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you can join another conversation and let's talk pets. So anyway,
I hope you guys are enjoying your summer. It's getting
hot here in southern California, and from what I understand,
it's getting hot in other places of the country as well.
As a matter of fact, we've been getting a lot
of news stories about pets and cards. Interestingly, Tennessee just
passed a law that if you are walking around driving
and you see a dog in a park car, you
can actually break into that car. So of course I'm
not recommending you take that brick yet and going through
a window. Obviously that could be dangerous for the pet
inside as well. But do know, follow the normal course.
If it's in front of a store front or a
seven to eleven or some sort of you know, quick shop,
you want to open the door and scream, did everybody
have this dog in this car, anybody on in this car.
If you walk into a building and there's a front desk,
ask anybody to be paged, a supermarket to be paged
if in fact they have a dog in the car.
But the key really is that you want to do
what you can to get that dog out legally, legitimately safely. However,
if you can't find the owner and it's warm in there,
and you have any doubt, and you are in the
state of Tennessee, go ahead and do what you can
to break through that car. You are allowed and you
are protected by law. And I think that's pretty cool,
and I think other states that follow as well, because
you know, it's dangerous, it really is. And I have
treated dogs that have been stuck in par cars. I
have treated dogs with heatstroke and it's not pretty and
it's very sad because many of them don't make it.
So I think Tennessee had a lot of courage to
do so, and I think it's a great idea. So
you know, another thing that you know came to my
mind is that we have a big problem with cars overheating.
Not just heaven forbid, an animal or child left in
a car or even driving in a car, you gotta
put the windows down, you gotta be air conditioning going,
and a lot of cars overheat this time of year
and will winter problem that where cars can freeze over
But it also helps prevent cars from overheating, and that's
anti freeze. Anti freeze is very commonly used all year long.
It's as it said, during the cold, it's to help
prevent cars from freezing. During the summer, it helps from
cars overheating and at least many of them contain an
active ingredient called ethylene glycoll and ethyne gl call typically
has a very sweet taste, so when it's dripping from
a carb rare or if it's a container of it
in your garage, it's actually a taste that dogs and
even cats don't mind licking on. So when you have
that radiator leak, that could be a problem. Why because
ethylene glycoll is a very very severe kidney toxin. It
is nephro toxic as we like to say, and can
be deadly. And interestingly, there was a new law that
was put into effect years ago. All really because I
believe she was either somewhere between seven and ten, maybe
eleven years old. She wrote a letter because she had
a dog that died from ingesting ethylene. Guy call, and
she started a campaign to ultimately have a lot of
these companies that make antifreeze to add bitters to the
anaphreeze that obviously will not affect its ability to work
to function as anti freezing and anti overheating, but it
will help prevent dogs and cats from licking the ana freeze.
And it did become law, so most of the newer
anafhreezers out there will have this ingredient in it to
make it not taste so good, because it really does
taste very sweet. But a lot of the anafrieses out
there still, especially the older ones and especially the ones
that you might have in your garage, still contain the
good old fashioned, sweet tasting ethlene I call antifreeze. Now,
how this sort of interested me so much is that
I realize that ana freeze is a severe kidney toxin,
and there are other products out there, other items out there,
other drugs out there that can be very, very seriously
dangerous to a dog's kidneys. And I realized that this
is something that you know, we've talked about certain toxins
in the past, but you know, maybe for this show
I want to concentrate on dogs and kidneys, and of
course it would apply to cats as well, though there
are other things I would add to this list for cats.
But let's talk about some of the things that can
be very dangerous to dogs. And what's interesting is not
all of them are always dangerous to every dog, and
many of them are dose related. As a matter of fact,
we can use them in low doses.
Speaker 1: It is the high.
Speaker 2: Doses that causes a problem, which makes it even more
challenging because we don't always know on an individual dog's
basis what can be toxic. And some of the things
that we offer our dogs because they need them, we
are being prescribed them, and yet that same medication in
much higher doses can be deadly. So, first of all,
how do you know what are the some of the
symptoms when we think about toxicity when it comes to dogs,
What are some of the things we worry about? And
how do you tell whether or not your dog is
even having problems with his kidneys? How do you know
to recognize, you know, before you make that phone call
or rush to the veterinarian, you want to know what
you're looking at. So let's go through a quick list
of some of the things that we could look at
that should at least, you know, peque our interest if
we see it in our dogs. Number one is dogs
not eating. They become a little more sluggish, as we
call they're anorexic. They may be drooling, and we'll talk
about that because some of these products actually cause as
one of the kidney toxins called a bun that's an
internal toxin. It elevates, it causes some oral ulcerations occasionally,
and these dogs will drool, they don't want to swallow well,
vomiting certainly a biggie increase thirst and increase urination. As
in early stages of kidneys. All right, what's happening is
in the early stages of disease or failure, the kidney
stopped functioning well. As a filter. The job of the
kidney typically is to read the water balance, if you will,
in the body, and it says to itself, it says
to the glomara like, okay, guys, here's what you gotta do.
