Speaker 1: You were listening to Petlifradio dot com and.
Speaker 2: Welcome in good morning to all of you on this
glorious Sunday, oh at least glorious here in Los Angeles.
I hope it is the same wherever you are listening.
You are with me, your host, doctor Jeff Werber here
and ask the bets with doctor Jeff for the next
thirty minutes here on pet Life Radio, the only live
call in radio show that means call in, that means
you need to pick up your phones and you need
to give us a call. And that's eight seven seven
three eight five eight eight eight to two. We're here
to answer your questions about your pets. Ninety nine point
nine percent of your dog and gat questions. I will
give you immediate answers, and if there's some rare exotic
pet you may have, I will get the answers for
you through my network of good friends and colleagues that
do exotics and other strange animals, and we will get
answers for you by next show. Also, I want to
thank our sponsors, KNG Veterinary Products and pro Sense Pet Products,
because without them, we wouldn't be here, and it wouldn't
be here to help you. We did have a great
call from a listener during the week. It was actually
an email. It's a great question. So I'm hoping that
she's going to give us a call back because I
think it's something we should share with all of them,
because it really is. It was a great question about
her dog and a problem that her dog is having.
We have, as you know, those of you listening, hopefully
all of you have been listening. We have been going
through a lot of different endocrine organ systems and those
are the systems that deliver and secrete the various hormones
that affect much of what our bodies do, how they react.
And we've covered things like the adrenal gland which is
over secretion called Cushing's disease, an under secretion called Addison's disease,
and all the ramifications and treatments and things. We were
in the midst of covering some thyroid issues, and we
were going through some of the hypo thyroid and that
is what we commonly see in dogs, and that is
an under delivery and under secretion of the thyroid gland
and kind of what we see along with that, and
we were just going into some of the hyper thyroid
issues with cats. We were getting into the treatment, but
before we continue with that, what I wanted to do,
since the holidays really are coming around the corner. Next week,
I'm going to be talking to you live from Park City, Utah.
I will take a break from my snowboarding on the
slopes to join you for a thirty minutes in my
home or my hotel or my condo room studio. But
what I wanted to talk about today, and if we
have time, we can finish up our discussion on hyper
thyroid cats later. Hopefully we'll get that phone call because
that was a great call. But we want to talk
about holidays. Now. Holidays the festive time we just had
our depending on what you want to call Halloween, whether
that's our first installation. Obviously, the biggest threat there is
going to be all the candy and junk our dogs
gonna get a hold of. But then we just finished Thanksgiving.
That's a good one. But now we're heading to Christmas
and Hanukkah, and these are the ones that seem to
pose the biggest threat to our pets, and for many
different reasons. First of all, let's face it, for all
of us that have been sharing our home with pets,
sharing our lives with pets. We would clearly say I
know those of you that hear me say it will agree.
Pets are part of the family. So it's not like
we're going to have all these festivities and we are
going to send our pets to the garage or to
the backyard to be by themselves. They want to be part.
We want them to be a part of it all.
But we have to keep in mind that there are
certain conditions, certain things we need to look out for
that may cause some safety issues for our pets. So
let's first talk about the obvious, and these are some
things that we discussed whenever we talk about Thanksgiving, and
that are the foods. And typically a lot of the
foods that we like to eat during the holidays, be
it turkey with the skin, dark meat turkey, especially ham,
those of us that eat latkas, which are the fried
potato pancakes for hanka or doughnuts. These are all things
that are usually fried in oil. So dogs and cats,
but mostly dogs. Dogs are the idiots. They would eat
this stuff. Are basically very sensitive to fat, and when
there's too much fat in the diet, that can predispose
them to pancreatitis. And matter of fact, I have a
dog here with me in my office. This came in
a Friday that does have pancreatitis. And pancreatitis happens when
dogs get into too much greasy, fatty food. A lot
of times we recommend and keeping dogs away from nuts,
macadamia nuts, walnuts, pistachio nuts. They have a very high
fat content. The nuts themselves are okay, but it's the
high fat content that's going to get them and it
can make them very very sick. Dogs with pancreatitis are very,
very sick. It's the one condition, one disease that even
the sweetest, happiest dog, the nicest dog, that if you
were to palpit or press on their abdomen in the
midst of a pancreatitis infection, they might turn around and snap.
