Speaker 1: You were listening to Petlifradio dot com.
Speaker 2: Good morning or good afternoon, whatever the case may be.
I am your host for the next thirty minutes here
on pet Life Radio, doctor Jeff Werber here on Ask
the Vets with Doctor Jeff, and that is Ask the Vets.
So I want you to call and ask as you
can hear from my voice. It still hasn't recovered fully,
so I don't want to talk to how boring to
listen to me for thirty minutes, So I want to
hear from you. We can talk about a bunch of stuff.
I have an agenda. I always have an agenda, but
I want to hear from you. We can talk about anything.
So it's very easy. All you need to do is
pick up the phone called eight seven seven three eight
five eight eight A two once again eight seven seven
three eight five eight eight A two. And if you
happen to be listening us live online here at pet
Life Radio at the Ask the Vets with Doctor Jeff tab,
you can join in on the conversation very easy. You
just go on to that start page and you see
a big box that says join the conversation, log into
our live chat. During the show, we can also you
can send me a quick email which will be forwarded
to me live as we speak to Dr Jeff. That's
doctor Jeff at Petlife radio dot com. So for those
of you that we're listening. For the last several several weeks,
we've been talking about the different organs and mostly the
endocrine system. And first we covered a lot of symptoms,
symptoms that for example, what to do with diarrhea, what
to was vomiting, et cetera. Then we went to our
different endocrine disease endocrines or hormone diseases. We talked about thyroid,
both hypothyroid and the dog, and hyperthyroid and the cat.
We talked about Cushing's disease and Addison's disease. That is
an over secretion of the adrenal gland or the pituitary
gland signaling the adrenal gland in the case of cushions,
or an under secretion as in the case of Addison's disease.
We went on to diabetes. We talked about the different
types of diabetes. We have type one or juvenile onset
diabetes in people, and that is the type of diabetes
that dogs get, but they can get it really at
any age or type two diabetes, which is the diabetes
that we see in cats, and that's the equivalent of
our adult onset diabetes. That has a lot to do,
sadly with what and how we feed our cats. If
you had any questions about all of those conditions diseases
over the last several weeks, go ahead and send me
an email to DRGF at Petlife Radio dot com. Hopefully
I can clear things up for you. And as always,
when you get the courage the guts to pick up
the phone or to log in and send me a question.
Are sponsors, which are pro sense pet products, the only
pet products available over the counter in mass at the
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toys which are great safe and by the way, we'll
talk about safe toys just at the very end because
of a problem I'm working on. It's the story I'm
working on right now with NBC News on the fact
that Petco has just pulled it's jerky Chinese jerkey treats
and raw high treats, anything made in China off the shelves,
and the story has it, rumor has it that pet
Smart is soon to follow and by March, there will
be no Chinese products like the jerky treats or anything
edible on the shelves. So I think that's a bold move.
I applaud them. I certainly would like to ask them
what took them so long, But the fact that they're
finally doing it, I think is great because there are
a lot, a lot of safety concerns with these products.
My recommendation right now, just as a footnote, is if
you are thinking of buying any jerky treats or rawhide products,
anything it's edible or chewable, raw head products for your
pats for your dogs, make sure they're made or in
the USA, or they could be made abroad, but belong
to a company that is a name brand US company
and you'll be safe. And so that means even products
that are made and there's some maid in South America,
some maide in Australia, New Zealand. I'm not saying they're bad,
but we just don't know enough about it, and the
regulations are the strictest here in the States. So I
mean we can work both ways. As we know, you know,
try to get a drug pass to FDA. It's being
used in Europe to major success and we're still in
the testing process. So I meanwhile, patients in Europe are
already doing great and recovering from whatever major disease they had,
and we're still in the FDA process. But it also
helps us the other way around to make sure that
there is actual safety and that's what I find with
the FDA, with the EPA, Vine Run Protection Agency, with
the USDA, United spar and Agriculture, these are all organizations
that really seem to watch out for us and our pets.
So I think right now to stay with US products
is the best way to go. So once again, get
a hold of me, call in, let's talk about anything
you want. I do have As I said, my agenda
and what I wanted to now talk about as we're
going through the different organ systems. We talked about the GI,
the gas to intestinal tract. The next thing I want
to talk about which I see a lot of issues
with and that is eyes. And we do see a
lot of eye conditions in our pets. As many of
you might know, there are actually, in keeping with it,
very many organ and body parts and disciplines within veterinary medicine.