We need of the water that this dog just took in.
We need to keep about thirty percent of it. And
the rest you can urinate out. Well. What happens is,
as kidneys start to fail, they lose that ability to
make that judgment. So everything that goes in basically comes out.
That's why dogs in kidney failure the urine is very
clear because they're not concentrating at all. So because of
all that fluid loss through these kidneys that are no
longer functioning properly, what happens the brain says, hey, buddy,
you got a drink. We're runn out of water here,
so we have this cycle. We're taken in more water
because the kidneys aren't doing their job to retain fluid
and therefore they're urinating it out.
Speaker 1: Now.
Speaker 2: The opposite happens, though, once kidneys really start to fail
to the point of shut down, they no longer make
urine at all. This happens prior to succumbing to whatever disease.
When these kidneys shut down, they become anuric. An uric
means no more urine being formed, and that's a problem.
As at bun that blo urin nitrogen starts to elevate
because of kidney disease kidney failure. It also has a
toxic effect on the brain and we can see seizures,
we can see coma, and of course in the ultimate
stages we can see death. So it is so important
to recognize those early signs. So you got a dog
that's going to maybe not want to eat, drooling, vomiting,
You might even notice because they're drooling, they also have
really bad breath. They'll get at the beginning or the
early in midstages, they'll get very very thirsty. Then they'll
be urinating a lot, and then all of a sudden
they stop urinating. They can start to seize and go
into a coma and ultimately death, very very serious stuff.
Speaker 1: So what are some of.
Speaker 2: These things that we probably use have in our houses
and yet we have to be very very careful when
it comes to our dogs. So one thing is ND
sets non steroidal anti inflammatory drugs. Now, some of the
nd says that we use, like ibuprofen at home, even
aspirin can and do have safe levels for dogs. Even
the veterinary approved the rimedios, the medicam, so these drugs,
also derromax. These are all SOMEO brand names that we
use all the time and yet can be toxic and
high doses. In fact, when some of them are so
tasty because we want to give our dogs things they
want to eat something, things that are chewable. So what
happens is the companies make them so tasty and then
dog's going to get it to the whole container. So
I help people all the time when I'm sending home
some of these veterinary approved and sets, these nonsteroidal anti
inflammatory drugs. I tell the owners, don't trust that childproof
cap because that toildproof cap is not going to work
on your fifty to sixty to seventy pound retriever or
shepherd or rotweiler. They're gonna go through the plastic like
it's nothing. So you need to hide them. You need
to put them way out of reach, hide them up
in a medicine cabinet somewhere where there's no way your
dog can get a hold of them, because if they can,
they will, and if they do, there are a lot
of potential extremely toxic side effects. Next up, Now, this
is kind of new, and I say kind of new
because it's relatively new for many of you. Hopefully this
is old news already. But I mean I used to
use these. I used to give these to my dogs's treats.
Training treats. You know, sit, good boy, and I used
to toss one grapes. Raisins, grapes, currents are all very
potentially toxic. And here's the problem. Not every dog will
have a toxic reaction to these raisins, grapes and currents
number one and number two. They're dose related, and there's
a lot of argument out there is to what that
dose iss one raisin or one grape going to really
affect a seventy pounds retriever. Most likely not, And is
every retriever laboratory. I mean I used to do them
all the time. I've never had this reaction, which means
that probably my dogs were lucky ones and didn't have
or didn't lack whatever it was this enzyme that causes
a problem with these rains and grapes. There's something in
the skins, the pro synthiatins that have a toxic effect.
You know, it's not completely understood why we don't know
all the dose ramifications, but for those dogs that are sensitive, yes,
it could be deadly. So again, raisins grapes something you
want to be very careful about. The ethnic is I all.