That's how painful their abdomens can be. So it's very
very very serious condition. Treatment would involve hospitalization, ivy fluids.
It's something that the first symptom that you're probably going
to see is vomiting, and I'm talking a lot of vomiting.
Dogs probably won't want to eat, but if they do
eat or drink water, they're going to vomit again. So
your first clue that something is wrong is, oh my god,
my dog is hunched over, seems to be in pain,
is vomiting, puking his guts out, And these are all
really really serious signs and a strong clue that obviously
this is a gastrointestinal to all got into something, but
very well could be one of the fatty foods you
worry about. Now, how about chocolate. Chocolate, As we've talked about,
I'm sure many of you know by now, chocolate is
a toxin. It is interestingly a bit overrated in the
sense that most of the chocolates that our pets are
going to get into are the chocolates that are in
cakes or brownies or chocolatesip cookies, are the chocolate bars,
the candy bars that we like to eat so much
milk chocolate, and that chocolate is the least serious. The
chocolate that's really bad is the pure, bitter or unsweetened chocolate.
They call it baker's chocolate. It's the chocolate that bakers
use to make all these chocolate delicacies, and then they
like to add their own sugar to taste so they
don't buy hunks of milk chocolate, they will actually get
real pure chocolate and then seizing it to with their
own liking, depending on the recipe. That chocolate is very toxic,
has a high concentration of theobromine. It can cause some neurotoxicities,
meaning you know, it's sort of the dogs. Can he
actually seize. They can get very depressed, they can be lethargic,
they'll of course can vomit. So we want to keep
our pets away from chocolate. But it's not just the chocolate.
When it comes to when we warn you against chocolate,
rarely are we going to unwrap that chocolate bar or
chocolate candy and offer it to our dog. So basically,
when dogs get a hold of chocolate, they get a
hold of the entire thing. I'm talking in the bag
they're wrapping the chocolate bar itself or the candy itself,
et cetera. Well, they are not very adept at unwrapping
these bars carefully, leaving just taking the wrapping and putting
out aside or throwing it in the garbage for you. No,
they're eating the whole thing, and when they do, there's
more to deal with than just the chocolate. It's we're
dealing with all the tinfoil and the wrapping and the
paper and anything else that this chocolate may have been
hidden in. Because they really don't care, they just want
to eat the chocolate. They will get all that other
stuff along with it just so they can get a
hold of the chocolate. So it is very important to
keep those things away from pets, and of course if
there's fruits that they have access to. Again, this is
nothing new anymore, but it was several years ago. Grapes
and raisins can be toxic, and I mean highly toxic
to some dogs. Unfortunately, we don't know which ones, and
there's no simple test that we can take or your
veterinarian can take to let us know, oh, do we
have one of those dogs that's going to be sensitive
to chocolate or not. And because there's no way to tell,
the recommendation to all is no more raisins and grapes
for your pets. No more taking those grapes, putting them
in the freezer and using them as a treat for
your pet, which is something I used to do all
the time. So I never gave a lot of them,
and fortunately or I've never had a dog that was
one of those sensitive ones. But when you have one,
it is pretty bad. So very important to keep that
in mind as well. So what do we do. It's
very important to give don't You don't want to shoot
them away. You want to keep your pets busy while
you're there and you're you know, opening your gifts and
you're hanging out and you're eating and you're doing all
this fun stuff. Make sure you take care of your
pets by giving them something that is okay for them
to eat. And if you want to park them right
next to you and put it on the floor right
next to you, that's fine. Just make sure that they
are eating that which they should be eating and not
that which they should not be eating, and that way
they can feel part of the fun, part of the
activity is part of the company, et cetera. Now, of course,
if you have a dog or a cat that likes
to bolt, and we talked about this and we talked
during our Halloween segment, is and you know that people
are coming in, the doorbell's ringing, you're having guests come over.
You have to make sure that if you have one
of those dogs or cats that they are well protected.
