Speaker 1: You're listening to petlifradio dot com.
Speaker 2: Well, welcome, welcome, Welcome here for another half hour, a
fast paced half hour on astabats with doctor Jeff. I
am your host, Doctor Jeff Werber here on pet Life Radio,
the only I think live show on pet Life Radio.
Speaker 3: A show that we want to talk to you. We
want your call.
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So you don't even know the good you're doing when
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probably there's a good chance we're helping many others out
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three eight five eight eight e two once again eight
seven seven three eight five eight eight eight two. And
you can also just send me a little quick note
to doctor Jeff at Petlife radio dot com. Can't be
easier than that. So hope you've had a good week
and you know here we are on a nice Thursday.
The week's coming to an end, and it is getting
hot here in southern California. I mean, they're expecting today
as well into the nineties. They're expecting tomorrow and over
the weekend to be in the hundreds. As we you know,
you know, get close to, you know, supposedly the end
of summer and you know, just having you know, come
off of a nice long weekend, which is great, but
you know, it's unbelievable that that here it is getting
into you know, early September, and we are just hot, hot, hot.
I know what it's like in the rest of the country,
but typically for us here in La early September, it's
as that is July, it's really hot. Which you know,
I'm not complaining because as we come into the weekend,
I enjoy my relaxing time, my R and R as
we call it, so I hope you do so as well.
But with that hot weather come to some points that
I just can't stress enough. In fact, last week I
shot a segment for our local ABC affiliate KBC, and interestingly,
you know, we pitched a lot of ideas to talk
about and they still wanted to talk about hot weather,
and some warnings and some suggestions how to keep our
pets safe during the hot weather. Here I am, I'm
you know, I'm ready to talk about back to school
and how often times back to school the pets start
taking a back seat. And interestingly, you know, during the
spring and summer we see our patients more, and now
with back to school, I think moms are so busy
with their kids and doing all that stuff that we
are not seeing the same amount of pet attention that
we normally see.
Speaker 3: So, you know, it's interesting.
Speaker 2: But the summertime tips still it's still summer. Until until
September twenty first, it's still summer. So you have to know,
we're talking making sure you exercise early in the morning,
late in the evening. We're talking making sure there's shade
and water out all day. We are watching carefully for
signs of overexertion overheating. We are not doing those runs,
and we are never leaving our pets in park cars.
Those things never change, so you know, keep an eye
on that. And for those of you that were even
remotely remotely thinking that, as we approach the cooler weather,
we get into that fall and then you're thinking of winter,
and you know, what I would start now planning for
the holidays, because this is the time of year with
it we see so many issues starting with and I
know it sounds like it's far away, but it's really
around the corner, starting with Halloween, going into Thanksgiving, going
into Hanukah and Christmas, the New Year's this is the
time that we see a lot of emergencies with our pets.
Speaker 3: So we'll get to as.
Speaker 2: I said, we're going to talk some specifics as we
get closer and closer, but sort of you know, keep
that in mind. You want to listen in on Thursdays
here at one pm or Los Angeles, our West coast
or as we say, Pacific Daylight Saving time, and at
four pm back east. But you want to listen in
because we're going to have a lot of tips and
a lot of hopefully good hands to help you out.
So we have been seeing I think I mentioned last
week that I've been getting a lot of attention talking
about plastic surgery, and you know, probably the feelers go
out and I've had a number of networks. I think
I'm maybe doing a piece for I know CBS coming up,
and an inside edition coming up, and I'm actually heading
to New York early October to do a segment, and
they always want to talk about these weird, bizarre cases,
and I'm thinking, you know, wait a second, guys, there
are a lot of things that we have to deal
with on a regular basis that is much more common
common in the sense of needing some corrective surgery. And
I hate to use the word plastic surgery because when
you think plastic surgery, I know, if you just think
for a second, someone you know is getting plastic surgery.
Are they getting corrective surgery or cosmetic surgery? Are they
doing something that's going to help them live an easier life,
Are they doing something that's going to help them make
them look better? And I know the truth is when
it comes to people, form is more important than the function,
so much so that people will often, which I find
is hysterically funny, is they will sacrifice function in order
to achieve a certain form. And you know, just ask
just look at pictures of any of these celebrities. I
will not name them, but you know who they are
that have overdone it just a bit too much, where
it looks like their faces are like, you know, pressed
up against their heads. It looks like they took that
ponytail and just pulled it way too tight kind of thing.
Speaker 3: But with animals, we are.