You know, obviously we talked about the end sets the
raisins and grapes. Now another thing, and again we use
this a lot. As we know, there are two classes
broadcast categories of vitamins. There are the water siable vitamins,
all the vitamin b's, the vitamin C. These are the
water siable. What that means is you know, again don't
test this at home, folks, But typically these are non
toxic because what happens is in the higher amounts, the
body is going to take what it needs and then
the rest are going to urinate out. So the water
siably dissolve in water. It's usually not a big problem. However,
a dan K vitamins a vitamin D. Vitamins D envitamin
K are fat siable and therefore the fat sible of
vitamins actually can be toxic. Are we saying don't give
a D K. Of course we have to give them
I mean vitamin K. In the case of, for example,
an anticoagulant like rat poison, I mean vitamin K one
is life saving. So again we're not saying don't use them,
but we have to understand that there are upper limits
of safety, and the vitamin D three is one that
can in high amounts can cause kidney damage. So I'm
gonna hold that thought with you. We are going to
be right back. Don't go away. You're here live with
doctor Jeff at pet Life Radios. Ask the bets with
doctor Jeff. He aren't cut Life Radio.
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Speaker 3: Let's talk past.
Speaker 1: Let's come petal Headline Radio, pet Live Radio dot.
Speaker 2: Com and welcome back. You're here live with doctor Jeff
Werber here in pet Life Radios. Asdevats to doctor Jeff,
we were talking about kidney toxins and what's so interesting
about kidney toxins and we're specifically talking about dogs. Now
I'm going to add a few to cats at the end,
but these are things that mostly if you've gone through
our list non story lantin, inflammatories, the antifreeze, raisins and grapes,
Vitamin D. These are all things that we ay well
except for the athlete I like call the ano frees
that we use in our cars, not in our dogs.
But these are all things we have in our homes.
We have access to them, our dogs have access to them.
And it with the things like the grapes and the
raisins and the vitamin D, the medications, the end sets.
These are all things that we even give to our dogs.
So we have to be really really careful knowing that
here's something that we're the doctor, the doc you told
me to give this medication. Of course we did. And
your own doctor may have told you to take an
aspirin every now and then, but again say take thirty.
So we have to be very very careful because things
that we use often that have safe dose ranges, and
we of course want to use them in that safe range.
When we get out of that safe range, they could
be deadly. So the vitamin ds, as we mentioned, vitamin
D three the cold comes. So for all there's a number.
Again we use this also for example, dogs that have
parathyroid problems or dogs that have had thyroids or cats
that have had thyroids removed, and now we have to
supplement with because the parathyroids are often removed with the thyroids,
sometimes accidentally. Sometimes they just can't be saved in the
event of a tumor, and we need to supplement our pets,
and we need to supplement with some vitamin d's, so
so just be careful because too much can also cause
some kidney disease. And the last one that I wanted
to talk about today for dogs are again medications that
your veterinarian in many instances has probably if you've had
a pet, a dog with heart disease, your dog inevitably
has gone home with beta blockers or calcium channel blockers,
and the reason is that these medications help reduce blood pressure.
A lot of times, in failure, dogs have increased heart rates.
They have increased blood pressure, just like we do in
heart disease, and we need to bring those values down. Well.
If your dog gets an overdose of one of these medications,
it can drop the blood pressure so low that it
reduces blood flow essential oxygenated blood flow to the kidneys,
and that can cause kidney shutdown. So we can get
kidney failure. Really, the kidney themself is fine, the tissue
is normal, the anatomy is working, the glenmary lie are
working right, the loop of Henley is working. Everything is
working beautifully except for one thing. We're not getting enough
blood flow through them. And with blood comes oxygen, and
the kidney tissue starts to fail, starts to die because
your dog got a hold of too much of what
was given to them for one organ's health and it
destroyed another organ's health. So again, when it comes to
the old adage, more is not always better. Now, some
might argue with money, for example, more might be better
with weight loss. Yep, more might be better. The more
weight you lose, the better you're going to be. That's great,
But when it comes to drugs. When it comes drug dosing,
we have a dose range. We want to stay within
that range. And just because two asmen did the job
doesn't mean that five are going to do any better.
As a matter of fact, they could hurt you. So
keep that in mind when dealing with these medications. So also,
what I wanted to do is add on. So first
of all, I'd be curious to know. Send me a
note to doctor jefdr Jeff at petlife Radio dot com
or joining the conversation, which I'm just checking here again
to see if anybody has and no one is. No
one has joined in our conversation to let us know
if they have had a pet a dog that has
ever had a problem with any type of kidney failure.
I think it's very important. So in cats, we've talked
about this before. There are certain plants that animals can
get a hold of that can have effects. And one
of the serious, serious plants that we want to add
to this list when it comes to kidneys at least
is the lily lilies are potentially very toxic. There are
a number of lily species out there. My thumb is
brown is not green. So I can't go through them
all and tell you definitely want to check with your
poison control. But my blanket rule would be when in
doubt a void. So if you have a lily around
the house that you think, I think it's not one
of them. I think it's one that's safe on that
safe list until you know for sure, don't think because
you thinking and thinking wrong could be deadly to your cat.