There are also board certified veterinary ophthalmologists. So these are
veterinarians that have gone through their four years of veterinary
school and then they do an internship often and then
they do a residency. It's roughly three years in just ophthalmology,
and they become specialists in eyes. And you can imagine
that if we didn't have a lot of eye issues
to deal with and a lot of eye problems, we
wouldn't need specialists in eyes. But because there are many
problems that we have to contend with, it is a
very very interesting specialty. I happen to like eyes. I
think it's good because it incorporates a lot of medicine.
It incorporates really really cool surgery, and if you like
very fine detailed surgery eyes, it's a great subspecialty. I
often joke that had I had the time or the
inclination way back when I graduated to do a residency,
ophthalmology was one of my top choices. I think eyes
are great. So anyway, when we have, you know, certain
conditions and a lot of diseases we're going to cover
are very similar to both people antipets. We have our
fair share of congenital diseases. These are diseases that animals
are born with. They may have a genetic predisposition, or
they may not. Sometimes it could be just a defect
all right. Congenital just means present at birth or during development,
and there may not always be a high potential for
genetic transmission. Sometimes we have diseases that you look at
the parents. If you know it's a recessive contrait, and
then both parents would have to have it and pass
it to their offspring. If it's a dominant trait, then
it could be just one parent having it and passing it.
So these are some of the conditions that we know
we would have to contend with when we see eye
diseases early on in puppies or kittens. I mean, I'll
give you one perfect example. Collie dogs often could have
a condition called micropthalmia, and that means that their eyes
and their eye sockets are very small. So the palpebral fissures,
which are the eye opening where the eyelids are are
also very small, and the actual globe the eyeball is
much smaller than normal. So you see that in a
little puppy. Obviously that's a congenital defect, something that they
were affected them in development that they're born with the
problem and not necessarily a high You know, some of these,
as I said, don't have a high hereditary predispositions. But
this condition would be why because we see it in
a certain breed. So when you start seeing conditions that
are common to a specific breed, then you have to
start thinking, well, there's got to be some sort of
hereditary component. And so you can have diseases that are
hereditary end congenital or just congenital or just hereditary. You
can have a hereditary disease that's not going to present
until the dog is six seven years old. So there
are a lot of conditions. Also, as we talked about
when we were discussing diabetes, if you were paying attention,
if you're awake, then what happens with many cases of diabetes.
We see a high tendency hyperpensity of cataracts. So diabetic
dogs often are going to present with cataracts. So that
is in an eye condition that we call it an
ocular manifestation of a disease. So it's not necessarily an
eye disease, but the eyes are often linked and affected
to other common conditions. So here's another one that if
any of you have had the following breeds. And again
when you talk about breed predisposition, that means that there's
probably some sort of congenital link. Cocker spaniels number one,
by the way, bulldogs, English bulldogs, especially losses and sheetsoos.
I don't know if I should give you the answer
or just to test if you are paying attention, to
give us a call here at eight seven seven three
eight five eight eight eight two and see if you
know what condition we usually see in young dogs of
this type. It is a surgical fix and we see it.
There's the hint. Mostly that can happen in any dog,
but we're going to see it in cockers, bulldogs, losses
and sheets and even sometimes Rottweiler's, maybe even Sharpay's. But
it's very very common in those breeds. And I said,
it's very fixable. So I'm going to put that on
a hold for just a minute and see who's got
the courage. Either send me a quick note here to
doctor Jeffitt pet Life Radio, join in on the conversation,
or just give us a call. And it's a condition
that I will tell you. Another thing is another hint.
It shows up out of the blue. I mean it can. Literally,
you can go out to dinner, come home a couple
hours later, and your dog's got it. And it's something
that most people panic when they see. And the truth
of the matter is it is not an emergency. So God,
I can't even give you more hints than that. So
I want to hear from you to see if you're
paying attention. And remember, not only when we talk about it,
but we will also the caller or whoever joins in
is going to get a free pro sense product and
a contoy. So next up, we have a condition that
is probably one of the more painful conditions of eyes.
It typically happens in older dogs, and it is called glaucoma,
and glaucoma is an increased pressure within the eye itself. Now,
certainly you can imagine that a complicating factor of glaucoma
could often be a lens luxation. But it's very painful,
and these dogs will typically present, they'll come in and
what you're gonna notice is, first of all, a lot
of squinting. We call that blephro spasm, very red eyes.
