Your Pet's Best Friend

Foie Gras Controversy

"There is no accounting for tastes", said the old woman, as she kissed the cow.  This must serve as my disclaimer. I am no epicure, no gourmand.  While I would rather have good food than bad food, my idea of going out to dinner is "eat, pay and get out".  Rhapsodizing over the delicate blending of flavor and aroma is beyond my ken.

There are some things that are passing for food, and delicacies even, and you have to wonder who was the first guy to try it... and just how hungry was he?  The Pilgrims nearly starved to death in their first winter, yet they were stepping over lobsters stranded in the tide pools. They had plenty of protein under their noses, as it were, but It didn't occur to them to try eating something that looked like a giant bug.  And why would it?

I'm a great fan of the Tarzan novels by Edgar Rice Burroughs.  The ape-man tore the warm flesh of his kill with his strong, white teeth, preferring not to spoil it by cooking (like "civilized man").  Growing up among the apes, he was fond of other delicacies as well.  Many was the time he'd turn over a rotten log to feast on succulent grubs. "Succulent" makes them sound good.  My personal observation of grubs and maggots has been that they look pretty nasty.  I have never tried them, despite Tarzan's recommendation.  I lean more toward Crocodile Dundee's assessment:    "Well, you can live on it, but it tastes like s--t."

That's the way I feel about many so-called delicacies, such as caviar.  The extinction of the sturgeon is a mystery to me.  I cannot fathom why anyone would eat fish-eggs unless they were starving and couldn't find any succulent grubs.

Ditto and double-ditto for foie gras, the fatty liver of a duck or goose who has gotten so obese that his liver is about six times normal size with fatty degeneration -- yum, yum!  In my humble opinion, you cannot make a cracker tasty enough to overcome the nastiness of this substance.  George Carlin once remarked that "There is no blue food."  I can't phrase it so succinctly, but I don't think diseased tissue is a delicacy.  A quick trip to the Wikipedia article on this stuff will let you know that there have been plenty of people, for centuries, who don't agree with me.

Periodically at AVMA meetings the issue is raised and our delegates vote on supporting a ban on foie gras production.  Unfortunately, as is the case with some other controversial issues, our association's official position usually winds up being some sort of "we agree in principle, but we don't want to offend any livestock producers, either." 

For me this is just a no-brainer, since I hate the nasty stuff and wouldn't eat it on a bet.  However, as many bizarre concoctions as modern man has available to ruin his health, there are millions of people who are emotionally attached to ingesting foie gras.  They won't be giving it up without a fight.

Personally, I think there's a way around the controversy.  It's not the fact that the goose or duck is killed and eaten that creates the controversy.  That is certainly an issue for some, but there are plenty of amiable carnivores who simply deplore the force-feeding of the birds to achieve the diseased state.  And you have to admit, the practice looks a little medieval in this photo.    But what if you didn't have to force-feed the birds?

Here in America, the land of obese people and obese pets, it is obvious that force-feeding is frequently unnecessary to achieve a diseased state.  Supersize me, baby.  I think the simple answer is to  selectively breed for a strain of poultry that will just eat itself silly. I mean, if the rest of America can do it, why not our ducks? 

Look at what we've done with our livestock.  An Angus beef cow has an udder that would fit in your cap, while a Holstein dairy cow has an udder bigger than a bushel basket.  If we could develop our incredible array of weird-looking dogs from the basic wolf, I think we can develop a fat duck.  We could call them "Royal Corpulent" ducks.

We might have to also develop the duck equivalent of all-you-can-eat buffets and cable television, but I think force-feeding can absolutely be eliminated and we can still have obese ducks.  I wonder if you could get the ducks to eat succulent grubs?

Nature heals, we just help.

Many times we hear the plea, "You've gotta fix him, Doc."  Man, only God can make a tree, and only the body does the actual healing.  If things are pretty torn up, some surgery can speed up the healing by putting those pieces back next to each other where they belong.  That won't make them grow back,though.  Dr. Erick Egger is an orthopedic surgeon at Colorado's veterinary school.  He says that the bone surgeon must be part carpenter, part gardener.  You can help with medicines, as well, but if the animal's body doesn't participate, you're kidding yourself.  There are also times when the healing power of the body is just incredible.

