Speaker 1: You were listening to Petlifradio dot com.
Speaker 2: Well, good morning, or they'd be good afternoon, depending where
you are in the country. I want to just say hello,
I am your host for the next thirty minutes, doctor
Jeff Weber here and ask the vets with the Doctor Jeff,
the only live call in show here on Pet Life Radio,
and callin me. We want you to call in.
Speaker 3: We want some questions.
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with your pets. Give me a call, we'll discuss Chances
are if it's dog or cat, you're gonna get an answer immediately.
If it's something other, depending on the species you want
to talk about or the question, I.
Speaker 3: May do a little homework and get back to you.
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you can send an email right now to Drjeff at
Petlife Radio dot com. It will be folded to me
live and we can converse that way. So there are
so many easy ways that we want to hear from you.
And you know, I just saw talked to our producer
Mark one of the things that I would like to
hear from you, and you don't even You can keep
it anonymous if you're embarrassed, if you're shy, if you
don't want to get a free product, that's okay. But
any topic, anything that you've been dealing with your pet,
maybe anticipate dealing with your pet, just something you want
to know more about in a way that I will
explain it so you can really understand the process, understand
the diagnostic options and whyse understand the treatment options and
the whyse et cetera. I know that many of you
sometimes feel a bit of lost, and then what you
do is you go onto the internet.
Speaker 3: Which is okay.
Speaker 2: It's okay, but not great number of reasons. The Internet,
as I say, it's probably the number one source of
information nowadays. But when people call me and they tell
me what they'read on the internet, I also say it's
the number one source of misinformation. I don't mean misinformation,
they're wrong, but I will draw this analogy. When young
veter night students come out of at school, they have
a certain vision, a certain idea of the kind of
cases they see and the necessary diagnostics and treatment. The
problem is that the cases that they are usually seeing
at many veterinary schools, unless of course they're going to
a VET school that has what's called a community hospital,
where they are just doing regular stuff that most of
us are going to see and most of you are
going to have issues with, they are getting the cream
of the crop cases as far as difficulty and complication.
Speaker 3: So these students work on these cases.
Speaker 2: They're being worked up by the clinicians, by the residents,
whether it's inter or medicine or surgery, or in college
or dentistry or behavior or whatever the case may be.
And by the time they get out of school, they
think that every case that comes to their door is
going to be that kind of case, and they're jumping
on it to decide on which diagnostics to employ, to
decide on what treatments to employ.
Speaker 3: And it's like.
Speaker 2: Whoa, whoa time out, time out? Why are you thinking that?
That is not what you're going to see typically in practice.
So unfortunately, the internet picks up on that. So when
people come in and they went on the internet because
their dog had a little running eye, okay, and right
away they're talking about all these bizarre esoteric diseases and
the ophthalmologist and the electroretinograms, it's like time out, time out,
Slow down. It's probably just a little bit of an
irritation or conjunctivitis treat that first. As I like to
say in my analogy of the horses and the zebras,
and certainly this is a California analogy by location, but
as you can imagine, it can go anywhere where you
might find typically find some horses. And that is if
you're running along the beach in Malibu and you hear
hoof beats chasing you from behind? What are you thinking?
Horses are zebras? And clearly the answer is horses. So
why doctor, are you looking for that zebra?
Speaker 3: That case? That might be one in a zillion.
Speaker 2: You might might get two or three in your entire
thirty five forty year practice career, and you think you're
getting it today on the first week of practice. No, no, no, no,
it's not going to happen that way. And the other
one makes a lot of sense. If it looks like
a duck, walks like a duck, quacks like a duck,
it's probably a dock. So with that in mind, I
would like to hear from you, what types of issues
have you been having with your pets things? Maybe you've
gone to the veterinarian a number of times before. I'll
give you a simple one. This client of mine comes
in with a dog that's rescued, and it had been
to a number of veterinarians already for an eye discharge
them not it just so happens. I use that as
an example, but now it is a real case an
eye discharge, and the eye look pretty good to me.
But clearly, clearly a lot of excessive tearing we call epiphraa,
and she was coming to me for a diagnosis and evaluation.
So of course when I the first thing, I was
looking at the eyelids. Why is this dog tearing so much?
