May 16, 2025 • 30 mins
This week's topics include what is an emergency, vitamins, kidney disease, pica, and more! Tune in every SUNDAY at 12 Noon Eastern, 9am Pacific and call in with your questions at 877-385-8882 or join us on Zoom.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:02):
This is pet Life Radio. Let's talk pets, and we
(00:23):
are live.
Speaker 2 (00:24):
We are welcome, Welcome. You're here live with doctor Jeff Werberg,
host for the next thirty minutes here on pet Life
Radio and Instagram. Live here for you, here for your pets.
Any questions you have now is it time to ask? Cope?
Everbody had a great week. I had a I don't
know why. It was a really really busy week for me,
like crazy busy. So you know that's a good thing.
Good morning, I'm waving everybody. So anyway, you're not even
(00:46):
a hold of me, Hello there, Steph. Yes, I was
thinking it was a crazy week. If you have questions,
now is the easy time to ask. You can always
reach me here to sign well, if you're here on Instagram,
but all you have to do is just start typing away.
And if you're if you're on pet Life Radio, if
you're if you're listening tradition probably here already. Good stop.
You can always reach me on my phone if you'd
(01:07):
like eight seven seven three eight five eight eight eight
two once again eight seven seven three eight five eight
eight eight two and just want to hear and just
talk about anything you want to talk about. As I said,
crazy week. I don't know what it was, but you know,
I feel badly really because I have a lot of
people that come in and unfortunately I have this disease
called I can't say no disease. So when people call them,
(01:28):
they call, they have to come in or they walk
in the door. Get a lot of walk ins. My
rule of thumb is if someone's already in the office,
I am not going to send them away. Now. They
may have to wait to walk in. Sometoms I can do.
It's called a drop off. We'll convince them to drop
the pet off. We'll take a look at my in
between my appointments or just before I get into surgery.
Then they could pick up later. But no one's ever
(01:49):
walked in the door and I said sorry, we can't
see you today. That has never happened to me in
my forty years. I don't I don't expect it to
happen in my next whatever it is, left, Oh, any
questions you may have, now is the time. So that
one thing I wanted. I wanted to talk a few
things I want to talk about. Number one is I
was going to talk about this last week we got
I mean, look, I love what we get sidetracked. I
(02:10):
love when people come up with things. And we could
sit and talk for quite a while. So that's great.
And although Dad, that you're doing. But I talking about emergencies.
What constitutes an emergency and you know so many things
that when something's off, and I'll give you some of
the common ones. Blood in the stool, oh my god, Okay, vomiting,
that's a biggie and right away for someone who sees
(02:31):
blood in the school, even blood in the urine, it's
a freak out. So of course they call their hospital.
And if it's the weekend or in the evening, it's
an emergency. A message goes out saying, hi, thanks for calling,
we're closed. Go to emergencies. What do you do? Of
course you're get in the car and too, go to emergency.
Let me tell you something I've learned over the years,
just from our air vet our telemedicine platform, that ninety five,
(02:53):
maybe even higher percent of emergencies aren't and having someone
to talk to, having something to help, what we call
the treis go into a case deciding really what's going on,
and when it's on video, it's even better. I've gotten
some cases about a vomiting dog and we do FaceTime
on the app, and this dog is running around, can't
(03:14):
wait for a text meal, thank water, running over with
the ball of the frisbee to play. Care that there
was blood in that vomits or they vomited in the
first place, because this dog is not sick. So I'm
going to ask the basic questions, what did he get into?
What really was the issue? We're going to get in
to that. My next thing, I'm going to talk to
you about a really really big case. I just had
pornfodogs to have vitamins I make I cold only need.
(03:36):
I was okay. So here is I thought. How you doing?
Here's my thought about vitamins. So I take vitamins, I
take supplements. I take an NYD plus, I take Coke ten.
I take lucosamin K and DROIT and MSM and a multi.
Now I feel great. And I don't know how much
of this is because of the things I do. Is
(03:57):
it because I try to eat well, because I try
to stay on the lean side instead of the heavy side.
But I feel really good and I look at, you know,
other people in my age. I'm seventy and I I'm
thinking you know, what are they doing wrong? Or what
am I doing right? Or guess what it could be?
Just geez. I mean, my sister's on here. She doesn't
look her age. So my brother we just had, I
(04:19):
just saw two weeks ago. He doesn't look his age.
We're all, I mean between my oldest sister and me
five years apart, complying me and my oldest sister two years,
my little sister two years, and my little sister or
my little brother, they're one year apart. My mom had
four kids in five years. Wow, I thought she was
twenty five. She had four kids, So it's kind of crazy.
My feeling is this Are they gonna hurt? Is this
something gonna hurt? No? Now, most food's on the market,
(04:42):
especially those that are what we call af GO certified,
that if you look at a label, they all should
say that our ingredients or our formulas meet or ex
seed those standards as established by AFGO. Okay, so that's
the Association of American Feed Control Officials. If the food
is AFCO certified, it should be batter balanced enough. Now
it hurt to give them ALTI or if you're giving
(05:03):
less commercial diets and you're making your own you're adding
your own foods, then give them multi absolutely. Let's say
I'll come a downside. You know. The only time to
get too much there are go you know, we know
they're water cyble and fat side of vitamins. The water
siables are the bees and the seas that are A, D,
E and K and so yes. Could you overdose on
vitamin A and cause the pop yes, vitamin D yes?
(05:25):
But it would be really really difficult. So if you
want to give some supplements at home, that's probably fine.
Now as far as the other things that we are
hearing a lot about, for example, for older dogs, the
NAD for older dogs also that might have arthritis or
joint problems to do the glucosamine and conjoin. And my
feeling is you can't overdo it. It'd be really hard
(05:46):
to overdo it just to a basic amount, you know,
follow the instructions on the label, and I think it's
okay to give supplements. So that's my take on that.
I know I missed another question. Friends all with very
soft stool for about five days, they put them on
a half scrambled eggs and rice out. We got to
talk otherwise normal that self, it's burned down and eating fire.
Oh yeah, yeah, okay, So here's my thought. By the way,
(06:06):
that's a great question because so many times when it
comes to diarrhea, everybody'd run to rice. Well, it turns
out they're intestinal diarrhea. That could be small intestinal and
then large intestinal, large bowels, small bowel diarrhea. Now I
find and this is how I learned, and it's still
working for me. Now. When you have small intestinal diarrhea,
for example, parvovirus animals coming back from parvo, it knocked
(06:29):
a crap out of the intestine. And yes, we were
putting them oncottageaeson rice or chicken and rice. And I
still use rice, but most of the diarrheas. Oh, by
the way, small intestinal diarrhea is usually associated with a
dog that doesn't feel good, so they're not eating well,
they're lethargic, they may be tender abdomen, so they're off.
(06:50):
And that's one way I can tell whether it's small
bowel or large bowels diarrhea. Dogs with large intestine diarrhea
all we also call that colitis information of the colon.