Speaker 2: Very concerned about function and we may have to modify
that form to achieve the function. And so the two
surgeries that we do much more frequently that I mentioned
to these producers about one is and I actually set
to do one next week. It is entropy on surgery.
There's certain breeds that will end up having eyelid folds
where they're eyelids, the upper and lower eyelids actually are
rolling inward continually rubbing against the eyeball, causing a problem.
And these dogs present an obvious discomfort. They present with
a lot of discharge, and that is very correctable, and
you know, it might take some of the folds away,
but it's very correctable. Skin fold pioderm is as well.
We have to eliminate some of those folds in the
sharpei or in the chow chow, or you know, in
the bulldog. If in fact we are getting persistent infections
within the folds.
Speaker 3: Are the folds cute? Yeah?
Speaker 2: When it comes to sharpay's, do you expect to see folds?
Of course you do, But if they are presenting and
causing problems, where there's discomfort, where there's infection, where there's
a smell where they mixed it unappealing to be with you.
Speaker 3: Of course we have to fix it. When we talk about.
Speaker 2: Braces in dogs, it's not for that million dollar smile.
It's to allow these dogs to be able to eat
and to chew properly so they can ingest their food better.
And when it comes to ears is another case we
have coming up. In a cocker spaniel. They have such
chronic ear problems that the ears are continually getting infected.
They can't hear, and if left alone for too long,
it needs a very drastic piece of surgery. So again,
these are things that we are all working to do.
So when you hear someone talking about plastic surgery, you
just know that when it comes to pets, don't think Hollywood,
don't think New York City, don't think Housewives of Dallas
or where the heck that is. You want to know
that we're talking about improving function for four legged companions,
our four legged friends.
Speaker 4: Now.
Speaker 2: Also, you know, just one thing that comes to mind.
You know, I like to share some of our interesting cases.
So Lola, if you remember, she was this little dog
that had this splenic mass and it was cancer. We
kind of suspected it was, and h god, it took
her so long to rebound, because there's a delay between
the time that you stop the bleed and you get
the bone marrow to start rebounding, and reading the fact that,
oh my god, now I got to put out more
red blood cells, and this one, admittedly was getting me
worried a little bit, thinking, oh my god, we have
a an underlying disease or another problem here that she's
just not making red cells. Well, she rebounded amazingly well,
and she came in for another follow up and she
is doing just great. Her bludgell count is normal, she's
tolerating her chemotherapy amazingly well. And of course, look, she's
not cured forever, we know that, but she is now
enjoying some quality time with the family, and more importantly,
as this family has a few young kids, they are
enjoying some really quality time with.
Speaker 3: Lola, and that makes me very very happy. Of course.
Speaker 2: So and then we had you know, it's so sad
when these things happen, but you have to know that
we the veterinarians, veteran community, those animal caretakers that are
really committed to your pets and don't think otherwise. We
wish we had all the answers, and we can only
follow what has worked for us in the past, what
has worked for our colleagues in the past, share data,
share information, and sometimes, unfortunately, as I always say, our
patients don't read the same book. So we know what
is supposed to happen, and we tell the owners what
they should expect, what should happen, but unfortunately the pet
often has a different plan. And this happened recently where
we again it just so happens. You know, bad things
happened in threes. We had three splenectomies splinning surgeries in
a row. Two are doing very well and the third one, interestingly,
should have been doing great. Why because it was one
that had the best prognosis. When it came to the biopsy,
it came back as a non cancer, so.
Speaker 3: We were thrilled.
Speaker 2: So we do this amazing surgery and take out the
spleen and the dog has the first few days are
just doing great and then all of a sudden starts
to go downhill, very very quickly, rush to an emergency center,
and this dog is bruising all over, bleeding from on
the outside the gums. We call it petitiation the ears.
I mean problem after problem after problem. And the diagnosis
was the dog was what was called throwing clots. And
what happens is that post surgery like this, when there
is a splenic mass and there's a lot of clotting
going on, even though the mass itself causing all this
bleeding in the clotting was a benign tumor, the problem
that the clots are still there, and sometimes these dogs
are what we call throw a clot, and that clot
starts circulating within the vascular system and it lodges in
certain parts of the in certain vessels where the plot
is larger than the vessel, and now the blood flow
is included, is blocked from wherever it goes. So if
it's blood that's going to the heart, or blood is
going to the brain, or blood that's going to the lungs,
this is potentially a deadly complication and another problem we see.