They are in a different room they don't have access
to the front door. If you have a dog that
freaks or panics every time that doorbell is going to ring,
then you might want to put him in a different
part of the house until everybody gets there and things
have quiet down a bit, and then they can come
out and enjoy the fun as well. So this is
a lot of common sense stuff. Now, if you have
any questions about the foods, about things they can and
can't eat, go ahead and give us a call at
eight seven seven three eight five eight eight eight two.
Now we're going to go on to the holiday decorations.
And this is where again, though it's beautiful, it's fun,
it's festive, it may not be if you have to
spend the night in the emergency room because your dog
got a hold of one of those things that we
try to caution you against, such as you know, there's
a lot of decorations on a tree in the house,
a lot of ribbons, a lot of tinsel. Well, a
lot of dogs like to eat that stuff, and if
they swallow a big hunk, basically, it could cause what
we call a string foreign body effect. And sometimes the
only way to remedy that situation is via surgery. It's
not something you want to have to deal with during
a holiday. Evening ornaments. A lot of these ornaments are
cute for us to look at, but they may look
like some things that your dogs have eaten in the
past and like to eat again. Or I always get
a kick out of those glass balls that people use
to put on their trees. Well, they sell them in
packs of three or four, and go to the sporting
good sections and you will see a pack of tennis
balls in three and god, they look a lot alike.
And if you have a dog that loves playing with
tennis balls and brings them to you, okay, dad, okay, Mom,
it's time to play fetch. And all of a sudden
they walk out to that tree and what do they see.
They see, Oh my god, look at all these tennis balls.
This is fantastic and they put them in their mouths.
But guess what, as we know, they are not tennis balls,
so one needs to be very careful. Put them higher
than the dog could jump. Point setia a little bit overrated.
But they can't digest it, even the tree itself. Not.
Pine needles are not digestible. They're not necessarily toxic, but
they are sharp, and they can get caught in the
tonsular crypts in the mouth, they can get stuck in
the esophagus, in the back of the throat, they can
get stuck somewhere. I mean, So again, we need to
be very careful that we don't have these types of
dogs or cats, especially cats. This is where you gotta
be careful. Cats. Cats love to munch on plants, and
especially if they're real, there's some kind of sweetness sometimes
of these things, and they will eat some of these
things that we don't want them to eat. So again,
it's one of those things that we need to be
very very careful to how we decorate, where we decorate
what kind of access we allow for our cats. And
I'm going to come up after our break, coming up
right now, we'll talk about some solutions, but also we're
going to talk a little bit more of some more
hazards that we need to be careful of protecting our
pets during these great time of year, the hull season.
So don't go away. We'll be back in about two
minutes right here in Pet Life Radios as the Beets
with Doctor Jeff. Don't go away.
Speaker 1: We'll be right back right after these messages. Stay tuned.
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Speaker 4: This year, Americans are expected to spend a jaw dropping
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Speaker 2: Let's talk past, Let's talk pets Life.
Speaker 5: Radio, HETLFE Radio, Petlife Radio dot com.
Speaker 2: And welcome back and thanks for joining us here on
pet Life Radios and ask the vets of Doctor Jeff.
I'm your host, doctor Jeff Werber, and we have not
heard from any of you. Eight seven seven three eight
five eight eight eight two is the number once again,
eight seven seven It's free, guys, three eight five eight
eight A two. Or just join in the conversation online.
You could start typing away. Just go on to the
ask the Vets tab and you there's a box right
there that says join the conversation. How easy is that?
Or we can send an email to Dr Jeff. That's
doctor Jeff at Petlife Radio dot com. Anyway, just before
the break, we were talking about some of the holiday
decoration hazards, ribbons, tinsel causing string, foreign bodies is a
problem point setia and the and the actual tree itself.
Things that are they are not really that toxic, but
irrit irritative and undigestible. Then we were talking about the balls.