"T.T." Jones got bitten all over his head by one of his house-mates around the end of February, not quite three months ago.  In addition to all the swelling, abrasions, and obvious bite wounds, there was an additional complication.  If you pressed on the side of his head, saliva would pour out of his ear...LOTS of saliva (and blood and stuff).  This was a couple of days old and was very nastily infected and painful (and, this picture was made AFTER we cleaned things up).  Apparently the mangling of his head had damaged and intermingled his parotid salivary gland and his ear canal.  Sort of like "you got your chocolate in my peanut butter".

We cleaned up the wounds and sent him home on antibiotics and pain medicine (to start with).  I posted the case on Veterinary Information Network for the hotshot surgeons to evaluate.  They said, "I am afraid you may have to explore this area. I would be inclined to pursue some imaging (CT or even some contrast in the ear canal to identify where the leak is) or simply explore it. You may need to be prepared to remove the canal but if there are still areas of contamination/infection deep down, you can place a drain until it is "cleaned up" a bit and then go back in for definitive surgery..."

I was surprised when "T.T." didn't come back for the scheduled recheck exam.  I was even more surprised when he showed up today for his annual checkup.  They didn't bring him back because he had seemed to be okay after taking his medication.

Sure enough, he does seem to be okay.  There's a little funky raw spot where his ear canal used to open.  A lot of his ear canal appears to have disappeared.  He's not sore, he feels good, it's not draining.

He didn't have a C-T scan, he didn't have any surgery, he just healed.  I wish I could say I healed him, but I didn't... Maybe I helped a little; I think I did.

Doggles (Dog goggles)

This is Dodger.  Apparently he has lots of outfits.  He doesn't have some huge "hunchback" -- that's his owner's shirt subtly blending into Dodger's shirt.  They match today.  That's not why I took the picture, though.  I took the picture because it's the first time I've seen a pair of "Doggles" in person.  Dodger's dad says that he doesn't really like to wear them that much, but he does like to stick his head out the car window a lot.  That makes it a safety thing instead of a fashion thing.  That's the sort of thing I say when I want to add some gizmo to my motorcycle (louder horns, more lights, etc. "Sure it's more chrome, but it's really a safety thing.").

It's a pretty good idea, though, when you think about it.  If you ever ride a motorcycle without eye protection, you'll be stopping pretty quickly.  If you don't have face protection you'll be getting some next time.  They say that you can tell a happy motorcyclist by all the bugs in his teeth (smiling while riding).  When some bug leaves a quarter-size spot on my face-shield with a sound like a bursting pinata, I'm pretty glad it didn't hit me in the eye.

Think of all the dogs you've seen with their head out in the breeze, not to mention the ones riding loose in the back of a truck (which is topic for a post in itself: dangerous lifestyle).   I'm amazed that I don't see more eye injuries from that.  Maybe the airflow dynamics around the car move the bugs out of the way.  I hope so.

The Power of Negative Thinking

I was born in 1953.  Men born in that year were the last group to be subject to the military draft in the United States.  There was a lottery system  and each year numbers were drawn.  If your birthday was in the 300s, you were off the hook.  If your number was 10, you were on your way to Vietnam pretty soon.  My number was 83 and I felt like there was a good chance I'd be drafted.  My good buddy's number was 49.  Everyone up to number 25 was drafted almost immediately, and everyone up to 75 was called for their physical, which my buddy took and passed.  It seemed to him inevitable that military service would interrupt whatever activity he undertook, so rather than go to college or seek a "real job", he worked at a gas station, toured on his motorcycle, and more or less  just "marked time" until Uncle Sam should call him up.

As it turned out, the Selective Service Act expired and has not (yet) been renewed.  Because my friend was so sure that he would be drafted, he pretty much wasted a year of his life doing things that he really didn't feel were worthwhile.

In 1991, Iben Browning predicted that a major earthquake would rock the New Madrid fault in early December.  Local folks packed up their valuables and stockpiled canned goods and bottled water.  Many families left town during the week of predicted disaster. So many planned to leave that the schools closed, anticipating such a meager attendance.  Once the schools announced they would be closed, my wife took the kids to Branson to see the Christmas lights (and escape the big quake, maybe).  I stayed behind, hoping to salvage my home, while looting the homes of my absent friends and neighbors.  Of course, the big quake never arrived, and some seismologists now believe it never will, that the fault is quieting down. 

The weird thing to me was the number of pet-owners in November, December and January who put off much-needed procedures for their pet "...until after the earthquake."

