Busting All Your Favorite Pet Myths with Dr. Greer of CheckOut Vet

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
That's checkout vet dot com. Great website to learn about
checkout Veterinary, about the unique, fantastic experience for both you
and your pet. Very conveniently located, very convenient and easy
to get in and out with your pet. Out checkout Veterinary,
and they are accepting new patients right now and your
first visit that exam it is free. There is no
reason not to set up an appoyment to day at

(00:22):
checkout vet. Again, great opportunity now that they are accepting
new patients at checkout Veterinary. The website checkout vet dot com.
Telephe number six oh eight three one eight sixty seven hundred.
That's six h eight three one eight sixty seven hundred.
And joining us this morning from Checkout Veterinary is doctor
Marty Greer, recognized as veterinary enough the year from Westminster
Kennel Club. Doctor. How you doing this week?

Speaker 2 (00:44):
I'm doing great.

Speaker 1 (00:45):
It is great to talk with you, and we're going
to do a bit of a myth busters edition of
the of the program this morning. Yeah, I did not
I I you know, you and I talked a bit
before the show and I thought there's probably a few
myths out there about pets. So I just kind of
quickly googled pet myths, common pet myths, and oh my goodness,

(01:05):
there's pages and pages of this stuff. There's a lot, Yeah,
there's a lot of it. A lot of it's kind
of fun and just important, you know, relatively important, but
not major stuff. But there are some serious ones in here,
kind of the major ones as well, and just kind
of picking up some of them. The one that I

(01:25):
will start off with, and I'll ask you about this,
and I've heard this since I was a child, about
dog years, about there's dogs age differently than humans, and
we always talk about my dog is eight, but in
people years, he'd be forty or something like that. Is
there any truth to that? Is there any correspondence to
that belief?

Speaker 2 (01:45):
Well, there's no question that the age differently than us,
but it's not a one to seven ratio the way
most people think that it is. So if they're seven
years old, that doesn't mean they're forty nine. In human years. Essentially,
the first eighteen months or so is equal to our
twenty one years. So they go through puberty, they've become
young adults, so that's around eighteen months is twenty one
and then it's at about a one to three ratio

(02:06):
until they become elderly, until they get into their last
seventy five or eighty percent of their expected life expectancy.
And then of course there's differences breed to breed. So
you have a chiuahuo, it's going to likely live to
be much older than at great Danes, so there's a
big difference. But then when we get to the anybitty
really teeny dogs, like the two pound dogs, then they
tend to have a shorter life expectancy as well. So

(02:27):
the extremes, the two hundred pound dog and the two
pound dogs tend to have a slightly shorter life expectancy.
So if you look at that, so for instance, a
cab that comes in that's ten, I don't consider a
cat it tend to be elderly. I consider a cat
at fourteen or fifteen to be elderly. And then we're
going to recommend annual blood work starting when they're probably
you know, twelve to fourteen years old, just to get
a baseline and see what's going on. So a Great

(02:49):
Dan at nine is pretty old. A chuauo o at
nine is just getting started. So it really depends a lot,
you know, Yorky Schnauzers, A lot of those dogs live
to be well into their teens. And then we get
to the labs in the Goldens and there's there's also
this kind of thing with labs and Golden Retrievers some
German Shepherds is around age seven and around age nine
we start to see some increase in cancer. So if

(03:12):
a dog comes in at age seven and they're not
feeling well, cancer is going to be pretty high on
my list if it's a Golden Retriever, a Bertie's Mountain Dog,
labat or and shepherd. It's going to be a lot
lower on my list if it's the Schnauzer. So there
really are a lot of differences breed to breed, and
the age of the dog based on the size of
the dog. So it's not just a straight up one
to seven.