They can have muca in the stool, They can even
have blood in the stool. And they can have mushy,
kind of soft served kind of diarrhea. Don't get that
image in your mind, by the way, but I want
to stick to this self river and out think about
oh my dog has that. So anyway, these are the
(07:12):
ones that are still acting fine. Is running can't wait
for its next meal. There's a big difference. So those
I don't like rice for those I want added fiber.
It's like you think of as counterintuitive. Wait, but you
take fiber because it want of soft in the stool. Yeah,
but so if you give too much fiber, then yes,
the soft stool will continue. But if you give just enough,
it's enough fiber. It sort of coats the ingesta as
(07:36):
it's passing through the colon. The colon's job is to
resorb the last amount of fluid, but it can if
it's all inflame. So the whole idea is you want
to reduce and decrease the inflammation in the colon so
you can start doing what it's supposed to do. Then
the bleeding and the mucus, you see, that's because the
lining of the colon is being dragged off. It's like
scraping off. So therefore that's why you're seeing red blood.
(07:58):
Now the difference if if there's bleeding small intestine or
in the stomach, by the time it comes out, then
we have what's called melano or melina venergon potato potato,
and that is the bleeding that by the time it
gets out to the other end, it's sort of like digested,
it turns black. That's black tari stool. When there's frank
blood or red blood that's coming from the colon, it
(08:19):
looks bad, but it's not as bad, so I don't
worry about it. You know, if you've see molina or melana,
then you're looking at some stomach. You can gastic ulceration,
you can have a problem, you can have a growth,
some sort of tumor in the in the small intestine.
You can have really severe intestinal disease and a small
intestine that causes bleeding. Then that's more serious. But the
red blood that you might see from a colitis, it
(08:42):
looks bad, but it's not a serious And the mucus
on top of that, so then you know you're dealing
with large intestinal diarrheis. So talk to your veterinarian. There's
also I use often in addition, sometimes if it's just
a colitis inflammation from something that was eaten or ingested.
Right then it oftentimes gets better within four or five
days on its own. But I like to add a
little fiber, and if it's really bad, I'll put them
(09:03):
on some flat metroniti as all, which is a great
ant about it. For large bowel diarrhea, it's gotta be
careful with that too, because too much flagil is not good.
I'll usually give it once for a seven to ten
day course. I may repeat it once, but after that
you gotta take a break. So anyway, then if it
spread out five days back to this case, the scrambled
egg is fine, but instead of rice, use either silium
(09:25):
powder or canned pumpkin, or cooked oatmeal or cooked sweet potato,
cooked yams. Just added digestible, edible fibers that will probably
help soothe the colon as it's going through, and then
it'll have a dance to heal. All right, boy, that
was a mouthful, so thank you, thank you so much.
Look great, I feel great. A lot of waving. Let
(09:46):
me wave, wave, wave the worker. When your tech abed
gave us the sillium to add on the food. When
Riley got the ruds. Yes, yeah, it worked and the
cilium is great by the way. In fact, I was
at a talk in January the VMX and it was
a GI talk. I obviously I'd like to go or
see things is first of all, you never can stop learning. Secondly,
I like to go to talks that either interests me
(10:06):
a lot, So I do a lot of behavior. I
do a lot of frenzy Boas talks, that's the raachiocephalic
obstructive barroid disease talks or syndrome talks. Then I do
obviously skin GI. I like an ophthalmology. I love I stuff.
Could kidney levels read poorly on a cat if they're
not feeling well or is it automatically kidney KD kidney
disease eight year old male, Well, it depends. If it
(10:29):
is the bun that's high, but the normal creatinin the
normal phosphorus, then I'm thinking it could be dehydration status.
It could be something that was eaten because the bun
so bun blood urine nitrogen when that's elevated by itself,
but creat and the phosphorus are normal, then I'm thinking
it could be other. Now, if you have the kidney values.
(10:51):
Where the bun is high and the creatinine is high,
it still could be what we call pre renal, depending
on how high. If it's very high, most likely it
is renal disease. If it's sus minimally high, it could
be what we call pre renal azotemia. Azotemia are those
levels that are elevated. Then that could be because of
other things like dehydration status, like something diet, like something
(11:13):
that was minimally I hate to use word toxic, but irritative,
and it elevated those kidney enzymes. So it's not for
sure that it's bad. Now if it's a cat at
eight year old, and we know that that eight year
old cats are, I mean that's the start toe a
little older. We know the kidney disease is the number
one killer of older cats. Could it be the early
(11:34):
signs and the answer, of course, So what I would
do is if the cat's doing well, eating well, I
would start on a kidney diet, and there are a
number of good ones out there. Of course, a full
panel eight years of age, I would have done a
full panel anyway, So a full panel to make sure
everything else is fine and monitor the cat. Cat continues
to do well, it's eating well, it's urinating, and he's
(11:55):
not a renal diet. I would recheck in about maybe
four to six to eight weeks and see if things
are coming down. Okay, I hope that helps last I
just stop the rice and add pumpkin. Yes, good idea
on that creatine?
Speaker 1 (12:06):
Is this?
Speaker 2 (12:07):
Ah? Okay? So if it is high creatinine, I am
more concerned. Absolutely, and I think again kidney diet following
up plenty of fluids, either make sure the cat's drinking well,
or you might even have your veterinarians show you or
your technician and a veteran nurse show you how to
give subcutaneous fluids in a home, because that's very important.
(12:27):
Also because if we see the increased fluids helping bring
those values down, then that's a good sign. Ah. Right,
bladder stones lab showed that my dog has structural bladders.
I think that would be struvite and my dog I've
been feeding in single protein of allergies. Should I change
his diet? Well, oh my god, the answer is yes.
And this brings me to the other things I wanted
(12:49):
to talk about today. I've had three systotomies. Two in
a dog, one in a cat in the last two
or three weeks, and the first one, I'll have to
say this. You know, it's funny. I get follow up
like this, and it just justifies what I do and
why I do it, and why I am having so
much fun, and I really get such satisfaction out of
(13:10):
doing it. So dog named Santo blocked twice. We were
able to reduce the blockage. We were to unblock the dog.
It's a dog, and you can see X rays clearly.
Some stones they're kind of small, some of more, but
one was getting lodged in the arethra and we're hoping
that maybe a kidney diet could help. So we unblocked
the dog, and sure enough, within two days he's back again.
All right, it's a surgical disease. We go in do
(13:32):
surgery because he was blocked and his bladder was when
I first of all extended. It was so irritated, it
was bloody. It was terrible. I hate doing bladder surgeries
on dogs like that and such bad shape anyway, but
we had to. So we go in, We do the surgery,
you know, we unblock, and we got I got stones
out of there. It was crazy. So the bladder up,
(13:54):
I do a double clothes on the on the bladder
wall itself, and then we close the abdomen, close the skin.
And so this morning he did great, took the stitches out.
He was doing great. So it's been about three weeks now,
and I turned my phone this morning and there it
is a video of then with Santo running around the backyard.
And I got this, which is just it was. And
(14:15):
I wrote back, I wrote, so cute, and she writes,
you kept Santo alive. I am indebted and grateful and
when I get things like that, it just makes my day.
