Animal Welfare Speaker Lays An EggOctober 5, 2010 In August we learned that well over 1,000 people had been sickened by salmonella because of tainted eggs. The subsequent media coverage jangled our profession’s nerves as the poultry industry reeled from accusations of lax oversight and poor sanitation, offering critics easy jugular access on hot-button issues like crowded housing, battery caging and industry ethics. The timing of the crisis, which prompted the largest egg recall in U.S. history, was propitious. I’d just attended an animal welfare symposium at the American Association of Avian Pathologist (AAAP) Conference, and let it suffice to say I was not impressed. “Animal Welfare: Reality, Perception and Thinking Outside the Box” was the symposium’s title. On the basis of this verbiage alone I was prepared to attend a morning-long series of lectures, disagreeable and contentious though many of the concepts and comments might be to a fledgling small-flock consultant like me. Yet it seemed obvious that an organization willing to undertake creative, “outside the box” thinking was interested in progressive approaches to the many welfare problems. Sign me up! Abandon the Bond? In anticipation, I dissected all the AVMA and AAAP position statements on poultry welfare. I devoured …
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Do you own a spleen?October 1, 2010BY PHIL ZELTZMAN, DVM, DACVS, CERTIFIED FEAR FREE Dr. M. is a funny woman. When she interviews potential technicians, she knows not to ask illegal questions, such as marital status, ethnic origin and age. Yet without blinking an eye, she asks possible hires if they have a spleen. This was so intriguing to me that of course I had to investigate. Our colleague explained: "I read once in a human morbidity and mortality review that if you do not have your spleen and you are bitten by a dog, the bite has the potential to be fatal. There have been reports of deaths in spleen-less people because of the organ's role in our immunity. Since I've read this article, I thought I should make sure any potential technician does own a spleen." Indeed, an old JAVMA article* describes dysgonic fermenter-2 infections. Since then, the "fastidious, gram-negative, opportunistic" bacterium was renamed Capnocytophaga canimorsus. More recently, Scott Weese, DVM, DACVIM, has written about this topic in his excellent blog (wormsandgermsblog.com). His is an associate professor in the Department of Pathobiology at the University of Guelph, Ontario. Simply said, our internist has become an infectious disease specialist. Here how …
Aim High, Go Low On Weight-Loss PlanSeptember 23, 2010 Dr. Todd Towell has some simple advice for owners of fat cats and obese dogs: Don’t feed the oversized pet you see. Instead, portion out meals while visualizing the much-leaner animal deep inside. “Think of it like those Russian nesting dolls,” says Towell, DVM, MS, Dipl. ACVIM, the senior manager of scientific communications at Hill’s Pet Nutrition. “You want to feed that core pet in the center, not the one on the outside with the layers of fat.” When dealing with pet owners, T樂威壯 owell keeps her weight-loss message as basic and understandable as possible. But she acknowledges that for veterinarians seeking to craft a successful pound-dropping plan, things can get more complicated. Truth is, the first step—determining a pet’s optimal weight—can be a doozy. That’s because research is exposing the conventional scoring systems for assessing body condition as the bearers of unreliable results, Towell says. The commonly used five- and nine-point scales for assessing a dog or cat’s condition max out at 40 to 45 percent body fat. But these days it’s not uncommon for veterinarians to see patients with 60 to 70 percent body fat.Such animals quite …
A Case Study: Putting Shine On Titan’s Golden YearsSeptember 20, 2010Every day, the weight of Titan’s 12 years seemed to exact a new toll. And the German shepherd wasn’t the only one toting the burden of his decline. His owner, Rachael Carlson, felt for her beloved pet as he suffered through one infection after another and struggled with pain and inflammation in his aging joints. “His anal sacs were always infected and had bloody secretions,” Carlson says. “He was constantly on antibiotics, and we had to go see our veterinarian over and over. Plus, he was having a difficult time getting on the bed and couch, and he fell down a lot. “We were considering euthanasia.” That seems eons ago, Carlson says, though it’s been just 18 months since a reprieve first surfaced via a concerted and consistent approach to Titan’s treatment featuring Class IV laser therapy. Safe to say, his improvement has fed the quality-of-life meter for both dog and owner. “Our intent was simply to help Titan be more comfortable,” Carlson says. “We’ve gotten much more than that.” Here is a closer look at the role therapeutic laser played in improving the quality of an aging pet’s life. Patient Titan, an 81-pound, 12-year-old neutered male German …