The reason why I saw this dog bruising so much
was something called DIC, the disseminated intravascular coagulation. So in
response to the actual potential surgery itself, the necrotic tissue
that was removed, et cetera. Body tries to come in
and sort of solve its problem, and it starts micro
clotting in all the masculature, leaving no clouding factors behind.
So now the dog starts bleeding because there's no normal
clouding factors.
Speaker 3: Available, nothing left.
Speaker 2: Again, it's potentially it's deadly, and unfortunately, in this case
it was. And the hard part was that we were
so excited when we got the results back and saw
that it was actually a non malignant tumor. We thought,
I'm again, of all the three, the two that came
back with tumors are doing well, and the one that
came back with a non malignant tumor sadly did not
pull through. And also she was much older. So you know,
it's tough, and it's always tough for us because you know,
we'd love to save every single one of them. As
they said, unfortunately, there's a master plan up there that
doesn't always match our plan.
Speaker 3: Anyway, it's time.
Speaker 2: To take a break, and I want you to get
the courage to give us a call at eight seven
seven three eight five eight eight eight two. Send me
a note at doctor Jeff at Petlife Radio dot com.
And we want to think of course our sponsors, and
we will be back in just a few minutes.
Speaker 1: Don't go away, We'll be right back right after these messages.
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Speaker 9: Welcome to Bird's Eye View on pet Life Radio. I
am doctor Lori Hess here with doctor Michelle Ravish, and
we are both Bird and Exotic Animal veterinarians. We work
at the Veterinary Center for Birds and Exotics and All
Bird and Exotic Pet Hospital in Bedford.
Speaker 3: Hills, New York.
Speaker 9: And this is a show all about birds. It's a
bird's eye view and we hope you'll tune in soon every.
Speaker 1: Week on demand only on Petlife Radios dot com. Let's
talk past.
Speaker 3: Let's done, pet Hetline Radio.
Speaker 4: Pet Life Radio dot com.
Speaker 3: So welcome back to Ask the Beats with doctor Jeff.
I am Doctor Jeff. Where were your host here on
pet Life Radio?
Speaker 2: And once again, if you're just joining us, the number
to call is eight seven seven three eight five.
Speaker 3: Eight eight eight to two, Or if you're sitting.
Speaker 2: At that computer and you are listening along, you can
go ahead and catch me at Petlife Radio dot com.
That's Dr Jeff, Doctor Jeff at Petlife Radio dot com.
So a couple of weeks ago, I was just in
Kansas City at the Central Veterinary Conference, and I'm always,
you know, very eager to hear about new things. And
one of the things that I hear and you definitely
want to talk to you veterinarians about this. Obviously, there
has been a movement there in general in the profession
that we are over vaccinated, and we are now trying
to eliminate all the vaccines, not all of them, but
the regularity that the actual schedule that we are revaccinating.
And it used to be typically that we had vaccines
that were done on an annual basis, and now we're
learning that a lot of our core vaccines, notably distemper
and parvo, the feline vaccines for rhino CALLSI, numinitis, and
pan leucopedia, which is the cat fever, and all the
upper respiratories feline leukemia vaccine or canine rabies vaccine are
good for considerably longer.
Speaker 3: Than a year. Now.
Speaker 2: We know this because many of us, myself included, have
been titering, which is a blood test that we do
to actually determine whether or not the protection is still
good and if so, do not vaccinate. Instead of vaccinating
on a random, arbitrary schedule, probably determined by a vaccine
manufacturer who obviously wants to sell vaccine, we are vaccinating
based on need. Does that pet need to have its
vaccine or is the protection from the last vaccine, whether
it was a year ago, two years ago, three years ago.
Speaker 3: Feel good.
Speaker 2: I'm thrilled to see that a lot of the manufacturers,
even though their vaccine is a one year quote unquote vaccine,
the manufacturers are guaranteeing it for three years, which I
think is great. So I want you to talk to
your better aarans about that. Do not vaccinate for things
you don't need to, not vaccinate for diseases that are
not common to your area. You would want to ask
what the core vaccines are those the essential vaccines for
your area, and go from there. And we have a
caller on the line. After this caller, we're going to
come back and talk about some examples of what is
core and not core.
Speaker 3: Hello, you're on with doctor Jeff.
Speaker 10: Hi, doctor Jeff. This is Lily than He. I have
a question about my cat. My cat is he's a
big cat and he he cleans himself like cats too,
but he has not on the back of his on
his bac. He's a little matted. I don't know why,
uh huh, how you pick them out because you know
I'm a dog person. This cat adoption me and I
don't know what to do. We're twenty pounds, maybe like sixteen.