Those are the cases. Now. Look, I would always say
this again no ego here, that probably most of our
cases get well in spite of us. I say this
to veterinarians, not because of us. In other words, all
(14:37):
we do is give that a little extra hand, give
that support. The body's amazing. The body is going to
take care of itself. But every now and again we
get these cases where I can actually say, these hands
actually save this pet's life. And when that happens, it's
the best feeling ever. And I really know that this
is the profession I chosen, and I don't know it
(14:58):
was calling and why you do it? Hey, anyway, another
story going back to the eating all that crap, all right,
and we call it Pika and I have another story
for you, and we're gonna do it when we come back.
So don't go wait, it's a good one. We'll see
you back here after these short messages from our sponsors
and Petlife Radio take it away.
Speaker 3 (15:15):
Mark. Oh, sure, it's all fun and games until someone
ends up in a cone.
Speaker 1 (15:22):
That's right. We are animals. Deal with it at Life Radio.
Let's talk pets. Let's talk pats. Let's pets radio, Headline radio.
Speaker 3 (15:35):
At life radio dot com.
Speaker 2 (15:47):
Okay, we're back here live on pet Life Radio as
well as Instagram, and so I want to talk about Piku.
Pi cut is the eating of innatimate objects. Dogs that
get into garbage like it's one thing where it all
gets into the garbage, eats food or leftovers or bone. It's
one thing when they eat like everything. So one of
my friends actually brings up a good point about sillium,
(16:09):
which I love. By the way, I like getting pure
sillium husk powder because, as it's written here, and she's
right that some of the ones you find in your
pantry might contain artificial sweeteners. We know about zylotl, so
read the ingredients. If you could use cilium powder, which
I love, you want to use pure unadulterated sillium husk powder,
(16:29):
all right. Anyway back to Pika. So one of my
friend's dog comes in and I'm known this friend forever,
and I also I'm known the dog his dog's forever.
And this dog is a nine year old doodle and
the sweetest dog, but has been losing weight, eating well,
no vomiting, and this is the key, no vomiting. And
(16:50):
he's truly what we call adr ain't doing right. So
of course I do an X rays in a blood test,
blood and urine came back totally fine. So now I'm
really scratching what is going on? And I see something
in his stomach was it was like maybe the size
of a large beef ballered egg in the corner of
the stomach, and I'm thinking, why is this a mass?
And he's not vomiting, No, he's not vomiting. God, this
(17:11):
is It's really weird. So we follow up a couple
of days and he's still there eating. He's still eating,
that's and not vomiting, which is this is a mind blow.
So I have my friend doctor Sam Covetti, who's a
board tratified internist to a master of ultrasound, and I
do abominal ultra sounds, but more cursory. I have to
look for big things. But when it comes to looking
(17:33):
at the thickness of an intestinal wall or the lining
of a wall, et cetera, then I want Sam to
come in and do it. So he does, and he
confirms that by now, by the way, this mass is
twice bizart and the density is such that it's some
parts are thick, some parts of thin. With confidence he
has never led me astray. He says, this is not
a mass, this is ingested. This is something in the
(17:54):
stomach that needs to come out. So okay, on his recommendation,
we set up for a surgery to do what's called
the gastronomy, and they will also run the bowel. And
so we open the dog up and pull the stomach out.
We do what's packed the stomach. We don't want anything
leaking back into the abdom and even though after about
(18:14):
our surgery, after any kind of intestinal surgery, we flushed
about a flush and flush and suck out this and flush,
And we want to make sure we do a good
job because there's an expression that dilution, all right is
the answer when you have pollution. So if there's anything
in there that could be causing severe abdominal problems, all right,
then we want to make sure we flush it out.
(18:36):
So flushing and flushing to dilute it out is the
answer to polluting. So let me tell where stuff we
pulled out. First of all, paper, plastic, plenty of grass
and weeds, a label from like a short or something.
How about a receipt from some market. I mean, this
dog has such terrible pike, and I think when the
scared feeling badly, it's like a lot of dogs run
(18:59):
out in the grass. His answer was to go out
eat everything. So it was unbelievable. I have a bag.
I took a picture of it. Everything we pulled out
of his stomach was unreal. The good news is that
after we removed everything, checked the stomach, closed them up,
closed the stomach. I closed stomachs like I do the
bladder in two layers, and then we ran the belly.
(19:19):
That means we went through the entire intestine all the
way to the you know, to what we call the
Celioski colon junction was these to the colon. Usually, if
something's in the colon, you leave it alone. It's gonna
come out anyway. And that was clean. So postop dogs
doing great. We sampled some of the intestines and you know,
but it's amazing when you have a dog. And here's
a take home lesson. If you have one such dog
(19:42):
that cannot keep his mouth away, especially on walks, you
need to get yourselves a really good basket muzzle. This
is a muzzle. It's not a muzzle like that. You
have a now aggressive dog that you're gonna worry it
like get bitten. A basket muscle. They can they can
drink all right, it's it can breathe, they can pant.
It's like a big basket that fits right over the
muzzle and it attach it behind the neck and this
(20:05):
way they can smell things, they can drink water, but
they can't eat things. They can't get it through the
little slits in the basket. And that's what you need
to do, because I don't know if a dog like
this could even withstand another surgery like this. This was
a major surgery on an older, fairly good sized dog.
So it's really really important to when you get a chance,
(20:27):
when you have these dogs you want to go ahead
and you want to get a basket muscle, do not
let it happen twice. Another example of this, I just
mentioned earlier that I had to do a surgery on
one of my cats. One of the three sostotomies I
did was a cat, but I didn't mention it. I'm
gonna mention now that the cat had the same surgery
a year ago. A year ago March. Now it's April
(20:50):
of the next year and he's got another need for sostotomy. Yeah,
there's a lot for a cat to take, for any
animal to take. So of course, after the first one,
we evaluated the stone and it came back struvite Knox slate,
which is the most common. So we mentioned there are
a couple of diets you should put this cat on
that will help prevent the formation of new stones. Came
back in July and follow up, ua, etc. I asked it, so,
(21:14):
by the way, how's the cat doing on the diet?
And she goes, oh, we haven't started that, diety, I
don't think of myself, are you crazy? You didn't you
got to start this diet. Sure enough, this cat was
back in April and a second surgery. And believe me,
after a surgery like this, these animals get well a
lot of called adhesions, so the anatomy is not exactly
the same as it was. Now you're trying to get
(21:36):
to the surface of the bladder where you want to open,
and you have to remove tissue and to sort of
dissect it away to be able to get access to
where you really want to make your decision in the bladder,
and with all these adhesions, it's kind of tough to do.
So anyway, listen to your veterinarion, Larry, how you doing.
By the way, I have one of our visitors with
(21:57):
me today, my friend doctor Larry, and he actually on
his we did surgery on his brother's dog, a little
Shelty and here. Now Larry's a doctor, he's a physician,
he's ob Joann, but does something really specialized. But he
asked if he can scrub in with me and help
me in surgery, and he did. I think it's the
first time they ever had an MD scrubbing with me.