Is it because there might be? Of course, they ruled
out many a time with what we call a fluorescian
stain that there's any kind of corneal abrasion cornial ulcer lesion.
Of course that's going to cause discomfort and a lot
of tearing. But with those dogs, typically you can see
the lids at work. You can see what we call blephorospasm.
They're blinking, they're uncomfortable, the eyes are red, they're pawing
at the eyes. So I put that lower on my list. Again,
I don't take things off my list anymore. I'm not
that cocky as.
Speaker 3: I used to be.
Speaker 2: But I'm just gonna put it lower. So I then
look at the eyelids. Oftentimes we'll see an eyelids something
called disticchiasis or trick coiasis, which are adbarrant lashes that
are growing either in the wrong location or the wrong direction,
and they are rubbing at the eyeball. It's kind of
like getting that little piece of sand or if anyone
whereas contact lenses, You know the feeling when you get
something caught under the lens, but man, it's irritating and
you tear a lot. So I looked under the lids,
I saw nothing. I said, you know what, I'm gonna
do a fluorescian stain. But I'm not gonna do the
fluoresciinstain to see if there's any lesions on the.
Speaker 3: Cornea that's been done already.
Speaker 2: What I want to do is I'm going to put
the stain the die in the eye, and then I'm
going to take my black light, my woods lamp, and instead
of holding it on the eye to see if there's
any scratches or lesions or brasions on the cornea, I'm
gonna hold it at the nose. And one might say,
what does the nose.
Speaker 3: Have to do with the eye?
Speaker 2: Doctor, you nuts know what happens is naturally tears drained
through tear ducts that empty in the nose, which is
one of the reasons why I oftentimes we see a
very slight, clear discharge out of a dog's nose, and
why dog's noses are often wet as well. So what
I want to do is I want to see if
I put the dye in the eye, the discharge coming
out should be that same fluorescent, bright green that it
would be that I would be looking for on the eyeball,
And if the tear ducks were working properly, within a
few seconds twenty thirty seconds of half a minute the most,
I'm going to see this bright fluorescent green dye coming
out of the nose and draining onto the upper lip.
And then I'm going to know, well, at least at
least I know that the tear ducks themselves are working.
So sure enough, put the dye in the eyes. I'm
sitting there thirty seconds, a minute, a minute and a half,
there is no dye coming out of the nose, bing
bing bing bing for like pennies compared to what some
of these places were doing. Right, I have a diagnosis.
The diagnosis is this dog's tear ducts are plugged. And
now my next step, of course, is gonna have to
sedate and flush them and try to pass what we
call a canula, a very thin piece of suture material
through them. And when everything is working perfectly, this is
really the coolest thing you find a little papollo, which
is the opening of the duct is one on the
upper and the lower lid both towards them what we
call the medial canthus the inside maybe a quarter of
an inch away from the actual corner of the eye,
both upper lower, and you find the little papilla and
you actually start threading a thin piece of nylon suture
through the pillar and when everything is working perfectly, all
of a sudden, this thin seiture material as you're passing.
It's like rot to ruter. It's coming out of the nose.
So you know that at least at that point everything
is okay. Now, could there be some duct anomalies where
the papilla, the opening the pillar are not open. Is
the thin membrane it's covering them so they're not working
at all? So of course my next question was have
these eyes ever been normal? And the answer was yes,
oh this is this is something new.
Speaker 3: Ah.
Speaker 2: So if this is something new, then the whole idea
of having congenital anomaly where there's a thin membrane covering
the pillar that I have to cut away, I could put.
Speaker 3: That again way lower on my list.
Speaker 2: Why because if the dog was presenting like this, since
it was a puppy. Then I would say, okay, it's
maybe that's one of the things that my lists have
to look at to resolve. But clearly it wasn't. So
this dog was normal up until a few weeks ago.
So I'm thinking had some kind of infection developed, some mucus.
The mucus got in the duct and somewhere from the
papilli and the eyeball down to the nose at the
opening of the duct, there's a plug and I'm going
to next week or the week after that, I'm going
to drain it.
Speaker 3: Fix it.
Speaker 2: I put the dog on some palma oinment with a
little cordico steroids. Maybe it's an inflammatory problem, so if
we can decrease the inflammation, maybe.
Speaker 3: That would help.