Speaker 1 (03:30):
You know, I know, that's a really long answers. It's
I love it, and and it shows that all the
important nuances of this is I think obviously as pet people,
as pet pet owners and caretakers, and oftentimes you want
to use shorthand, and the reality is, I know, I know,
as you explain a little bit about the aging process.
There's way more to it that we could that we

(03:51):
could get into, but it is something people need to understand.
Is it's not just a simple simple formula. Dogs, cats,
all your pets go through go through different stages of life,
just like humans, and it's not always paced the same way.
Is there Like for you doctor, as we talked about
with doctor Marty, degree of checkout veteran, is there a
myth that you see most often come into the clinic
that if you could like be like, I just wish

(04:11):
people realize this, is there something for you personally that
kind of gets you.

Speaker 2 (04:17):
Yeah, I think people try to skimp on veterinary care
and in the long run, it ends up costing them money.
And I think that's a frustration for all of us.
Is all of us that are veterinary clinics, that all
of our locations are happy to work with you to
figure out the most cost effective way to treat your pet.
But skimping on a vaccination, skimping on a heartworm test,
or skimping on flea and tick preventive in the long

(04:38):
run usually ends up costing you and oftentimes your pet
some of their health. So if you really do have
a limited budget, we can work with that and we're
happy to Nobody wants to just feel like, you know,
we're trying to take you to the cleaners. So what
we want to do with you is have you come
in and you know, we can help you figure out
what pet food can be most cost effective because sometimes

(04:59):
people are spending way more on dog food or cat
food than they need to be. So there's definitely things
we can do to manipulate how your care gets done
and your budget is done to give you the best
outcome for your pets health and still not be cost prohibitive. So,
like I said, saving money and it's robbing easier to

(05:19):
pay pull it oftentimes doesn't really work out well. So
don't try to cheap up on it. Just come in
and be really honest and say this is what my
budget is, this is what I can do. Can you
help me with that? And then we can go from there.

Speaker 1 (05:30):
And I know one of the things that if anyone
that's listened to the program for any amount of time
or had a chance to get to know you and
the doctors at checkout Vet is getting your pet in
for you know, whether it's the annual exam and those
routine exam. Getting them in to get them seen is
something you encourage. The point and it goes back to
well that first visit, that first exam at checkout vet
is free. Well big reason for that is is it

(05:53):
really helps you establish with folks kind of an understanding
of their pet and of their pets health and really
gives you an opportunity to say care is is violent.
And here's why I was going to ask you to
doctor years ago. I remember this is one of the
one of the other myths that I that I saw
on this list, and there was a commercial for a
pet food brand and they said talking about like the

(06:14):
appearance of dog food and one of the things that
the guy the guy had said, the narrator had said,
and the reality is all dogs are color blind, and
and I thought, well, that's interesting. Is is that true
our dogs actually color blind? Or what about cats as well?

Speaker 2 (06:30):
No, they're colorblind like you and like people are, especially men.
Is red green color blind, So they don't recognize red
and green, and they all look in like shades of gray,
but they do identify yellow and they do identify blue.
So a lot of times if you're watching dog sports
on the internet or online or you know, on TV,
or you go to an event, you'll see that the
contact point on the like the agility teeters and the

(06:53):
agility ramps are going to be yellow on the contact
point where the dog is supposed to stop and touch
their feet so that they don't go leaping off the
end of the blok, But it's blue on the majority
of it. So the center, two thirds or three quarters
will be blue, but the contact points on the ends
are yellow because dogs can see those colors really clearly.
And my daughter actually did when she was in grade school,
did a science experiment with her little Corgi and was

(07:15):
teaching her to touch different colors by the words she
was saying, and she learned pretty quickly and it was
very clear that red and green were not colors that
she could identify.

Speaker 1 (07:24):
It's just thing you talk about, you know what. And
you can do online tests or obviously people that go
to see an optometrist will discover a lot of guys.
I am one of them, just like just like their
pets as well. What about cats, as far as cats
have pretty extreme vision, don't they any do?