He helped me with all my surgeries and it was
(22:19):
great because they are really well trained, I gotta tell you.
So it was great, and the dog's doing amazing, which
is even better. So anyway, prevention is the key. We
always say the best way to treat a condition is
to prevent it. So when you have these animals and
you know they've already shown to you that they have
certain behaviors, stop them before they really start causing a problem.
(22:40):
And that's the best solution. All right, What else I
want to talk about? So we talk about the emergencies.
Oh so just talk to somebody if you know. Look,
our platform we say we think is the best, but
any platform, and you can have access to a veterinarian
and there are number of them out there. Before you
rush to emergency, get that second opinion, it's got to
be a live video chat. A picture's worth a thousand word,
it's a live video's worth one hundred thousand words. And
(23:02):
I've had so many cases where I've made a decision
just based on a video chat and I'm ninety nine
percent times right. But with most of these platforms, they
always give you an option to follow up in a
day or two, so you can always change things if
the animal is not getting better. I think that is
pretty much. I mean, see if there any other questions
that people have tuaha mixes fourteen years old, as eyes
(23:24):
are starting to get cloudy, what should I do to
prevent the eyes to get worse? Well, first of all,
a wonderful question. What typically what we see when these
eyes get cloudy. Now again it should be seen by
your veterinarian just to make sure. But typically what it
is is called lenticular or nuclear sclerosis. That is a
scarring of the lens capsule. Now, when the problem is
(23:47):
in the lens itself, that's usually a cataract and it
gets all murky. If this is more of a haze,
it's more uniform. Whereas cataracts can have blotchy areas and
it usually does it affect vision. At least they can
see a lot. They still have plr people that light reflects,
they still can see. Sometimes in lower light it started
(24:08):
maybe getting blurred by Technically it is a precautiactus condition.
Why it's involving a lens. But in order for this
just the sclerosis to cause blindness, the dog will probably
have to lift to about twenty or thirty. Obviously it's
not going to happen in most cases and probably any case.
So as it progresses, and it may it may cause
(24:29):
some vision impairment, but it usually doesn't cause blindness in
most cases. So what can you do about it? N
A nothing. I mean, there's some drops out there that
claim I have not spoken to a veteran aphthalmologist yet
whose confirmed that there's anything that we can do about it,
because it's just part of the aging process and it
just happens. And again, just don't worry about it. But
(24:52):
again I would have your eyes checked, your doctor, your
veterinarian can do. It's called the ocular fundic exam, looking
through the lens the back of the checking the optic disc,
checking the vessels, checking the retina itself, looking for retinal separation,
other things that can cause the diseased eye. If all
that is normal, and it's just basically blenticulous carosis, and
(25:13):
I just said, very very common. We see it in
a lot of dogs. I think we're good. I think
I got everybody down here, and I want to make
sure I did not omit any great questions or hells.
I appreciate all the visitors. So okay, if there's nothing else,
we run a minute over. I know that our good
buddy here Mark who runs our Pet Life radio. Real quickly,
(25:34):
my Yorki pu ming will be seven tomorrow. Any tips
on keeping them healthy after birthday? Ming? Yes, just psychon people, exercise,
good diet, okay, keep them mentally acute, mentally sharp, so
always you know, playing with them. There are some puzzles.
There are things you can do for a dog to
keep them, keep their mind as active as their bodies,
and that is the best thing you can do. And
(25:55):
I understand that well. First of all, for Yorkie Pooh,
seven is not no. I consider small breeds getting to
be seniors at eight. That's when I would say as
a routine doing annual blood neurine tests just to keep
an eye on them. For a large breed it's seven
and this assuming everything else is fine. So that's it.
Keep them lean because I tell you it really it
(26:17):
parallels people that obesity is a number one nutritional disease
affecting pets. And when they are obese, what happens they
can't do as much. So when they can't do as much,
what happens they gain more weight. The more weight they gain,
the less they do. The let's do the more they gain,
so we have to be very, very very aggressive with
their diet. They're feeding them modifying foods, modifying amounts based
(26:40):
on their activity levels, and this is really what needs
to be done, so keep an eye on that and
also again nutritional supplements. If it work, that's great as
they get older. I love leap ears is one, but
there are so many things talk to veterinarian that could
help my thoughts on the food Fresh pack. These are
really good foods, just food for dogugs Fresh Pet. Are
(27:01):
they the best, Well, there's no such thing as the best.
We've talked about that ad nauseum. But are they good yes,
They're balanced, yes, so if they like it. They're costly,
So if you don't mind the higher price and your
dog doesn't have any particular specific disease or condition that
might limit their ability to have this food, then go
for it. Most importantly, as we know we've talked about
(27:22):
this before. Number one, they have to like it. Number
two they have to have nice firm stools. Number three,
lots of energy, a nice shiny coat. So if all
of those are happening with the Fresh Pet and you
don't mind getting it or have they said to you. However,
it's simple, then applesaci stick with it. If it ain't broke,
don't fix it. So don't change foods just because somebody
(27:42):
else says, oh god, does my dog does great? And freshman.
If your dog is doing great and what he here's
he's eating, then don't change. And if you want to
change for whatever reason, then it's important to do it
gradually because you can go from great food AD to
great food BE. And if you do it abroptly, they're
always going to have some gi upset, whether it's levomiting
diarrhea mostly diarrhem, and you're gonna say it is, oh God,
(28:05):
I switched that food and got diarrhem. It's not good. No,
it may be fine, but you want to make your adjustments.
It's got to be a slow transition from food A
to food BE over about a seven day period. You know,
a little bit each day you're decreasing the food A,
and while you increase the food BEE, until you're back
you're one hundred percent food BE. If that doesn't work,
(28:25):
but he doesn't do well once he's on it one
hundred percent, then you know it may me not be
the right food for him, but it could be the
right pood for somebody else. All right, anyway, there you
have it. Thanks for joining me here on Pet Life
Radio and ask the be's the doctor, Jeff And I
don't know if I'm the best, but I would like
to think I'm one of the better. How's that for
being right in the middle there. So anyway, we'll see
(28:46):
you next week during the week. If you have anything
you want to talk about, please reach out to me.
I get great subject matter to talk because of you.
So if there's something that's going on with your pet,
trust me. If it's going on with your pet and
it's a concern, I guarantee it's happening to some other
pets as well. Please, by the way, if you are
friends that are not following me and want to learn
some new things and better take care of their pets.
(29:07):
And I'm very easy on Instagram verbs underscore TVM and
that way they can They're gonna notice every Sunday morning
at our show and they can hop on the show
and ask questions. All right, very very good and mayor
I see it hop it in the middle, Karen, Hi,
how are you all right? So? Oh, it's it's a
Mayor's birthday. Alf I get oh whish is hatter birthday? Mayor?
(29:29):
That's important? All right, All good. We'll see you guys
next week, Same bad time, same bad tattle here on Instagram,
Live and ask the best of doctor Jeff here on Brady.