Speaker 2: But bottom line is we'll get an answer. And I
wasn't thinking zebras. I was thinking horses. And as I said,
for very a little common sense and a single diagnostic
test and we have an answer. So that's kind of
the kind of things I like to talk about. How
to continually have you guys have your veterinarians practice what
I like to call the Kiss rule, which is keep
it simple, stupid, and too many of my veterinary colleagues.
I don't think are doing that. They are looking for
the big problems. The Internet looks at the big problems,
and the Internet doesn't give you the more basic, more
common Try this first, you know, I.
Speaker 3: Always there's nothing.
Speaker 2: If you've ever presented with something that's not impending emergency
and you're still not sure where you want to go
with it, treat it empirically for a day or two.
See what happens. The body's amazing. The body wants to
fix itself most of the time, So most of the time,
let the body do its work before you start getting
involved and make things worse. I've sent cases to emergency
clinics before and they made it worse. All you have
to do is sit back and kind of let the
body do is thing. Anyway, we're about fifteen minutes into
our show. I'm going to take a quick break for
our sponsors, you know, the drill, and I'll be back
right here with doctor Jeff. Here, it asked if that's
the doctor Jeff on pet Life Radio.
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Speaker 3: Let's talk past. Let's gone past on radio, headline.
Speaker 1: Radio, pet live radio dot.
Speaker 2: Com and welcome back to bet Live Radios. Asked Evat
to doctor Jeff. I'm your host, doctor Jeff Berber. You
know tomorrow morning I start a crazy week. I'm first
of all so crazy. I'm being picked up at three
thirty in the morning thank you very much. As I'm
off to Toronto through Chicago. I'll be working for the
next we see Tuesday Wednesday in Toronto area, then flying
to Vancouver for Thursday in Vancouver and finally back home,
and I'm going to be talking about summer tips for pets.
Speaker 3: It's a media chore. It's called I'll be hitting.
Speaker 2: Oh my god, I'll be one busy guy from station
to station, to radio show to magazine, article to interview,
all over the place.
Speaker 3: It's going to be.
Speaker 2: Sponsored by Mars PetCare, and you know, it's interesting. The premise,
of course is pet safety during the summertime. And also
they're probably something that is becoming a little bit more
popular now and.
Speaker 3: We call that mixed feeding.
Speaker 2: And you know, over the years we have learned that
in many circumstances, though most of us don't do it myself,
included from my dogs, but I'm going to change for
my cats. I've picked up this a long time ago
and have made the changes. And that is they're promoting.
And it's interesting. It's a media tour sponsored by Mars
PetCare on Mars owns items and pedigree and whiskeys and
Caesar and temptations it's under the Waltham Nutrition Center in
the United Kingdom is also under the Mars PetCare umbrella.
A lot of amazing research comes out of that. But
what they are having me do is not necessarily promote
any brands. What they want to promote is the research
that they found at Waltham, and that is the benefits
of mixed feeding. And I was actually surprised at some
of the things that we learned. But you know, we
know that in dogs, for example, urinary attack, infections and
urinary problems are of greater incidents in the small breeds.
And one of the things we also noticed seventy percent
of pet owners, seventy percent of you that have dogs
are feeding your dogs just dry food, which by the way,
is nutritionally sound, nutritionally balanced. But we're determining, we're learning
that may be advantages of actually feeding mixed in and
it could be a whatever percent you want. It could
be twenty five to seventy five, sixty forty, It doesn't
make it different. You can actually just first feed some
canned and then let them gobble it up, which they
probably will, and then leave the dry out to graze
for a little longer. There's no magic to how to
do it, how to make the switch, and how much
the feed of each The idea is that dogs, many
of our dogs, can benefit as well from cant food diets.
Number one of which, especially this time here, is hydration.
Even though we think the dogs will take in as
much water as they need, that's not always a case.
So by giving them some canned food as well, which
is a high water content, then they are getting more hydration.
Speaker 3: And how do we know? How do we know what
we were?
Speaker 2: Do? We learn that dogs don't necessarily take in as
much water as they need. We learn from cats because
cats are not good water drinkers, and many of the
problems we get we see with cats with feline lower
urinary check disease are related to the fact they're not
getting enough water. So one of the ways we can
come about that is to also feed them canned food.