Speaker 2 (07:43):
And we probably have some color blindness issues with those
as well, But cats are a little bit more difficult
to figure out, but they see really really really well
in the dork, which is why you can see their
pupils will dilate, and they have Dogs are interesting because
dogs have around peopile. Cats have an elliptical pupil, so
they're a little bit different than each other. Cats are
not small dogs. You've said this before on the show.

(08:04):
Cats are not small dogs. So you can't just treat
a cat like you would a dog that's little. So
it's really important that you distinguish those differences. And if
you have a pet, for instance, that's starting to lose
their vision as they become older, having lighting where they
walk up and downstairs and go up and down hallways,
those are really important. And it's so easy to buy
motion sensitive lights now. You can have them that plug in,

(08:26):
you can have the tap lights, you can have the
ones that are solar. There's a lot of different combinations
of what you can do. But at for instance, if
you have a deck and it's dark in the backyard
and there's no way for your pet to see the
steps really well, so putting out motion sensor solar lights
can be really helpful if they come up to the
deck then the lights that come on and they can
see where they're going or more importantly go down, so

(08:47):
they go tumbling off the deck. So there's definitely things
that we can do with vision. If you have a
pet that has limited vision or as losing their vision,
we certainly can help them with very simple solutions that
you can get online or you know, go to Minard
and pick up a few things.

Speaker 1 (09:03):
Talking this morning with doctor Marty Grier of Checkout Veterinary
of course online checkout vet dot com. That's checkout vet
dot com. Talking about some common pet pet myths. That's
kind of a tongue twister there, talking about some of
the ones that are that are that are definitely need
to be dispelled and some of them a little bit
of truth and something to be to be considered of.

(09:23):
And speak of cats and some of the myths about cats,
cats and milk. I see I remember as a kid
one of my Little Golden books. One of the illustrations
was a was a little kit and cat drinking out
of a out of a saucer of milk. And I've
heard that's bad, I've heard that that's normal. Uh, is
milk a problem for cats? Or what should what should

(09:43):
cat owners know.

Speaker 2 (09:45):
Most of the time milk is fine. A few cats
will be lactose intolerance, not very many, so some man
to bost some soft stools or diarrhea. The most important
thing is if you have a cat has bladderstones, especially
if they're the calcium oxylate type of letterstones, that you're
not giving milk ice cream. You know, a lot of
people put the bowl on the floor after they're done
with their ice cream at night, or after their bowl
of cereal in the morning. You'll let the cat lap

(10:06):
it up, or if you're a little careless, then you
just leave it on the table or in the sink
and the cat comes the li and gets up there
and licks it. That can be a problem if you
have a cat with bladder problems. In general, it's not
going to hurt them, but they don't quote unquote need
milk because they're getting enough calciuma, getting enough protein in
the diet. I think a lot of the milk comes
from the dairy farms where they would have a certain
amount of milk that would have to be discarded because

(10:28):
the cow was sick, or the cow was on antibiotics
or whatever. So instead of throwing it out because you
can't use it in the human food supply of to
make cheese or liquid milk or anything like that. Then
they would put it down in a big pan and
all the barn cats that are in the barn doing
their job of catching the little mice can come over
and have a nice little brickfit, you know. So I
think that's where a lot of that comes from, is

(10:49):
people have just realized that cats enjoy milk. Most cats do.

Speaker 1 (10:53):
Talking this morning with doctor Marty Greer of check Out
Veterinary Online checkout vets dot com. That's checkout vet dot
com accepting new patients right now. It's a great day
to make that appointment at checkout Vet. Don't forget that
first visit, that first exam that will be free to
you and your pet. You can learn more about checkout
Veterinary Online again the website checkout vet dot com. That's
checkout vet dot com. So you have things that your

(11:15):
pets consume. One that I always hear is if your
dog is eating grass, it's because they're sick and they're
trying to make their tummy upset. True or false.