And mind you it's not just well God, no, doctor,
my cat doesn't eat the plant, doesn't lick on the lily,
It doesn't eat the leaves. Ah, that could be great,
But guess what if they drink the water at the
bottom of that vase that has been sucking all the
lily juice into it as well, that could be enough
to cause severe deadly toxicity. So it's not just the leaves.
Your cat could be a non plant leaf eater and
still die from licking the war that is hydrating that
lily flower, that lily plant. So be really really careful
with those things as well. And if you have any
questions about a toxin, there's some great poison control websites
you can just go online. Google ASPCA has a great one.
So you can send me a note. I will pass
it on to my very good friend and colleague, doctor
Justine Lee, who is boarded in emergency medicine and in toxicology,
and she will get back to me, and I will
in turn get back to you. We've had doctor Lee
here on the show in the past, and I'm sure
we can have her come back on. In fact, if
this is something you'd really like to know more about
household poisons. These are things that you have in your
medicine cabinets, you have in your garages, you have under
your counters in the kitchen, cleaning agents, solvents, foods, whatever.
Be very very interesting. By the way, it's not necessarily
just kidneys. It causes blood sugar problems, it causes liver disease.
But we've talked in the past about an ingredient in
sugarless gums named xylatol, and it is okay for people,
but it can be deadly to dogs. Well, interestingly, this
is a caution out there while we're on the subject
of things that can be toxic in general, that there
are and I don't know the brands, so you're gonna
have to check it out, but some of the new
sugarless peanut butters where it says reduce sugar, reduce, calorie,
reduce fat peanut butters may have xylotol. Now, mind you,
I'm not advocating that you should be giving your dogs
peanut butter as a normal part of their daily routine. However,
you would get into whole some peanut butter. Yes, it's
a little fatty that concerns me. There could be an
issue with some of the fatty nuts and pancreatitis. But look,
let's face it, from most dogs and they like it.
A small amount of peanut butter that you can use
to give with their medication is fine. You want to
get some good video of your dog doing some fun
things talking, give him some peanut butter put on the
roof of his mouth and you can have a lot
of fun with it. That's fine. However, just understand that
check the labels of the peanut butters that you buy,
and if you are buying one that is promoting low calories,
less sugar, et cetera, don't necessarily think, ah, this is
even better for my dog because it's less fat less sugar.
O contreire, because if they're sweetening it with the artificial
sweetener xylatol that's x y L T O L, then
it can be potentially deadly to your dog, So be
really careful there as well. So anyway, I hope I
gave you enough food for fodder here to think about
things that you have around to always a good idea
if you're thinking about giving something to your dog or
your cat that you've never given before, and even your
friends have given it and they say, oh, it's fine,
it's fine. It could be. I'm not saying it's not fine,
but give you a veterinarian a call, ask your vet,
ask someone from their staff is it safe? Are their precautions?
Is there too much? And that's the key that what
might be too much for one dog, right or not
too much for one dog, might be too much for
your dog. And as we mentioned a lot of these
things we talked about today are normally given to dogs
and are totally safe, but they have a toxic dose.
And if we exceed that safety dose and we get
into the realm of toxic doses, it can be very
dangerous for your pets. And there are many things out
there that are just like that that are safe in
small amounts, but may not be so safe in larger amounts.
So again, check with veterinarian. Anyway, I want to thank
you for joining me here today on pet Life Radios
Ask the Vets with doctor Jeff. I would love some
input if you guys have any subject that you'd like
to hear more about, if you like me to make
it a little bit more understandable. Sometimes you go to
the vet, they've thrown all this stuff at you, the
throwing these words at you. You don't understand and you
don't want to sound you don't want to you're afraid
to sound dumb like doc, I don't get it. Can
you go over it again? You know what? It's okay,
because that's what I love to do is help you
make things to bet things for you very understandable. And
when you understand and things, it makes much more sense
why and do what we do. So therefore we'll see
here next week here on Assavets with doctors Jeff at
nine A and Pacific at twelve noon back East and
wherever you're in between, it's going to be ten or
eleven o'clock as well. I want to thank sponsors once again,
pro Sense Pet Products find them at your local Target
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find Klan everywhere. See you next week. Thanks for joining me.
Speaker 1: Let's Talk pets every week on demand only on petlve
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