Be careful, especially if you have labradors or dogs as
I do, that can't wait to get their next ball
into their mouth. Candies, of course we talked about. And
the next thing I wanted to discuss, and this is
a safety issue, and that is that many trees, especially
in houses, are decorated lights all over the place, and
most lights, I would imagine, I don't know because I've
never purchased them, because I've gotten one of the alternatives,
which to talk about a minute, But you plug the
light into a socket, that means there is one hundred
and twenty voults traveling through the exposed cords. Now, I'm
sure none of you would like it for yourselves and
therefore for your animals, and this includes bunnies. Rabbits love
to chew on exposed electrical cords, so that's a lot
of voltage. So what you want to do is look
for two alternatives. One is you can buy beautiful lights
the same that run on a few batteries like two
or three or four, you know d batteries one and
a half volts each. You're looking at six vaults. That
is the way to go because if you bite into
one of those and you're gonna do nothing, probably maybe
a little tingle. Or or you can buy lights that
actually plug into the socket, but they actually function on
a twelve vault transformer. That's something that will take the
one hundred and twenty vault household current, drop it down
to twelve and operate the lights. The lights still are
shining bright, they're pretty, everything is nice, but there's no
danger to a pet who happens to like to chew
on this stuff. Now, another thing that we see, especially
with the lighting and Minora for the Hankkah candles, and
a lot of animals, especially cats, are intrigued by flame.
So if you're going and when you're going to light
or when you're gonna light candles for decorative purposes, make
sure again you keep them away from pets, because again,
that is a heck of a great way to spoil
a wonderful evening by having a fire to have to
put out because your pets were playing with the candles.
So one of the things that you can do well.
First of all, you should be training your pets to
making sure they don't go near the area. You can
get one of those those little fences as a barrier
to keep pets away. There's also something that I've seen
and I thought was pretty cool. It's not dangerous, it's
not cruel, so don't start jumping on me. But it's
called the scat mat, and it's a mat that you
can put around any perimeter around that which you don't
want your pets to go, and you plug it in
and basically what it does it delivers a it's also
it's like less than it's a few vaults, and all
it does is give like a little vibration to their pads,
something that pets find unenjoyable, possibly hopefully even objectionable, and
they won't want to go on it. And it's a
great way to keep pets off of furniture, off of countertops,
away from places that you don't want them to go.
You could put a scat mat in front of it.
They do work, and as they said, they don't give
a shock. It's not like a shock collar. It does
the job. It is a form of remote correction, no
different than you standing there all day long and all
night long watching them and either giving that firm no
or that handclap or the penny can when they go
near that which you don't want them to go. So
it works really, really well. It's almost like the invisible
fence concept. But it's just the math that you put
on the floor or on a counter. As I said,
it does work really well. Now other things to be
careful of that. So we had the tinsil, the balls,
all that good stuff and the artificial plants as well.
It's very important to keep our pets safe and creating
a safe haven for them. So if you have pets
that don't tolerate all this activity, well it's not cruel
under those circumstances to keep them in their safe place,
and that's a place where they have their toys. By
the way, there are a lot of fun cool toys
that you could be giving to your pets while your
kids are opening their fun cool presence, so things that
will keep pets busy. They like to chew on they're
having fun, so that's important, you know. Nyla Bones gumma bones,
calng toys, greenies. I mean, there are so many really
cool stuff out there now that you can buy for
your pets. You give them that bone, they are going
to go and sit in the corner and they are
going to leave you alone. Why because they don't like
to share either, no more than your kids do. So
it's gonna happen is they're gonna get that really cool
thing and they're gonna go off to the side somewhere
and have a blast. So that's a great way to
involve them, to keep them, you know, happy and excited,
to keep the festivities fun and really make it fun
for everybody, including your pets. If you have any other
other ideas. By the way, as we have all of
about four minutes left, I want to know what you
guys do with your pets for your pets on the holidays,
any good gifts that you found anything networks really well
as far as occupying them, ways you kept them away
from the decorations, whatever it is, give it you call
a quick call here at eight seven seven three eight
five eight eight eight to two, or go ahead and
just text me your question your comment. I'll read it.
Speaker 4: Oh.