It's gonna be well, I should. It just usually happens
more in one eye first than both at the same time,
though it could be bilateral, of course, but often we're
gonna see glaucoma in only one eye and at least
to start, and you're gonna see a very red eye,
a lot of squinting, and because the pain is so
dramatic that these dogs are gonna be really, as we say,
ad r ain't doing right. They are gonna be hiding,
they're not gonna want to play, they may not want
to eat, and you're gonna look at them and you're
gonna see this big, bulging red eye. If you have
one of these dogs, like my French bulldogs that are
that we call breakycephalic breeds with the very prominent eyes
they call them bug eyes, you're gonna just see a
huge eye and a lot of pain. So when we
see what we call conjuncti itis, we see injected sclera.
That's where the white part of the eye is very
red and raw. That could be doue with a lot
of things that could be due to just a conjunctive bis.
It could be due to an allergy, and dogs can
have an allergy to something. They could be bitten by
something around the face, they rub it their eyes. The
eyes get very red, they get very inflamed, and that's
also extremely possible. But I will tell this is what
I often tell people that when it comes to an
eye problem in your pet, you do not want to
mess around when it comes to an eye problem. These
are something that and we've talked about this. I've talked
about limping. For example, a dog comes up lame suddenly,
but they're still walking, they're still wait bearing, they're the
favoring a little bit. Is that reason to rush to
the veterinarian. No, it's not. But with eyes, if you
start seeing an ocular anomaly, an ocular abnormality, you want
to take your pet into the veterinarian asap because these
conditions can make a difference really between sight and losing sight,
between keeping the eye or having the eye removed. So
the faster that we jump on this, you're the veterinarian
that if needed a referral made to the veterinarialphthalmologists in
the long haul, the safer it would be for your pet.
So time for that quick midway break here on our show,
Ask the Best with doctor Jeff. You're on Pet Life Radio.
Don't go away, we'll be right back. After the short break, we'll.
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Speaker 2: Hello, Hello and welcome back. I am We're just oh
by the way, I left. In the first fifteen minutes
first half of the show, I asked to our listeners
a question about a common eye condition that looks worse
than it is. It's usually surgical happens. Typically number one
breed to see this in is cocker spaniel. However we
also see it in English bulldogs, We see it in
losses and sheetsu's, we can see it rot wilers and sharpays.
But we could of course see it in any breed,
but increased prevalence in those. And so waiting here for
an answer, I know someone's got to know someone. I
can't imagine anyone here listening on pet Life Radio that
has not had a dog at some point in the
life that had this condition. So don't be bashful, don't
be shy. Just log on in or give us a
call eight seven seven three eight five eight eight eight
to or just join us here in pet Life Radio
dot com Ascibes's with doctor Jeff and type in your
answer and we could talk about it. So before the
break we were talking about another one of the more
painful eye diseases that we see. It's called glaucoma. Glaucoma
is an increased pressure actually within the eyeball itself. It's
almost like the eyeball wants to burst. And if any
of you have ever had any kind of pain in
the eye itself or just something in the eye, you
know how uncomfortable it is. So you can imagine when
the eye is just ready to burst. So you could
see a bulging, large eye. You could see a sclare
of which is the white part of the eye is
all ejected, it's all red. The dog is squinting the
I mean, it's painful. And what we do is we
do a test called tenometry. Teenometry is a pressure test
a number of different ways to do it. There are
two devices that are commonly used years and years ago.
I laugh. I still kept one just because it's an antique,
and boy was it a pain to use. It was
called a Shiatz tenometer. And basically you're putting the head
dog's head up in the air and you're putting this
device on it with little weights and it measures how
depressed these weights have to be a little like a
pendulum slides back and forth. I mean, oh my god,
this poor dog having to sit through that is crazy. Now,
many of us use a Tono pen, probably one of
the more common devices. I mean, it doesn't hurt at all.
It's simple to use that, it's got an LED display,
it reads out the pressure. It's a godsend. And then
a lot of the aphamologists use actually a cooler device,
way more expensive, And what it does it takes a
little shoot, like a little piece of air that shoots
out of this device, and then it measures the indentation
of the cornea when this puff of air is shot
at the cornea. Clearly, the more indentation, the softer the eye.
The less indentation, the firmer the eye. And that's probably
the gold standard. Now. However, for most general practitioners it
might be a little on the expensive side. But the
tonal pen works amazingly well and it's great and very accurate.
Usually I've not ever yet made a diagnosis with my
tonal pen and then sent the dog to the ophthalmologist
and the ohomologist says, oh, no, these pressures are fine,
So it's very accurate. Now, you want to have the
eye pressure somewhere, you know, at least eight to ten.
You get too soft, you worry about another disease we
could talk about later called uvi iitis. But you just
approach fifteen to eighteen, you're getting to the part where
you don't want to go above twenty for sure. We
call twenty to twenty five millimeters of mercury the gray zone.
