitivity.
So we need to be very very careful, work closely
with your veterinarian when.
Speaker 3: It comes to these.
Speaker 2: It takes a while to treat both of them. It's
going to be a bit of a commitment, but very treatable.
And just to really freak you out before we say
goodbye for today, about seventy or eighty percent of people
actually have demo dectic mange mites living in our eyebrows.
Speaker 3: So there you go. Take that thought to bed with you,
but yeah, it's pretty gross. Anyway.
Speaker 2: I want to thank you for joining me here on
pet Life Radio Assets with Doctor Jeff. If you want
to send me to DRJF at pet Life Radio dot.
Speaker 3: Com, go ahead, please do so.
Speaker 2: I'll answer it and I'll read your email online and
you too will get a pro sense product and a
contoy just for joining in and allowing us to answer
your questions online. And next week, another major major problem
that we often see that I want to talk about,
and that's going to be vomiting, very very common presentation.
Speaker 3: When do we worry? Why do we worry? How does
it happen?
Speaker 2: And we're going to go through a series of these,
and next week, how lovely, we're going to talk about
the vomiting dog or the vomiting cat. And until then,
have a great week. We'll see here next week on
pet Life Radio. Ask the best of Doctor Jeff. I'm
your host, doctor Jeff Werber, and thanks again to pro
Sense and comm see here next week.
Speaker 1: Let's talk pets every week on demand only on pet
life radio dot com.