Speaker 2: By the way, anyone. This always holds true. Anyone who
calls us online, who joins the end of the conversation,
who sends me an email to Drjff, Doctor Jeff at
Petlife Radio dot com, they will get a free speaking
of Kong, a free contoy, and a pro sense pet
product and process. Pet products are available at your local
mass retailers, and they are the closest thing you're going
to find to veternight quality, but it's going to be
available to you at mass market prices. No need to
go to these fancy pet specialties stores. You could pick
up a lot of great pro sense products, for example,
at your local Walmart. So I do want to hear
from you. And in the next minute or two we
have left, and you know, the time goes so fast. Boy,
I don't like these thirty minute shows. So anyway, we
were talking about hyperthiroidism. I have mentioned that one of
my cats, Oreo, my my sixteen year old cat, ended
up as a hyperthyroid cat. I sent them in for
the radioactive iodine the treatment of choice. The original treatment
of choice was surgery, however, being cautious to remove the
thyroid gland but not touching the parrot thyroid gland. There
is a medication that we often have to use called
film is al or methemisol, which is a all that
does is counteracts the effects of the thyroid hormone. It
doesn't really reduce the problem. It doesn't affect the thyroid gland.
It just acts on the thyroid hormone. So the problem
is still there. And as soon as you stop the
medication then that thyroid hormone goes up again. The values elevate,
as do the symptoms. To me, it's a band aid.
Is it indicated? Oh, of course there are indications. It's
indicated if you have a nineteen and a half year
old cat who's also got other kidney disease, for example,
or heart disease, and you're not going to subject them
to radiate active iodine. You're not gonna do surgery, so
to help him out, you know, for whatever time he's
got left or she's got left, you go ahead and
use the methemisol or film is all. That's fine. But
if you have a cat that tests healthy in every
other way regardless of age, don't. Age is not a disease.
Age is not a disease. So therefore it is a
condition that we have to deal with when developing a
treatment plan. But if itself is not a disease. So
if you have a pet that a cat that tests
beautifully and everything is working fine, then don't and even
though he's eighteen, don't worry about doing the radioactive eye time.
It's phenomenal. It's a pure fix most of the time,
and so much so you don't even have to supplement
them after treatment. As we alluded to that there are
some negatives. All it's a little expensive, but I believe
well worth it. When you pick your cats up from
having had the treatment, which is what I had to
do with my OREO, they have to be secluded from
I have a lot of other cats. I had seven others,
so I had to keep them separate. He had his
own room, his own bathroom, his own litter. You have
to get a flushable litter because their waste is radioactive
for about ten days or even more. It's almost two weeks,
so you gotta keep that in mind. It's usually because
they stay at the facility for a few days, so
it's usually about ten days after you pick them up,
but they do really well. You can also just keep
the litter in a bag you can't throw it away,
keep it hidden someplace for about two weeks, three weeks,
and then all the radioactivity will dissipate and then you
can throw it out with the regular garbage. But it's
preferred to get a flushable litter one. It's called sweet scoop.
That's what I use for Oreo. He tolerated it well
and we took care of him. He's now out and
about doing great. I am so thrilled a that we
caught it early before I had any clinical signs. The
only thing we noticed is he maybe lost a little weight.
He dropped about four pounds, not that at twenty two
pounds he couldn't afford to lose a little weight. But
he's a big cat. He's, you know, main couon Norwegian
forest cat, so he's not a little teeny kitty. He's
actually pretty big boned, as we like to say. But
it is a very treatable condition. The only thing we
often say is you got to be careful after treatment,
keep a close watch on the kidneys. Why because the
very nature of hyperthyroidism, the speeding up of blood flow,
the speeding up of blood passing through the weakening kidneys
may hide mask the true kidney problem. But once everything
slows down, then you realize, oh my god, these kidneys
weren't working so well. The reason why we didn't notice
it because some blood was going through more than once,
taking a few passes every minute or second or whatever
it was. Now that heart rates slowed down, we may
actually discover a underlying or a hidden kidney problem. So
keep in mind that you still want to keep a
close watch on your pets after treatment, but it definitely
is the way to go. You're more than welcome to
send me a text anytime or to send me an
email here at pet Life Radio if you have any
personal specific questions about your own personal pets that you'd
like me to answer. If you're embarrassed or shy to
come on air anyway, I want to thank you for
joining us here in Pet Life Radio as Ask the
Bests with Doctor Jeff. Thanks again to our hosts, our sponsors,
Kong Pet Products, pro Sense Pet Products, and we will
talk next week once again. I will be live from
Park City, Utah, enjoying the snow. The snowboarding slow, but
I will take time out to visit with you. Then
see you next week.
Speaker 1: Let's talk Pets every week on demand only on petlive
radio dot com.