Speaker 1 (29:39):
Have a good week.
Speaker 3 (29:41):
Let's talk pets every week on demand only on petlight
radio dot com.
This is pet Life Radio. Let's talk pets, and we
(00:23):
are live.
Speaker 2 (00:24):
We are welcome, Welcome. You're here live with doctor Jeff Werberg,
host for the next thirty minutes here on pet Life
Radio and Instagram. Live here for you, here for your pets.
Any questions you have now is it time to ask? Cope?
Everbody had a great week. I had a I don't
know why. It was a really really busy week for me,
like crazy busy. So you know that's a good thing.
Good morning, I'm waving everybody. So anyway, you're not even
(00:46):
a hold of me, Hello there, Steph. Yes, I was
thinking it was a crazy week. If you have questions,
now is the easy time to ask. You can always
reach me here to sign well, if you're here on Instagram,
but all you have to do is just start typing away.
And if you're if you're on pet Life Radio, if
you're if you're listening tradition probably here already. Good stop.
You can always reach me on my phone if you'd
(01:07):
like eight seven seven three eight five eight eight eight
two once again eight seven seven three eight five eight
eight eight two and just want to hear and just
talk about anything you want to talk about. As I said,
crazy week. I don't know what it was, but you know,
I feel badly really because I have a lot of
people that come in and unfortunately I have this disease
called I can't say no disease. So when people call them,
(01:28):
they call, they have to come in or they walk
in the door. Get a lot of walk ins. My
rule of thumb is if someone's already in the office,
I am not going to send them away. Now. They
may have to wait to walk in. Sometoms I can do.
It's called a drop off. We'll convince them to drop
the pet off. We'll take a look at my in
between my appointments or just before I get into surgery.
Then they could pick up later. But no one's ever
(01:49):
walked in the door and I said sorry, we can't
see you today. That has never happened to me in
my forty years. I don't I don't expect it to
happen in my next whatever it is, left, Oh, any
questions you may have, now is the time. So that
one thing I wanted. I wanted to talk a few
things I want to talk about. Number one is I
was going to talk about this last week we got
I mean, look, I love what we get sidetracked. I
(02:10):
love when people come up with things. And we could
sit and talk for quite a while. So that's great.
And although Dad, that you're doing. But I talking about emergencies.
What constitutes an emergency and you know so many things
that when something's off, and I'll give you some of
the common ones. Blood in the stool, oh my god, Okay, vomiting,
that's a biggie and right away for someone who sees
(02:31):
blood in the school, even blood in the urine, it's
a freak out. So of course they call their hospital.
And if it's the weekend or in the evening, it's
an emergency. A message goes out saying, hi, thanks for calling,
we're closed. Go to emergencies. What do you do? Of
course you're get in the car and too, go to emergency.
Let me tell you something I've learned over the years,
just from our air vet our telemedicine platform, that ninety five,
(02:53):
maybe even higher percent of emergencies aren't and having someone
to talk to, having something to help, what we call
the treis go into a case deciding really what's going on,
and when it's on video, it's even better. I've gotten
some cases about a vomiting dog and we do FaceTime
on the app, and this dog is running around, can't
(03:14):
wait for a text meal, thank water, running over with
the ball of the frisbee to play. Care that there
was blood in that vomits or they vomited in the
first place, because this dog is not sick. So I'm
going to ask the basic questions, what did he get into?
What really was the issue? We're going to get in
to that. My next thing, I'm going to talk to
you about a really really big case. I just had
pornfodogs to have vitamins I make I cold only need.
(03:36):
I was okay. So here is I thought. How you doing?
Here's my thought about vitamins. So I take vitamins, I
take supplements. I take an NYD plus, I take Coke ten.
I take lucosamin K and DROIT and MSM and a multi.
Now I feel great. And I don't know how much
of this is because of the things I do. Is
(03:57):
it because I try to eat well, because I try
to stay on the lean side instead of the heavy side.
But I feel really good and I look at, you know,
other people in my age. I'm seventy and I I'm
thinking you know, what are they doing wrong? Or what
am I doing right? Or guess what it could be?
Just geez. I mean, my sister's on here. She doesn't
look her age. So my brother we just had, I
(04:19):
just saw two weeks ago. He doesn't look his age.
We're all, I mean between my oldest sister and me
five years apart, complying me and my oldest sister two years,
my little sister two years, and my little sister or
my little brother, they're one year apart. My mom had
four kids in five years. Wow, I thought she was
twenty five. She had four kids, So it's kind of crazy.
My feeling is this Are they gonna hurt? Is this
something gonna hurt? No? Now, most food's on the market,
(04:42):
especially those that are what we call af GO certified,
that if you look at a label, they all should
say that our ingredients or our formulas meet or ex
seed those standards as established by AFGO. Okay, so that's
the Association of American Feed Control Officials. If the food
is AFCO certified, it should be batter balanced enough. Now
it hurt to give them ALTI or if you're giving
(05:03):
less commercial diets and you're making your own you're adding
your own foods, then give them multi absolutely. Let's say
I'll come a downside. You know. The only time to
get too much there are go you know, we know
they're water cyble and fat side of vitamins. The water
siables are the bees and the seas that are A, D,
E and K and so yes. Could you overdose on
vitamin A and cause the pop yes, vitamin D yes?
(05:25):
But it would be really really difficult. So if you
want to give some supplements at home, that's probably fine.
Now as far as the other things that we are
hearing a lot about, for example, for older dogs, the
NAD for older dogs also that might have arthritis or
joint problems to do the glucosamine and conjoin. And my
feeling is you can't overdo it. It'd be really hard
(05:46):
to overdo it just to a basic amount, you know,
follow the instructions on the label, and I think it's
okay to give supplements. So that's my take on that.
I know I missed another question. Friends all with very
soft stool for about five days, they put them on
a half scrambled eggs and rice out. We got to
talk otherwise normal that self, it's burned down and eating fire.
Oh yeah, yeah, okay, So here's my thought. By the way,
(06:06):
that's a great question because so many times when it
comes to diarrhea, everybody'd run to rice. Well, it turns
out they're intestinal diarrhea. That could be small intestinal and
then large intestinal, large bowels, small bowel diarrhea. Now I
find and this is how I learned, and it's still
working for me. Now. When you have small intestinal diarrhea,
for example, parvovirus animals coming back from parvo, it knocked
(06:29):
a crap out of the intestine. And yes, we were
putting them oncottageaeson rice or chicken and rice. And I
still use rice, but most of the diarrheas. Oh, by
the way, small intestinal diarrhea is usually associated with a
dog that doesn't feel good, so they're not eating well,
they're lethargic, they may be tender abdomen, so they're off.
(06:50):
And that's one way I can tell whether it's small
bowel or large bowels diarrhea. Dogs with large intestine diarrhea
all we also call that colitis information of the colon.