This was brought to my mind by an experience I had this week.  "Cinnamon" came in to see me because her breath (and teeth and gums) was awful.  I thought that Cinnamon had gone to a new doctor or passed on, as I had not seen her for three years.  Three years ago, we removed her spleen because it a had a mass on it which turned out to be malignant.  The tumor was a hemangiosarcoma: a malignant tumor made of cancerous blood-vessels.  It doesn't have a great prognosis.  While you can remove the spleen and live just fine without it, the cancer has usually begun to spread already through the animal's bloodstream.  When my Golden Retriever, Buster, had the same situation, the cancer had already become widespread before we detected anything abnormal.  After removal of his spleen, he recovered great from surgery, but didn't last for three weeks.  We lost him when he was only eight years old.

With that kind of back-story, Cinnamon's owner just figured that it was futile to do much of anything else to or for the dog, since she would be dying soon anyway. 

Well,what do you know?  We had gotten to Cinnamon in time.  She's still alive three years later, and doing pretty well, except for that mouth.  Thanks to the power of negative thinking, her mouth is a sewer. 

You know, we're all going to die sometime.  Why not just take care of business in the meantime?  Sometimes things work out better than you think: no draft, no earthquake, no cancer. 

Dum vivamus vivamus  [while we live, let us live!]

Finding lost pets.

The most recent issue of the Journal of the American Veterinary Medical Association had a review article about how people go about finding a lost pet.  Researchers surveyed several hundred pet-owners who had lost a pet and asked what they tried in order to recover it.   If they did recover the pet, the researchers also asked how long their method (or methods) took to get results.  If they were not re-united with their pet, there were some additional questions.

Some of the findings were intuitively obvious:  the pets who were wearing identification tags were those who were recovered the fastest. 

Owners who visited animal contol agencies and shelters to look for their pet were next on the list, followed closely by those who just called to contact those agencies.  The phone-call thing suprised me.  When I worked full-time in a shelter, we had lots of calls from people who asked (and I quote) "Have you all got my dog?"  No name, no description, just an anonymous "Have you all got my dog?"   I'd ask for a description and get "You can't miss him.  He's a little brown dog."  That description could be variously applied to most of the dogs in the shelter.  These folks would become incensed when I suggested that it would be best if they came and looked for themselves.  They felt I was just too lazy to compare their detailed description with our inmates for a match.  Oh, well...

Folks who put up fliers around the neighborhood were better off than those who put ads in the newspaper.  Those who actually placed ads had better results than those who just scanned the ads to see if some Good Samaritan was advertising the lost dog they had rescued.

One thing that I had not anticipated was the power of a negative attitude. People who believed that their pet had been stolen had the lowest likelihood of recovering their pet.  This might be because it actually had been stolen, but generally these people were anticipating failure, so they just gave up and made very little effort.

One thing that will not surprise you cat-lovers:  the vast majority of lost cats were recovered when they came home on their own. It did not add "when they got darn good and ready", but I think we know that.

Whoa! He didn't like that!

"Whoa! He didn't like that!" says Fluffy's owner, when Fluffy [not his real name] has just experienced some singularly unpleasant invasion of privacy -- most commonly a rectal thermometer, or rectal examination.  I suppose that when our loved ones are distressed (just as at a funeral) we feel compelled to say something, simply to show that we noticed and that we care.  The thing that always gets me is the note of surprise that invariably colors this exclamation.  "Did you think that he would?", I ask.  And if he did, what would you think then?  Indeed, what might you say in response?  Personally, I might be tempted to get a new dog. 

It reminds me of the journal of one of the first explorers of the Grand Canyon.  "If I had a dog who would sleep where I made my own bed last night, I would shoot him and bury him in an unmarked grave."

The first time that I experienced this indignity on my own person, the physician remarked that "It is more blessed to give than to receive."  Hey, don't quit your day job, pal.

While it is an often necessary procedure, it will never be a popular ice-breaker at Tupperware parties. 

Space-Age Poop Scooper

Steve Mays is my blogging guru, and is also a dog-lover. Today he features his thoughts on the Doggie Poop Catcher.  Sure, I love dogs and things doggish.  From my apparent obsession with asking clients to bring in stool specimens, you would think that I also love dog feces (I don't).  Really, I don't find this as interesting as you might think.  However, as always, I love to hear myself talk.

I think it will be easier to get the dog to accept this device than it is to get them to accept toothbrushing.  On the other hand, tooth-brushing will do the dog a lot more good.   Feces are pretty stable; they're not going anywhere.  You have plenty of time to get a sample, or retrieve it for disposal.  It's hard to imagine someone so anal [forgive the pun] that they are trying to keep their lawn pristine.  At least, it's hard to imagine a dog-owner in that category.