You start getting above twenty five and you're in the glaucoma.
And I've had dogs testing at fifty at seventy. I
can't even imagine how painful that would be. And there
are many, many different treatments. Some medical therapies work, some
topical eye medications seem to help. Often surgery is required
to try to open up that drainage angle, go between
the back portion of the eye and the front portion
of the eye, and get things moving. Sometimes actually a
drain is put in to keep the eye pressures down,
which has to be done surgically, typically by an ophthalmologist.
And then ultimately, ultimately, if none of this works, then
we have to remove the eye. And we feel worse
about eye removal because of our own feelings. The truth
of the matter is I have seen and treated hundreds
of one eyed dogs and they are just as happy
as the two eye dogs. They lose obviously some visual field,
but they compensate and they do amazingly well, I mean,
and as a matter of fact, I have seen many
blind dogs that still are pretty happy. And you know
what comes to vision. We're talking about eyes. Let's talk
about vision for a second. Of all the senses, the
main senses taste and smell and hearing, I'd say for
most dogs, vision is their worst. The way the eye,
the retin is set up. First of all, there are
different neurons our receptors in the eye, and they're called
rods and cones. And rods basically are for eight take
in the light, so they're responsible for us. For example,
our nighttime vision really isn't as good as not as sharp.
Yet dogs actually see better than we do at night,
and that's because they have a higher proportion of rods
to cones. Cones, on the other hand, help with detail
and color, so that's why we see better color than dogs.
Dogs are not colorblind as often people think. They don't
see color as acutely as we do because they have
much fewer cones than rods. Now what's interesting is, and
this is how I always I mention this because of acuity,
because of the ability to differential differentiate sharp demarcations of color.
Because dogs don't have as many cones, they don't see
it as well. So here's an example. If you show
a dog and you can measure and hook them up
to some sort of electronic electrophysiologic devices, and they're measuring
brain activity, and you see pin stripes. So let's say,
for example, a classic beautiful navy blue pinstripe suit with
very faint like light gray or off white lines. Okay,
if a dog or to be looking at that, because
of their much fewer cones, they may not see the
pin stripes. They'll just see a solid color. But here's
the cool thing. If one of those stripes should happen
to move, oh my god, that dog is right on it.
So because of their ability to really see so much
more light, they can detect movement much more easily, which
means that they were perfectly made for hunting, so they
don't see. For example, you know, we are perfect vision
is like twenty twenty. Dogs are more like twenty eighty,
which means that what we can see clearly at eighty feet,
a dog needs to see at twenty feet in order
to see it as clearly. So they don't have that sharpness,
that finness. But man can they detect light. They can
see way better than we do at night. Obviously, that's
great for hunting. They can detect movement much better than
we likewise, you know, that's ideal for hunting. So it
just seems to be what they're made. Another thing that
we have that well, I should say, we don't have that.
Dogs and cats do. And you'll get this right away.
It's called a tepedum. A tepedum is a very reflective
portion of the retina, which is the membrane in the
back of the eye that has all of the sensory connections.
So when we have, for example, we'll talk about a
retinal separation in the future, we lose that type of
visual acuity and sometimes vision altogether. So what we see
with the tapedum. If you've ever been driving at night
and you are approaching that animal looking right at you
and the headlights hit them, and you see that almost
looks freaky, that reflection, that's the tapedum. When we take
pictures and the camera hits our eye in a certain way,
what do we see from us from people? You see
the red spots, that's just because the blood vessels in
the back of the eye. But with animals, you see
a reflective to pedum, especially in cats, and that makes
a huge difference. So I'm going to leave you hanging.
I want you to contact me this week to doctor
Jeff at Petlife Radio dot com. I want the answer
to my question about that disease condition we see usually
in young dogs, Cocker spaniels, Cheetu's, lots of English bulldogs,
Rottweiler's sharpays. It's surgical, very fixable, not a panic situation.
I cannot give you too many ends. I can't give
you more than that, and let's see who gives me
the right answer. Other than that, we will be here
next week. I'll be live from the North American Veteran
Conference in Orlando. My colleague, doctor Danny mcfetdie will be
joining me live once again. We'll talk about a bunch
of stuff. If you have any questions or anything you
want to talk about, just send them to me, Doctor Jeff.
Dr Jeff here at pet Life Radio once again, thanks
to pro Sense, thanks to Kong, and we will be
coming to live next week from North American Veteran Conference
and see it again.
Speaker 1: Let's talk pets every week on demand only on Petlife
Radio dot com
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