They can have muca in the stool, They can even
have blood in the stool. And they can have mushy,
kind of soft served kind of diarrhea. Don't get that
image in your mind, by the way, but I want
to stick to this self river and out think about
oh my dog has that. So anyway, these are the
(07:12):
ones that are still acting fine. Is running can't wait
for its next meal. There's a big difference. So those
I don't like rice for those I want added fiber.
It's like you think of as counterintuitive. Wait, but you
take fiber because it want of soft in the stool. Yeah,
but so if you give too much fiber, then yes,
the soft stool will continue. But if you give just enough,
it's enough fiber. It sort of coats the ingesta as
(07:36):
it's passing through the colon. The colon's job is to
resorb the last amount of fluid, but it can if
it's all inflame. So the whole idea is you want
to reduce and decrease the inflammation in the colon so
you can start doing what it's supposed to do. Then
the bleeding and the mucus, you see, that's because the
lining of the colon is being dragged off. It's like
scraping off. So therefore that's why you're seeing red blood.
(07:58):
Now the difference if if there's bleeding small intestine or
in the stomach, by the time it comes out, then
we have what's called melano or melina venergon potato potato,
and that is the bleeding that by the time it
gets out to the other end, it's sort of like digested,
it turns black. That's black tari stool. When there's frank
blood or red blood that's coming from the colon, it
(08:19):
looks bad, but it's not as bad, so I don't
worry about it. You know, if you've see molina or melana,
then you're looking at some stomach. You can gastic ulceration,
you can have a problem, you can have a growth,
some sort of tumor in the in the small intestine.
You can have really severe intestinal disease and a small
intestine that causes bleeding. Then that's more serious. But the
red blood that you might see from a colitis, it
(08:42):
looks bad, but it's not a serious And the mucus
on top of that, so then you know you're dealing
with large intestinal diarrheis. So talk to your veterinarian. There's
also I use often in addition, sometimes if it's just
a colitis inflammation from something that was eaten or ingested.
Right then it oftentimes gets better within four or five
days on its own. But I like to add a
little fiber, and if it's really bad, I'll put them
(09:03):
on some flat metroniti as all, which is a great
ant about it. For large bowel diarrhea, it's gotta be
careful with that too, because too much flagil is not good.
I'll usually give it once for a seven to ten
day course. I may repeat it once, but after that
you gotta take a break. So anyway, then if it
spread out five days back to this case, the scrambled
egg is fine, but instead of rice, use either silium
(09:25):
powder or canned pumpkin, or cooked oatmeal or cooked sweet potato,
cooked yams. Just added digestible, edible fibers that will probably
help soothe the colon as it's going through, and then
it'll have a dance to heal. All right, boy, that
was a mouthful, so thank you, thank you so much.
Look great, I feel great. A lot of waving. Let
(09:46):
me wave, wave, wave the worker. When your tech abed
gave us the sillium to add on the food. When
Riley got the ruds. Yes, yeah, it worked and the
cilium is great by the way. In fact, I was
at a talk in January the VMX and it was
a GI talk. I obviously I'd like to go or
see things is first of all, you never can stop learning. Secondly,
I like to go to talks that either interests me
(10:06):
a lot, So I do a lot of behavior. I
do a lot of frenzy Boas talks, that's the raachiocephalic
obstructive barroid disease talks or syndrome talks. Then I do
obviously skin GI. I like an ophthalmology. I love I stuff.
Could kidney levels read poorly on a cat if they're
not feeling well or is it automatically kidney KD kidney
disease eight year old male, Well, it depends. If it
(10:29):
is the bun that's high, but the normal creatinin the
normal phosphorus, then I'm thinking it could be dehydration status.
It could be something that was eaten because the bun
so bun blood urine nitrogen when that's elevated by itself,
but creat and the phosphorus are normal, then I'm thinking
it could be other. Now, if you have the kidney values.
(10:51):
Where the bun is high and the creatinine is high,
it still could be what we call pre renal, depending
on how high. If it's very high, most likely it
is renal disease. If it's sus minimally high, it could
be what we call pre renal azotemia. Azotemia are those
levels that are elevated. Then that could be because of
other things like dehydration status, like something diet, like something
(11:13):
that was minimally I hate to use word toxic, but irritative,
and it elevated those kidney enzymes. So it's not for
sure that it's bad. Now if it's a cat at
eight year old, and we know that that eight year
old cats are, I mean that's the start toe a
little older. We know the kidney disease is the number
one killer of older cats. Could it be the early
(11:34):
signs and the answer, of course, So what I would
do is if the cat's doing well, eating well, I
would start on a kidney diet, and there are a
number of good ones out there. Of course, a full
panel eight years of age, I would have done a
full panel anyway, So a full panel to make sure
everything else is fine and monitor the cat. Cat continues
to do well, it's eating well, it's urinating, and he's
(11:55):
not a renal diet. I would recheck in about maybe
four to six to eight weeks and see if things
are coming down. Okay, I hope that helps last I
just stop the rice and add pumpkin. Yes, good idea
on that creatine?
Speaker 1 (12:06):
Is this?
Speaker 2 (12:07):
Ah? Okay? So if it is high creatinine, I am
more concerned. Absolutely, and I think again kidney diet following
up plenty of fluids, either make sure the cat's drinking well,
or you might even have your veterinarians show you or
your technician and a veteran nurse show you how to
give subcutaneous fluids in a home, because that's very important.
(12:27):
Also because if we see the increased fluids helping bring
those values down, then that's a good sign. Ah. Right,
bladder stones lab showed that my dog has structural bladders.
I think that would be struvite and my dog I've
been feeding in single protein of allergies. Should I change
his diet? Well, oh my god, the answer is yes.
And this brings me to the other things I wanted
(12:49):
to talk about today. I've had three systotomies. Two in
a dog, one in a cat in the last two
or three weeks, and the first one, I'll have to
say this. You know, it's funny. I get follow up
like this, and it just justifies what I do and
why I do it, and why I am having so
much fun, and I really get such satisfaction out of
(13:10):
doing it. So dog named Santo blocked twice. We were
able to reduce the blockage. We were to unblock the dog.
It's a dog, and you can see X rays clearly.
Some stones they're kind of small, some of more, but
one was getting lodged in the arethra and we're hoping
that maybe a kidney diet could help. So we unblocked
the dog, and sure enough, within two days he's back again.
All right, it's a surgical disease. We go in do
(13:32):
surgery because he was blocked and his bladder was when
I first of all extended. It was so irritated, it
was bloody. It was terrible. I hate doing bladder surgeries
on dogs like that and such bad shape anyway, but
we had to. So we go in, We do the surgery,
you know, we unblock, and we got I got stones
out of there. It was crazy. So the bladder up,
(13:54):
I do a double clothes on the on the bladder
wall itself, and then we close the abdomen, close the skin.
And so this morning he did great, took the stitches out.
He was doing great. So it's been about three weeks now,
and I turned my phone this morning and there it
is a video of then with Santo running around the backyard.
And I got this, which is just it was. And
(14:15):
I wrote back, I wrote, so cute, and she writes,
you kept Santo alive. I am indebted and grateful and
when I get things like that, it just makes my day.