You realize that this gizmo is going to require a little training process before the dog will accept it.  While feces are pretty stable for a few hours, urine specimens are a bit more ephemeral.  At KVC we often need to catch a voided urine sample.  As many things as dogs urinate on, you'd think they'd have no scruples about a cup, plus or minus your hand.  Turns out that they value their privacy more than you might think.  It's even more difficult to slide a flat container under a squatting female in time to catch your specimen.  When you dart toward them as they squat, they have a tendency to get up again and look at you like you're some kind of pervert. [This from an animal that will eat feces with relish... or just plain.]

I suspect that it will take a little TLC before your dog accepts this apparent "Goose-o-Matic" device as a simple adjunct to personal hygiene.  This post is filed under "strange beliefs", as I that's how I would categorize the theory that this device will be popular.

Dogs eat poop.

You always know when a client is having a problem with his dog eating poop.  The conversation invariably starts with this question: "Do you think there might be something missing from Fido's diet?" What would prompt them to think that Fido has a nutritional problem:  Poor hair coat?  Skinny?  Dull eyes? Poor muscle tone? Poor endurance? Gum disease?  Possibly, but the one thing that is certain to raise the question is when the dog engages in coprophagy (that's the scientific name for eating poop).

Well, gee, let's see...I'm reading the label on the dog food, checking the ingredients, and by golly, they're right!  Poop is not listed in the ingredients anywhere.  The dog is eating his stools because his diet is deficient in manure...NOT.   One may also note that the list of ingredients also does not include dried-up, run-over toads. Dogs will certainly eat them, though.  Rotten carrion is also glaringly omitted (or at least not mentioned by name). Yet dog owners are well aware that a dog who finds something dead and rotten will roll in it, eat it, vomit it up, roll in it some more, eat it again, ad infinitum.   To a dog, this putrid mess is a taste treat, fashion accessory and designer fragrance.

The fact that dogs enjoy eating disgusting things (and then offering you a slobbery kiss) does not indicate a deficiency in their diet.  It is an indicator of "dog-ness", proving once again that a dog's idea of personal hygiene is considerably different from yours.  He eats poop because he likes it, similar to the people who eat head cheese, sushi, pig's feet, tripe, and anchovies.

How can you keep a dog from eating poop?  Pick it up before he does.  There are dogs who lose their taste for their own feces if their food is pre-treated with Adolph's Meat Tenderizer or a commercial product called For-Bid.  These substances allegedly impart a "bad taste" to the stool (as opposed to its normal delicious flavor?).  My experience has been that determined coprophages are not deterred by these puny efforts.

If you're still reading, this might be a good time to revisit the posts on tooth-brushing and whether a dog's mouth is cleaner than a person's.  Personally, I have a strong urge to go brush my teeth.

Dogs and Muzzles

So, what do you think?  Is it a bad thing to put a muzzle on a dog?  Most people would say, "it depends".   It depends on whether or not you think the dog is going to bite you.  It's a little more complicated than that, though.

First, you have to recognize the subliminal anti-muzzle feeling you have and realize that it has no rational basis.  While I always evaluate the pros and cons of using a muzzle, I also have this irrational anti-muzzle bias that comes from one source: Disney.  There may be a lot of Americans who haven't seen "Lady and the Tramp", but there aren't many dog-owning Americans who haven't seen that movie at some point in their childhood.  Don't get me wrong -- it's a great movie and a lot of fun.  But think about this:  all kinds of terrible things happen to Lady when she gets lost from home, but what is the very worst thing that happens in the whole movie, the biggest big deal?  The muzzle.  Sure, she almost gets gang-you-know-what, beaten up by bad dogs, run over, put in the pound, faces euthanasia, but that horrible muzzle that the horrible old lady puts on... Hey, I have been marked for life by that muzzle.

You think I'm talking psychologically marked, but I'm talking about my hands.  I don't put the muzzle on soon enough, and I get bitten... lots of times in 28 years.

So, when is "soon enough" to put on the muzzle?  The question is really "Why use a muzzle?"  The simplistic answer is "to keep the dog from biting you", but that's not good enough.  Why does he want to bite you?  Maybe he's just frightened.  Maybe he's a vicious man-eater.  Maybe you're doing something that hurts him.  Maybe he already got you!  If you're bleeding, that should be a clue.

Oddly enough, most dogs will put up with a lot (including being stuck with needles) without much protest.  After doing this for such a long time, I can usually tell when a dog is not going to tolerate the usual invasions of privacy. When I see impending disaster written on that dog's face, it's decision time, and here's how it stacks up.