With cats is another big reason, and that is the
cats are obligate carnivores. They need to eat meat, really
good meat, and what happens with dry food. Dry food
has meat, is no doubt, but it also has a
lot of carbs, and the feeling is the reason we
see so many overweight cats. Cats that are predisposed to
Type two diabetes is because they're on dry food only diets.
And I'm not saying eliminate the dry food, but you
want to mix in some can food. They need to
have more caned food, they need to have real meat,
they need to have more water in the diets, and
they need to have less carbs. And interestingly, though one
would think one would think that the can food is
more fanning, and that's not the case.
Speaker 3: It's actually less.
Speaker 2: Calories program of canned food than in dry food. So
again because some of those grams is water versus the
dry food is all filler as carbs, and they're getting
more calories. So it's very interesting.
Speaker 3: To learn this.
Speaker 2: And so what we're gonna do is we're going to
be promoting the concept of mixed feeding and also a
lot of summertime tips and so you know we're prepared.
I mean, some of the things you need to know about.
First of all, it gets hot out there, so for
those of you and oh let me backtrack a second,
we all want to get out and if not we
want to, we need to. I'm sure I'm not even
looking at you and just judging by our wonderful country
and the problem with many of us being sort of
wearing packing on a few more pounds than we should have,
especially after winter. We should be outside exercising as well.
It's good for us, it's good for our dogs, it's
good for developing and maintaining that wonderful bond that we
shared with our pets. So it's time, it's time spent.
It's fun, but we need to do it, but we
don't want to do it in the middle of the day.
We got to be very, very careful. Once that sun
comes up, guys, it is really hot. And not only
is it hot in the evening. When you think, okay,
the sun's down, now we're safe. Depending on the surface
you want to exercise to run on, it may not
be so safe.
Speaker 3: Why because asphalt, especially black.
Speaker 2: Asphalt, will maintain heat for quite a while. So you
have to either put those little pads, those little booties
on your pets feet something to protect them from that
hot surface, or don't go on hot surface, running on
grass or on sand, something that's not quite as hot
in the later of the evening, but you don't want
to exercise during the day. When you do exercise, make
sure you have an ample supply of water, take a
thermis that. What I like to do a couple of
things is I like to take a pandana and I
will wet it, roll it up and put in the
freezer overnight. And in the morning when I take my
dogs out for the walk, I put wrap some bandana
around their neck so they're getting that nice cool ice
cold when it melts wet bandana, and that just makes
them feel good, especially dogs with shorter hair. When you
leave them outside during the day, it is critical that
they have shade. Sometimes it's not just the heat that's
getting them, it's.
Speaker 3: The direct sunlight.
Speaker 2: So if you don't have a doghouse and there's no
area that's like a covered porch or a covered awning,
or where one of your house or your garage is
creating a shaded area, you must make arrangements to keep
them indoors or build.
Speaker 3: That which you need so they have shade.
Speaker 2: Secondly, water, ample water at all times. And I can't
tell you how many cases I've seen of heat stroke
heat prostration because these dogs were doing too much and
didn't have ample supply of water. During exercise, they weren't
given an opportunity to stop and catch their breath, and
it's sort of a vicious cycle. Once they get to
the point, especially in the shorter face breathe, where they
start having that respiratory sounds, that strider, you've lost the
battle because now the more they work to breathe, the
more their temp goes up. The more their temp goes up,
the more dangerous it is for them. So remember, dogs
don't sweat except for two places. We've talked about this before.
They sweat on the pads of their feet and the nose.
So if you don't give them an opportunity to cool down,
they can only do so much by panting, and if
panting becomes compromised, then their body temperature is going to
shoot up. So that's very, very dangerous. So I have
some good suggestions for water. One product I saw it's
a little attachment that goes on to a faucet. You
turn the faucet on, and the water doesn't leak through
because there's a little bar in a center and it
only delivers the water when.
Speaker 3: That bar is moved.
Speaker 2: So the dog's tongue or the nose, they nudge it,
they lick at it, and then when they lick the
water is delivered, and that way you're not wasting water.