Those are the cases. Now. Look, I would always say
this again no ego here, that probably most of our
cases get well in spite of us. I say this
to veterinarians, not because of us. In other words, all
(14:37):
we do is give that a little extra hand, give
that support. The body's amazing. The body is going to
take care of itself. But every now and again we
get these cases where I can actually say, these hands
actually save this pet's life. And when that happens, it's
the best feeling ever. And I really know that this
is the profession I chosen, and I don't know it
(14:58):
was calling and why you do it? Hey, anyway, another
story going back to the eating all that crap, all right,
and we call it Pika and I have another story
for you, and we're gonna do it when we come back.
So don't go wait, it's a good one. We'll see
you back here after these short messages from our sponsors
and Petlife Radio take it away.
Speaker 3 (15:15):
Mark. Oh, sure, it's all fun and games until someone
ends up in a cone.
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That's right. We are animals. Deal with it at Life Radio.
Let's talk pets. Let's talk pats. Let's pets radio, Headline radio.
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At life radio dot com.
Speaker 2 (15:47):
Okay, we're back here live on pet Life Radio as
well as Instagram, and so I want to talk about Piku.
Pi cut is the eating of innatimate objects. Dogs that
get into garbage like it's one thing where it all
gets into the garbage, eats food or leftovers or bone. It's
one thing when they eat like everything. So one of
my friends actually brings up a good point about sillium,
(16:09):
which I love. By the way, I like getting pure
sillium husk powder because, as it's written here, and she's
right that some of the ones you find in your
pantry might contain artificial sweeteners. We know about zylotl, so
read the ingredients. If you could use cilium powder, which
I love, you want to use pure unadulterated sillium husk powder,
(16:29):
all right. Anyway back to Pika. So one of my
friend's dog comes in and I'm known this friend forever,
and I also I'm known the dog his dog's forever.
And this dog is a nine year old doodle and
the sweetest dog, but has been losing weight, eating well,
no vomiting, and this is the key, no vomiting. And
(16:50):
he's truly what we call adr ain't doing right. So
of course I do an X rays in a blood test,
blood and urine came back totally fine. So now I'm
really scratching what is going on? And I see something
in his stomach was it was like maybe the size
of a large beef ballered egg in the corner of
the stomach, and I'm thinking, why is this a mass?
And he's not vomiting, No, he's not vomiting. God, this
(17:11):
is It's really weird. So we follow up a couple
of days and he's still there eating. He's still eating,
that's and not vomiting, which is this is a mind blow.
So I have my friend doctor Sam Covetti, who's a
board tratified internist to a master of ultrasound, and I
do abominal ultra sounds, but more cursory. I have to
look for big things. But when it comes to looking
(17:33):
at the thickness of an intestinal wall or the lining
of a wall, et cetera, then I want Sam to
come in and do it. So he does, and he
confirms that by now, by the way, this mass is
twice bizart and the density is such that it's some
parts are thick, some parts of thin. With confidence he
has never led me astray. He says, this is not
a mass, this is ingested. This is something in the
(17:54):
stomach that needs to come out. So okay, on his recommendation,
we set up for a surgery to do what's called
the gastronomy, and they will also run the bowel. And
so we open the dog up and pull the stomach out.
We do what's packed the stomach. We don't want anything
leaking back into the abdom and even though after about
(18:14):
our surgery, after any kind of intestinal surgery, we flushed
about a flush and flush and suck out this and flush,
And we want to make sure we do a good
job because there's an expression that dilution, all right is
the answer when you have pollution. So if there's anything
in there that could be causing severe abdominal problems, all right,
then we want to make sure we flush it out.
(18:36):
So flushing and flushing to dilute it out is the
answer to polluting. So let me tell where stuff we
pulled out. First of all, paper, plastic, plenty of grass
and weeds, a label from like a short or something.
How about a receipt from some market. I mean, this
dog has such terrible pike, and I think when the
scared feeling badly, it's like a lot of dogs run
(18:59):
out in the grass. His answer was to go out
eat everything. So it was unbelievable. I have a bag.
I took a picture of it. Everything we pulled out
of his stomach was unreal. The good news is that
after we removed everything, checked the stomach, closed them up,
closed the stomach. I closed stomachs like I do the
bladder in two layers, and then we ran the belly.
(19:19):
That means we went through the entire intestine all the
way to the you know, to what we call the
Celioski colon junction was these to the colon. Usually, if
something's in the colon, you leave it alone. It's gonna
come out anyway. And that was clean. So postop dogs
doing great. We sampled some of the intestines and you know,
but it's amazing when you have a dog. And here's
a take home lesson. If you have one such dog
(19:42):
that cannot keep his mouth away, especially on walks, you
need to get yourselves a really good basket muzzle. This
is a muzzle. It's not a muzzle like that. You
have a now aggressive dog that you're gonna worry it
like get bitten. A basket muscle. They can they can
drink all right, it's it can breathe, they can pant.
It's like a big basket that fits right over the
muzzle and it attach it behind the neck and this
(20:05):
way they can smell things, they can drink water, but
they can't eat things. They can't get it through the
little slits in the basket. And that's what you need
to do, because I don't know if a dog like
this could even withstand another surgery like this. This was
a major surgery on an older, fairly good sized dog.
So it's really really important to when you get a chance,
(20:27):
when you have these dogs you want to go ahead
and you want to get a basket muscle, do not
let it happen twice. Another example of this, I just
mentioned earlier that I had to do a surgery on
one of my cats. One of the three sostotomies I
did was a cat, but I didn't mention it. I'm
gonna mention now that the cat had the same surgery
a year ago. A year ago March. Now it's April
(20:50):
of the next year and he's got another need for sostotomy. Yeah,
there's a lot for a cat to take, for any
animal to take. So of course, after the first one,
we evaluated the stone and it came back struvite Knox slate,
which is the most common. So we mentioned there are
a couple of diets you should put this cat on
that will help prevent the formation of new stones. Came
back in July and follow up, ua, etc. I asked it, so,
(21:14):
by the way, how's the cat doing on the diet?
And she goes, oh, we haven't started that, diety, I
don't think of myself, are you crazy? You didn't you
got to start this diet. Sure enough, this cat was
back in April and a second surgery. And believe me,
after a surgery like this, these animals get well a
lot of called adhesions, so the anatomy is not exactly
the same as it was. Now you're trying to get
(21:36):
to the surface of the bladder where you want to open,
and you have to remove tissue and to sort of
dissect it away to be able to get access to
where you really want to make your decision in the bladder,
and with all these adhesions, it's kind of tough to do.
So anyway, listen to your veterinarion, Larry, how you doing.
By the way, I have one of our visitors with
(21:57):
me today, my friend doctor Larry, and he actually on
his we did surgery on his brother's dog, a little
Shelty and here. Now Larry's a doctor, he's a physician,
he's ob Joann, but does something really specialized. But he
asked if he can scrub in with me and help
me in surgery, and he did. I think it's the
first time they ever had an MD scrubbing with me.
He helped me with all my surgeries and it was
(22:19):
great because they are really well trained, I gotta tell you.