1. What you're going to do doesn't hurt, and won't take more than a few seconds, but the dog is scared or aggressive. A muzzle is appropriate.

2. What you're going to do will hurt, but just a little, and just for a second, like drawing a blood sample, or trimming a broken toe-nail,or giving an injection.  A muzzle is appropriate.

3. What you are going to do is really painful or will take a long time.  A muzzle is only appropriate for a long enough time to give the patient a sedative and pain-killer. 

4. You want the dog to be quiet.  Muzzle is not appropriate.

5. You don't want the dog to chew on things.  Muzzle is not appropriate.

There are muzzles that don't restrict the dog's breathing or drinking.  They have big open baskets on the end.  If you had to leave one on for a while, that would be what you wanted.  They are easier to pull off than the ones that fit tightly around the dog's nose.  That tight kind is better for most biters, but NOT appropriate to leave on for any length of time, as they do restrict the dog's breathing.

I don't put a muzzle on very often, not often enough, in fact. The scars on my hands look like an Arkansas road-map.  Sometimes you need one, though, even if "Lady" was horribly scarred by her experience.  Her psyche is in better shape than my hands.

Heart Attacks in Dogs

I started to post this under "internal medicine", but it's in the right place. Dogs (in fact, all domestic animals) very rarely have a heart attack in the sense that we understand it in human medicine.

Myocardial infarction (M.I.) is the technical term for "heart attack".  Myocardium means heart muscle.  Infarction means that the blood supply to something is stopped up, causing damage to whatever has lost its circulation.   Sometimes people say they've "had a coronary".  The coronary arteries are the blood vessels that bring oxygen and nutrition to the heart muscle so that it can do its job.  If one of those arteries gets stopped up, the heart muscle it was taking care of gets really sick, really fast.  Maybe it just dies.  If a big enough area of heart muscle is affected, the heart ceases to function and you die. With very small areas of heart muscle damaged, your heart may keep working, but you have chest pain, nausea and all the rest of the signs of a heart attack.

The most common cause of a blockage in these coronary arteries is the build-up of atherosclerotic plaque.  Cholesterol (among other things) builds up a lining of crud inside the blood vessel, making it's interior diameter smaller and smaller.  This in itself causes poor blood supply to the heart muscle.  If a chunk of the crud breaks off, it flows downstream and can cork the vessel off completely.  Now you're having a heart attack.

The thing is, it's rare for domestic animals to have high cholesterol.  There are definitely individual animals that do have high cholesterol and triglycerides (another kind of fat in the blood).  They usually have thyroid problems or other medical problems that contribute to this.  Even when they do have high cholesterol, they don't develop the atherosclerotic plaque that would clog up their coronary arteries.  Maybe they just don't live long enough for that to happen. Even really obese human children don't develop that kind of heart problem before they are teenagers.  At any rate, dogs and cats and horses and cows do not have coronary arteries clogged up with junk.  This means that they very rarely have something that stops up an artery to cause death of the heart muscle.  If they do, it would be a blood clot or something similar.

What all that boils down to is that, with rare exceptions, dogs don't have heart attacks.  Whenever I have a patient that dies suddenly with no explanation, we encourage a post-mortem examination.  If nothing shows up to the naked eye, we send tissues (pieces of the organs) to the pathologist to examine under the microscope.  With a sudden death case, we always send the entire heart.  Myocardial infarction has been reported back to me exactly one time in twenty-eight years.  It can happen, but it doesn't happen very often.

So why do people tell you that their pet died from a heart attack?  Where did they get such an idea? Sometimes they just invent it.  You extrapolate your answers from what you know.  Why do people die suddenly?  Heart attacks.  Why wouldn't a dog be the same? See the above.

I'm afraid that, in years past, most people have heard the pet-heart-attack story from a lazy veterinarian.  Think about it: people have experience with heart attacks.  They don't have much understanding of other types of heart problems.  If the pet didn't die from a heart attack, what did cause the sudden death?   If you (as a doctor) were presented with a pet who died suddenly and you could not determine the cause, which would you rather do?  1. Give a lengthy explanation of why it's probably not a heart attack (see above) and end by saying that you don't have a clue, OR 2. Solemnly pronounce that the pet died of a heart attack.

Two good things here: the first is that our pets are unlikely to have a heart attack.  The second is that most veterinarians won't give you that kind of a BS answer these days.  Would you rather have an earnest "I don't know" or a solemn load of BS?  Would "I don't know" satisfy you?  See comments below.