Speaker 2 (11:24):
To a certain extent, it's false. There are some dogs
that will go out and eat grass, but sometimes just
like to eat grass. Mine especially like either the big
clumps that come up from under the lawnmower or the
long tall grass around the trees or the downspouts or
wherever that you didn't quite get the trimming done. They
really like that. So when people see that, that's what
their dog is doing. And cats actually like grass too,
and you can buy cat grass growing at the pet

(11:45):
store or at the grocery store. But you can just
feed your pets some fruits and vegetables to help them
to get the ruffige that they're looking for. So if
your dog like sea grass, see if they like celery,
or like lettuce, or broccoli or asparagus or you know
a lot of those things. Only fruits and vegetables that
we don't want you to feed are grapes and raisins
because those can be toxic to the kidneys. And then

(12:05):
corn and potatoes are a little starchy, so they won't
really hurt them, but they're not going to be that green,
leafy vegetable. So my dogs love the end of the
asparagus or the dam off of the broccoli that I
think is a little too tough to chew. But the
dogs think it's great. Carrots, celery, apples, bananas. Most dogs
don't like citrus, but if you do, and if they
like it, that's great. But if your dog is peeking

(12:26):
out long grass, then maybe they're trying to tell you
something and they're saying to you, let's have some additional
interesting things in my diet. And they're low calorie snacks,
so they're really good for your dog to have fruits
and vegetables. As long as it doesn't exceed ten percent
of their diet. It's a great little snack for them
to have. It's the low coal version of And if
you're you know when you used to come in the
house and you say, Mom, I want a cookie. Your

(12:48):
mom would say, honey, have an apple. Well, you know
you can do the same with your dog. Splice up
an apple, give it to them. They love that stuff.

Speaker 1 (12:54):
That is fun to hear. That's great, great advice. I
speaking of, Yes, we talk Monty with doctor Martin. Gre're
speaking of of putting things in your dog's mouth. I
always heard the thing too, about dog's mouth is cleaner
than yours. Are dog's mouths?

Speaker 2 (13:06):
No, absolutely no. So the worst bite on the planet
is a cat bite, and second is a human bite
because people do sometimes bite, but dog bites oftentimes they
are not very clean. If you look at dogs teeth,
they can be pretty pretty high in the amount of bacteria,

(13:27):
the amount of tartar on the teeth. There was just
an X ray that was put up on Facebook the
other day that I was looking at, and it's a
dog that came in with having some trouble breathing, and
they took an X ray and in the dog's trachea
you could see this really bright white item. It was
the dog's own tooth. It had fallen out and he
had inhaled it and it was stuck in his trachea. Okay,

(13:49):
that's really bad. If your teeth are so bad that
you're inhaling them, that's really bad. So no, dogs don't
have a really clean mouth, so you don't want to
have them, you know, sharing your ice cream or whatever
it is. I had one client that came in one
day for a gental cleaning and she she left the
dog in the morning, picked her up in the afternoon,
and she said, oh, I missed her so much at
lunch because she sits on my lap and eats off
my fork. And I was like, oh man, those teeth

(14:12):
were so disgusting. I can't believe you share off your fork.
So please don't share your toothbrush, don't share your fork.
Don't share those things with your dog. Once you're done
with the bowl of ice cream, it's fine if they
want to look it out, but you know, let's not
go back and forth their mouth, isn't that clean?

Speaker 1 (14:25):
Good and good advice and guys and perspective as well.
As we talked this morning with doctor Marty.

Speaker 2 (14:31):
He grows up.