So it was great, and the dog's doing amazing, which
is even better. So anyway, prevention is the key. We
always say the best way to treat a condition is
to prevent it. So when you have these animals and
you know they've already shown to you that they have
certain behaviors, stop them before they really start causing a problem.
(22:40):
And that's the best solution. All right, What else I
want to talk about? So we talk about the emergencies.
Oh so just talk to somebody if you know. Look,
our platform we say we think is the best, but
any platform, and you can have access to a veterinarian
and there are number of them out there. Before you
rush to emergency, get that second opinion, it's got to
be a live video chat. A picture's worth a thousand word,
it's a live video's worth one hundred thousand words. And
(23:02):
I've had so many cases where I've made a decision
just based on a video chat and I'm ninety nine
percent times right. But with most of these platforms, they
always give you an option to follow up in a
day or two, so you can always change things if
the animal is not getting better. I think that is
pretty much. I mean, see if there any other questions
that people have tuaha mixes fourteen years old, as eyes
(23:24):
are starting to get cloudy, what should I do to
prevent the eyes to get worse? Well, first of all,
a wonderful question. What typically what we see when these
eyes get cloudy. Now again it should be seen by
your veterinarian just to make sure. But typically what it
is is called lenticular or nuclear sclerosis. That is a
scarring of the lens capsule. Now, when the problem is
(23:47):
in the lens itself, that's usually a cataract and it
gets all murky. If this is more of a haze,
it's more uniform. Whereas cataracts can have blotchy areas and
it usually does it affect vision. At least they can
see a lot. They still have plr people that light reflects,
they still can see. Sometimes in lower light it started
(24:08):
maybe getting blurred by Technically it is a precautiactus condition.
Why it's involving a lens. But in order for this
just the sclerosis to cause blindness, the dog will probably
have to lift to about twenty or thirty. Obviously it's
not going to happen in most cases and probably any case.
So as it progresses, and it may it may cause
(24:29):
some vision impairment, but it usually doesn't cause blindness in
most cases. So what can you do about it? N
A nothing. I mean, there's some drops out there that
claim I have not spoken to a veteran aphthalmologist yet
whose confirmed that there's anything that we can do about it,
because it's just part of the aging process and it
just happens. And again, just don't worry about it. But
(24:52):
again I would have your eyes checked, your doctor, your
veterinarian can do. It's called the ocular fundic exam, looking
through the lens the back of the checking the optic disc,
checking the vessels, checking the retina itself, looking for retinal separation,
other things that can cause the diseased eye. If all
that is normal, and it's just basically blenticulous carosis, and
(25:13):
I just said, very very common. We see it in
a lot of dogs. I think we're good. I think
I got everybody down here, and I want to make
sure I did not omit any great questions or hells.
I appreciate all the visitors. So okay, if there's nothing else,
we run a minute over. I know that our good
buddy here Mark who runs our Pet Life radio. Real quickly,
(25:34):
my Yorki pu ming will be seven tomorrow. Any tips
on keeping them healthy after birthday? Ming? Yes, just psychon people, exercise,
good diet, okay, keep them mentally acute, mentally sharp, so
always you know, playing with them. There are some puzzles.
There are things you can do for a dog to
keep them, keep their mind as active as their bodies,
and that is the best thing you can do. And
(25:55):
I understand that well. First of all, for Yorkie Pooh,
seven is not no. I consider small breeds getting to
be seniors at eight. That's when I would say as
a routine doing annual blood neurine tests just to keep
an eye on them. For a large breed it's seven
and this assuming everything else is fine. So that's it.
Keep them lean because I tell you it really it
(26:17):
parallels people that obesity is a number one nutritional disease
affecting pets. And when they are obese, what happens they
can't do as much. So when they can't do as much,
what happens they gain more weight. The more weight they gain,
the less they do. The let's do the more they gain,
so we have to be very, very very aggressive with
their diet. They're feeding them modifying foods, modifying amounts based
(26:40):
on their activity levels, and this is really what needs
to be done, so keep an eye on that and
also again nutritional supplements. If it work, that's great as
they get older. I love leap ears is one, but
there are so many things talk to veterinarian that could
help my thoughts on the food Fresh pack. These are
really good foods, just food for dogugs Fresh Pet. Are
(27:01):
they the best, Well, there's no such thing as the best.
We've talked about that ad nauseum. But are they good yes,
They're balanced, yes, so if they like it. They're costly,
So if you don't mind the higher price and your
dog doesn't have any particular specific disease or condition that
might limit their ability to have this food, then go
for it. Most importantly, as we know we've talked about
(27:22):
this before. Number one, they have to like it. Number
two they have to have nice firm stools. Number three,
lots of energy, a nice shiny coat. So if all
of those are happening with the Fresh Pet and you
don't mind getting it or have they said to you. However,
it's simple, then applesaci stick with it. If it ain't broke,
don't fix it. So don't change foods just because somebody
(27:42):
else says, oh god, does my dog does great? And freshman.
If your dog is doing great and what he here's
he's eating, then don't change. And if you want to
change for whatever reason, then it's important to do it
gradually because you can go from great food AD to
great food BE. And if you do it abroptly, they're
always going to have some gi upset, whether it's levomiting
diarrhea mostly diarrhem, and you're gonna say it is, oh God,
(28:05):
I switched that food and got diarrhem. It's not good. No,
it may be fine, but you want to make your adjustments.
It's got to be a slow transition from food A
to food BE over about a seven day period. You know,
a little bit each day you're decreasing the food A,
and while you increase the food BEE, until you're back
you're one hundred percent food BE. If that doesn't work,
(28:25):
but he doesn't do well once he's on it one
hundred percent, then you know it may me not be
the right food for him, but it could be the
right pood for somebody else. All right, anyway, there you
have it. Thanks for joining me here on Pet Life
Radio and ask the be's the doctor, Jeff And I
don't know if I'm the best, but I would like
to think I'm one of the better. How's that for
being right in the middle there. So anyway, we'll see
(28:46):
you next week during the week. If you have anything
you want to talk about, please reach out to me.
I get great subject matter to talk because of you.
So if there's something that's going on with your pet,
trust me. If it's going on with your pet and
it's a concern, I guarantee it's happening to some other
pets as well. Please, by the way, if you are
friends that are not following me and want to learn
some new things and better take care of their pets.
(29:07):
And I'm very easy on Instagram verbs underscore TVM and
that way they can They're gonna notice every Sunday morning
at our show and they can hop on the show
and ask questions. All right, very very good and mayor
I see it hop it in the middle, Karen, Hi,
how are you all right? So? Oh, it's it's a
Mayor's birthday. Alf I get oh whish is hatter birthday? Mayor?
(29:29):
That's important? All right, All good. We'll see you guys
next week, Same bad time, same bad tattle here on Instagram,
Live and ask the best of doctor Jeff here on Brady.
Speaker 1 (29:39):
Have a good week.
Speaker 3 (29:41):
Let's talk pets every week on demand only on petlight
radio dot com.
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