Speaker 2: All right, because what I notice is that a lot
of times. First of all, as you've already mentioned, cats
are groomers. They groom themselves and typically take pretty good
care of themselves. But what I note is with fairly
large cats, even though they look like they're getting back
there and they're doing their best at grooming themselves, which
they obviously have to do, when it comes to the
back end. If they're big, they don't really have the
agility to really get all of those matted areas, but
by the licking that they do, if anything, they contribute
to the mat instead of solve the mats problem, so
they can actually make it worse. So what I recommend,
and now I am a cat prom a dog person
too because I have lots of each, actually have more
cats than dogs, six to five in favor of the cats.
But what makes it good for me is because my
cats are often joke read the dog book by mistake,
so I think they think they're dogs, and I don't
want to tell them that they're really not. But so
it makes it really fun for the household because my
cats and dogs actually play together. But two of me see,
three of my cats are fairly long hair, and I
just what I do is on a regular basis, is
I get that good either that wire slicker brush or
better yet, a ferminator type comb or a metallic it's
a metal comb, and I comb.
Speaker 3: Out those mats.
Speaker 2: There's an art to doing it, and chances are it's
really not that hard.
Speaker 3: If you use the.
Speaker 2: Comb properly and you work on teasing the mat out
slowly instead of trying to get the entire mat out
at once, then it's actually the cat's tolerated pretty well.
One of my long haired cats, he's my second largest.
He's also about sixteen eighteen pounds. He's not as big
as my twenty two pounder, but he literally when he
sees that brush coming, just to tell you how crazy
he is and how much he enjoys being brushed, he
literally rolls over on his back, spreads those legs as
if to say, okay, dad, come and get me, and
he lets me comb out all those masts, and especially
in the belly and the back of the thighs, the mats.
Speaker 3: He just he's too fat to get to.
Speaker 2: Let's face it, I know it's terrible that I have
two cats that are kind of overweight, but what can
I do? They like to eat, but I think that
once you learn and you can either have your vet
or maybe someone from the staff at your vet hospital
or even your local groomer show you the art of
coming out those mats. And then once you learn it
and you do it slowly, a little bit at a time,
the cats don't reject too much. Now, the best way
to not have to deal with the mats is, and
you're gonna hate to hear this one, is after you
get him professionally groomed and all the mats are out,
you need to get him on a schedule on a
regular basis, whether it's two three days a week where
you do a nice thorough combing, brushing, and if you
do it that way, you will probably never have mats
to deal with in the first place. So and it's
you know, it's a great bonding time. And I always
tell people that if you approach it slowly and gradually
and make it kind of fun, and maybe do it
just before you're feeding your cat, and a chance of
if you cat's a big cat, he obviously likes to eat,
So use that to your advantage. And you know, do
whatever you have to do as far as the housekeeping stuff,
whether it's eat cleaning ears, or brushing teeth, or cliping toenails,
or doing the brushing and the grooming. Do it just
before that meal, that meal that he's obviously looking forward to.
And hopefully he won't object so much to that what
you're doing because he knows that it's always going to
be followed.
Speaker 3: By his meal.
Speaker 2: So Lily, try those things and get back to it,
and let us know when you become that master groomer.
Speaker 10: Great, thank you so much, We say thank you.
Speaker 3: All right, let us know.
Speaker 2: So before we talked about Lily's big cat and the mats, which,
by the way, a very very very common problem. So
any of you who have not been combing your cat's
mats out, now you know the secret. It's the right instruments.
It's the ferminator, it's the metallic home or the wire slicker,
and it's teasing the mats out slowly, carefully. Once you
get it out, if you start brushing on a regular basis,
chances are you won't really have mats to worry about.
So we were talking about the WHO vaccine and we
were talking about what's called core vaccines, and there's something
you need to work out with your veterinarian. But core
vaccines are vaccines particularly in your area, diseases in an
area that you want to protect again, but not wasting
vaccines on diseases that are unlikely you're going to going
to affect your cat or dog. For example, if you
have an indoor cat and I have six of them,
a my indoor cats is gonna get rabies of leukemia?
Absolutely not. So am I going to vaccinate against rabies
or leukemia No now. Of course, in some states, I
know New York requires rabies for cats. That's a different
story if it's required by law, but here in California
it's not, and therefore I don't do it. My dogs
don't do hiking and buy streams. I don't take them
to the mountains, so leptosporosis is not a problem for
my dogs here where I live in Los Angeles kind
of in the flats, and you know, not in the mountains. Therefore,
I'm not going to routine vaccinate against lepto, and if
my lifestyle changes, I'll add lepto into the mix. I'm
not a big fan of coronavirus vaccine. I think it's unnecessary.