Speaker 1 (14:32):
Yeah, well they but they do make you feel You
mentioned that the ice cream, like if the ice cream
comes out, you know, our dog is easy. He knows
exactly how to put on his little charm offensive and
the guilt defensive. They have a big ground rush. Yes, yeah,
somehow they've they've programmed us to believe that, Oh yeah,
I'm perfectly clean and cleanly. We can we can share

(14:53):
a spoon. Talk this morning with Yes, Talking this morning
with doctor Mardy Greer of checked Out Veterinary the website
check out vet dot com. That's checkout vet dot com.
If you've got a question, maybe there's a myth you've heard,
you want to have it dispelled or confirmed. Of course,
give us called love to get you on there with
doctor Greer from Checkout Veterinary number six oh eight three
two one thirteen ten. That's six oh eight three two

(15:14):
one thirteen ten. You can learn more about doctor Greer
and check Out Veterinary as well, all on their website
checkout vet dot com. That's checkout vet dot com. Great data.
Start that relationship. They are accepting new patients right now
at checkout Vet. Don't forget that first visit. That exam
is free. Of course. You can get all the information
including telphon number and location right online check out vet
dot com. That's checkout vet dot com. We'll continue our

(15:36):
conversation with doctor Greer and take your call next as
ask the experts with Checkout Veterinary continues right here on
thirteen ten wu I B A thirteen ten wu I
b A and ask yes experts with Checkout Veterinarian Doctor
Mardy Greer of Checkout Veterinarian. The website check out vet
dot com. That's checkout vet dot com. They are accepting
new patients at checkout vet. Great data. Start that relationship.

(15:57):
Get your pet on in that first visit that exam
is free at checkout Veterinary again the website checkout vet
dot com. Dolph number six eight three one eight sixty
seven hundred. That's six eight three one eight sixty seven hundred.
Doing a little myth busting or confirming in some cases
with doctor Greer this morning. When it comes to pat
myths aggression, I hear a lot about certain breeds of

(16:18):
dogs while they're more aggressive. Is there truth to that?
Partial truth or or is it just nonsense? Doctor?

Speaker 2 (16:24):
Now, there's there's partial truth to it. You can't categorize
every breed of dog as being always good or always
bad anymore than you can say every you know, every
teacher is good or every you know whatever is good.
You can't always say that they're always good. They're good
ones and they're bad ones. So unfortunately that's not the case.
Are there some breeds that are more dangerous than others

(16:45):
if they bite? And the answer is yes. The dogs
with the heavier jewels, the terrier, the pible terrier type dogs,
the rottweiler, the ones with the really heavy skulls and
bigger bite power. If they bite you, they're probably going
to do more damage than, for instance, your little chuellwell,
you know, and I think it'show is more likely to bite,
but the bites aren't is severe. They can't, you know,

(17:07):
grab you and take you around the way that some
of the bigger dogs can. Some of the serious pets, though,
are cats. And I'm so thankful that cats only come
as a ten pound version and not as one hundred
pound version. We haven't domesticated bobcats that live in our
house and an one hundred pounds. When a cat in
the exam room loses their mind, they really, they really
can go off. They can be really difficult to handle,

(17:28):
and if they came as a hundred pound version, they're
a lot more difficult to manage them, for instance, one
hundred pound dog. So thank goodness that they only come
in the little versions. But you can't ever categorize all breeds,
you know. I have some breeds of dogs that I
trust completely, but I've seen Golden Retrievers that they are
not always friendly. The labradors are not always friendly. So
we think that they are, but sometimes they're not. Some

(17:50):
of the little dogs can be a little bit more
likely to be I think they're going to be a
little more aggressive first, simply because they they are little
and they want to make that first move. The ones
that are the scariest are the little dogs sitting on
a little old lady's lap and we try to pick
up the dog off of her lap, and the dogs like,
uh oh no, no no, because they're trying to protect her,

(18:11):
I think in most cases, and not that they're protecting themselves.
So there's definitely things that go on in their head
that I wish I understood better. But we do a
pretty good job of knowing who's going to be somebody
that we should trust and who's somebody that we should
be a little bit more cautious with.

Speaker 1 (18:28):
Hi, doctor, what about as we talked mentioned some small dogs,
I hear this about all small dogs being kind of
yippy or yippy or they bark a lot true false,
or a little in between, a.