Another good suggestion if you have a dog that kind
of likes to play with its water bowl like it's
now a toy, what I recommend is the following. You
got to kind of picture this as I say it,
but you want to get a bunt cake pan. And
for any of you who have ever made a cake
or no, what a bunt cake pan is. It's got
a hole in the center. So what you do is
you buy about a half inch a wooden dowel, maybe
twelve to sixteen inches long, and you bang it into
the ground. You fill the bunt cake pan with water,
and then you slide the bunk cake pan over the dowel.
So now it's anchored. It cannot be tipped over, so
that rambunctious labrador puppy of yours that looks at everything
as a plate toy, it can't knock over the bowl.
Second thing you can do is take some heavy duty
rocks and put at the bottom. But you gotta get
a pretty big water bowl and then put the water
on top of that. And another thing, but loaded with
ideas here, is to fill up a water bowl about
three quarters full. Stick it in the freezer overnight and
by morning you're going to have one huge block of ice,
and that way that can go over to the block
of ice during the day, it will melt. As it melts,
it can get some more water. They're always lapping water
off the top, but it's really an ample supply of
water that they sort of can have to day and
it's nice and cool. And of course, if you don't
have a dog that loves to knock over the water
bowl or you use the dowl track, you can also
fill with water and put ice cubes in the water
bowl so it stays nice and cool. So we're talking
about preparing for exercise early morning or late evening. If
they're going to be outside during the day, they have
to have ample shade and they have to have ample
supply of water and make sure they're healthy. I always
like to I recommend before summertime, before you're going to
start increase that exercise, go see your veterinarian, have a
check up. Make sure everything's okay, make sure everything's working order,
make sure the feed are good, make sure that the
nasal passages everything is clear. Again, they're gonna sweat through
the nose, they're gonna pant, they're gonna breathe. We want
to make sure that everything is fine and that they
are not too overweight. Understand this that on the one hand,
we need the exercise to help shet the pounds, but
on the other hand, their work to do the exercise
is much more difficult on the body and the metabolism
when they're overweight, when they're carrying on.
Speaker 3: This extra weight.
Speaker 2: So it's something you need to work with a game
plan with your veterinarian. You want to work into it
nice and slowly, because otherwise you're gonna have a dog
who's going to overheat and that potentially could be life threatening.
I've had dogs in my office one hundred and seven.
It's amazing. They're even alive. They're collapsed. They can't move,
and which leads me to another point. If you are
going to exercise them and do anything with your pet,
even in the morning, make sure you know exactly where
you need to.
Speaker 3: Take them for the following things. Number one, heat stroke.
Speaker 2: Number two, depending on where you're exercising and where you're hiking, rattlesnakes,
poisonous snakes.
Speaker 3: You do not want to stop go.
Speaker 2: You do don't collec your joint dollars, rush and I
mean rush straight to the emergency center nearby for some treatment.
So these are things you just want to do. You
need to know for your pets protection. And of course,
think about mixed feeding, think about trying some good canned foods.
I guarantee your pets are going to love you for it,
because I know as much as my dogs love to eat,
and they'll eat you know, two of them are labradors.
One's the labordud To like joke. They'll eat anything that's
not bolted down or doesn't need them first, but they
and they'll chow down their food in two seconds. But
they love canned food. So and one thing you can
entice if you have a dog that's not eating well
by a little trick. Not too much because it's richer,
and you have to have a healthy dog to do
this with. But dogs love cat food because cat food
is higher in protein, it's a little high in fat,
it's tasty as as can be. And oh my god,
if you have a finicky dog who's not liking his
dry food, feed him some canned food. If he's not
loving his canf food, give him some cat can food.
That I think you'll like anyway. Thanks for joining me
here this version, this edition of I Ask the Vest
of Doctor Jeff, and.
Speaker 3: We will be here.
Speaker 2: No, I will not be here next week. I'm gonna
be traveling. I'm sure Mark will come up with a
one of my past shows that was fantastic. You'll learn
something and we will see here in two weeks, so
make sure to tune in. And I want to see you.
I want you to send me emails to Drjeff at
Petlife radio dot com so you can tell me what
you would like to discuss. Give me a topic, let's
discuss it. Let me help you manage it, educate you.
That's what I love to do. All right, we'll see
in a few weeks here Cutlife Radio
Speaker 1: Let's Talk Pets every week on demand only on petlifradio
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