It's a twenty four hour stomach flu. I'm not going
to protect against twenty four our stomach flu. The new
influenza vaccine again, we're going to hit the market. It's
going to be the save off for upper respiratory. It
turns out that many of us who were given the
option of free culturing of the discharges of these dogs
that were thought to be harboring, carrying, or affected by
the influenza virus turned out not to be in influenza. Therefore,
I don't vaccinate again. It might be different in your area.
You want to check with your veterinarian. So I know,
basically core for us is the Border Teller vaccine. You
know that's the quote unquote kennel cough shot. I shy
away from using that term kennel cough.
Speaker 3: I like to call it.
Speaker 2: Live in La cough. Or take a walk on West
Hollywood cough. Or go to the beach cough. Or go
to your vet cough. Or go to the groomer cough.
Or go to dogy daycare cough. It is everywhere and
very preventable from the vaccine. The border tell that you're lucky,
lucky to get it good for one year. In fact,
most of the facilities the grooming facilities, the dog, your daycare,
the boarding facilities require it and really correctly so every
six months now. I just came back to the trade
show at Central Veterini Conference and one of the companies
has a new vaccine out realizing that we don't need
this specific three three year vaccine because now all the manufacturers,
I should say most of the major manufacturers are guaranteeing
their vaccines for three years, which is fantastic, and that's
for distemper and parvo. This one is a half dose vaccine,
and by half dose I don't mean half the amount
of anigen necessary to stimulate the immune response to protect
these pets for the period of time as endorsed, but
half dose as far as actually half a cc instead
of one cc. Now, what's interesting when you have that
small breed and you think, well, God, you know I
use that vile to vaccinate my great dane.
Speaker 3: I really needed to vaccinate the chiuaua.
Speaker 2: And the answer is yes, the load of antigen necessary
to stimulate the immune response is the same. There's no
less cells in those little dogs. So therefore the immune
system is the immune system and it needs whatever the
ratio is x times you know, ten to the ten
or thirty amount of anigen to stimulate the immune response.
So what's happening is if you give half the volume
of the current vaccine. Let's say it's a CC. They
usually are one mL, and you want to give half
an mL, you might be decreasing that anigen load by
fifty percent, which means you may not get the response
you're after. So that's kind of making it dangerous. Now
why do people want? What is when you have a
reaction to a vaccine, and if you give a bunch
of vaccines in one day, it's very possible to get
that reaction. It's not the actual anigen causing the reaction.
It's the protein, it's the addivate, it's everything else in
that vaccine that the dog is reacting to. You're getting
that sore If you ever had a vaccine member when
you're a kid, then you had that boot, you're shot
in your arm and your arm was sore for four days.
That's what's causing the soreness. It's all the other things
that's in the vaccine, not the anigen itself. So by
reducing all that other stuff by fifty percent, there's much
less possibility of getting the reaction, but you're still getting
the entire amount of anigen to stimulate that necessary immune response.
So please keep that in mind when you visit with
your veterinarian and you're talking about vaccines. Do you want
to find out what are the core vaccines in your area?
You want to have them on a good schedule. How
often you need to repeat the vaccines. Some are going
to be six months, it might be a year. Most
of them now, which is great, are good for three
years or more. And because you know, I still tighter,
and I've had many many animals that have been six, seven, eight,
nine years since they had their lastest temper shot and
they're still maintaining a high immunity, a high tighter, which
is amazing. So keep that in mind as well. Talk
to your veterinearing about tighters. So once again it is
that time. It seems like the a half hour flew
right by. I want to thank Lily for calling us
about her Kiddi cat and the mats. I want to
and I left myself a note that I'm getting a
lot of questions about diets, about what is the best food,
what to feed our pets, what can we expect from
the different things we feed, etc. So that we will
start talking about that next week. So if you have
any questions or like to send me an email on
any subject about diet and food and feeding, etc. That
you'd like to talk about, go ahead and send it
to me at Dr Jeff at petlife radio dot com
or Dr Jeff. That's doctor Jeff at dr Jeff at
doctor Jeff dot com. And hope you have a great
weekend and we will see you next week.
Speaker 3: Go bye.
Speaker 1: Let's talk pets every week on demand only on petlifradio
dot com.