Speaker 2 (18:39):
Lot in between. Again, you know, there's dogs that have
a lot of barking, but they may be colleagues. You know.
That's not a small breed. They're big dogs. So it
really depends on the dog. There are breeds that are
more likely to bark, and they tend to be the
dogs that are bred for that reason. For instance, the
finished lap on which very few people are going to
be familiar with. It's not a common breed. They are

(19:01):
bred to her reindeer in Finland and the Arctic Circle,
and they're the way they heard is by barking at
the reindeer, So they're going to be a dog that
barks a lot. A Schnauzer barks a lot. A Golden Retriever, though,
can be just as difficult and bark just as much.
So it really depends a little bit on the breed.
It depends on what the breed was bred to do.

(19:21):
So if they were bred to be a quiet dog,
that's a hunting dog, it's going to be different. And
Nova Scotia duck tolling Retriever is meant to run up
and down the beach and yodel. They have this most
interesting bark to yodel to attract the ducks. Those they'll
come in and then the hunters can shoot them. So
there's different things that different breeds are meant to do.
And then we have something like the Basenji. I have
a friend who raises Bisenti. Then they are the barkless dog.

(19:44):
They're African imports and those dogs don't bark, so sidehounds
tend to be greyhounds Borzoi. They tend to be pretty
quiet dogs. My sister used to have two Bozoi and
she was known in her neighborhood as, Oh, you're the
women with dogs that don't bark. So there are definitely
differences breed to breed, but it depends a lot on
what they were bred to do. So if you are

(20:04):
really interested in figuring that out, go back and read
their history. A Casey's website has a lot of great
information about what they were bred to do in the
first place, and that'll give you a lot of information
about their basic traits, including barking, but activity level in
the house, activity level outside, their tendency to be protective.
It's really interesting information. You start diving into the breeds.

Speaker 1 (20:24):
Really fascinating stuff, and you say, well, that's a lot
to understand. One of the great things about developing a
relationship with your vet is having that conversation and thinking
about adopting a cat, thinking about adopting a dog really important,
and having a cat or a dog great at the
opportunity to talk with your vet about that. And one
final thing, and this was something that we could probably
do a whole show on, But doctor, I did want

(20:45):
to ask you purring by cats. It's a complex thing.
Like I think a lot of us as cat owners
assume cats purring cat's happy. That's not necessarily the case.
Am I right on that or am I off?

Speaker 2 (20:58):
No, you're right. Most of the time it means they're happy.
But we can see cats that are in big trouble
that are purring. They can they can be pretty sick
and they'll purr, and I think it's a sort of
a self soothing kind of activity. So we can't always
trust that purring means that they're happy. They're typically if
they're going to try to bite you, they're they're not
going to be purring just ahead of that. But you know, again,

(21:19):
cats can turn it on and off pretty quickly. So
I'm always a little cautious around cats because they can
be A great cat is a great cat. The cat
that's not happy can be a little challenging. So again,
we want to be really careful with all of our
all of our assessments.

Speaker 1 (21:35):
Really great stuff this morning from doctor Marty Greave. Checkout
veterinarian a ton more stuff. If you ever have questions,
don't forget we do the show each and every Thursday
morning a thirty and call in even better. It's a
great day to start that relationship. At checkout vet accepting
new patients right now. Learn more online checkout vet dot com.
That's checkout vet dot com. Don't forget the first visit
that exam. It is free to you and your pet.

(21:56):
You can learn more again online checkout vet dot com.
Tell form number six SO eight three one eight sixty
seven hundred. That's six SO eight three one eight sixty
seven hundred, Doctor Greer, it's always great chatting. Enjoy this
beautiful day and we'll talk soon.

Speaker 2 (22:07):
Thanks you.

Speaker 1 (22:07):
News comes you way next year. On thirteen ten, Wibi