Cellular Care Begins With AutophagySeptember 2, 2010 Autophagy was the subject of a State of the Art presentation given by James Bradner, M.D., Ph.D., at the 2010 American College of Veterinary Internal Medicine Forum in Anaheim. Literally, “autophagy” means “self-cleaning.” Bodies can’t live without their autophagy systems in place. Autophagy encompasses the automatic disposal systems of the cell. Interestingly, when autophagy adapts to starvation, certain mechanisms are activated that also have anti-aging and anti-cancer effects. We learned that our cells void metabolic waste and the kidneys extract it from serum and eliminate the waste through the urine. However, there was no clear understanding of autophagy or how the cellular cleansing phenomenon operates on a molecular level until recently. Read on and be amazed at the basic miraculous efficiency with which our bodies function every second of every day. Where It Begins The flesh of our cells is called cytoplasm. It contains all the microproteins and chemicals and structures needed to operate. Waste products are created in the cytoplasm and that waste must be digested and transported outside the cell. How does this happen? Scientists have observed that cell debris—proteins and organelles—gets encapsulated by tiny rearrangements of membranes and moved …
Retire? More Vets Say, ‘No Thanks’August 10, 2010 John Hayes, DVM, has retired twice, but it just never seems to stick. In 1985, after years of foaling mares and taking emergency calls during 18-hour days, he sold a thriving mixed practice in Maryland to a protégée, intending to scale back to part-time work for a colleague. Within months, he was itching for his own practice again. He set up shop in Ruckersville, Va., where his intended part-time clinic grew into a full-time concern. He finally sold that one in 2006, but he still wasn’t done. Now 71, he volunteers spay and neuter services one day a week at a humane society, mentors veterinary students and continues working with a small group of clients, even if it’s to help calve at 2 in the morning. When will he retire for good? He can’t say. “Veterinary medicine wasn’t about making money; it’s something I was born to do,” Dr. Hayes says. “The whole deal is, and I don’t think I’m alone in this, veterinary medicine is your life, and you just don’t want to give it up.” Continuous Career Indeed, Hayes may be on to something: More than …
Do You Have Career Exit Strategy?August 10, 2010 As veterinarians, most of us have not had the agony of having to go to “work.” This is because we love what we do every day. Some of us have been lucky enough to think we would continue doing it even if we were not paid. Some veterinarians have been good businesspeople and have made an excellent income while doing something they love. It doesn’t get much better than that! I have had the good fortune to be a veterinarian for the past 44 years and have little desire to stop what I am doing as long as I have good health and a healthy family. I have sampled many career areas of veterinary medicine in those 44 years: military service, graduate student, resident, practice associate, practice owner, professor, administrator, practice consultant, industry consultant, author and lecturer. I feel blessed to have earned a very reasonable income and done so many things that have been challenging and fun. If you are not as excited about your current activity as you once were, it may be time to consider a change. I have talked with veterinarians who stopped working suddenly and then had great difficulty adjusting …
Treat radiation with respect, not anxietyAugust 10, 2010Many veterinary technicians have an unreasonable fear of the harmful effects of ionizing radiation. Though a healthy concern about the potential harm is expected, an unhealthy concern may adversely affect job performance. All veterinarians should ensure that their technical staff is comfortable working with radiation and educate them about the potential hazards and ways to reduce the harmful effects. Positioning and Technique Count Radiographs are an economical, highly informative tool to diagnosis illness and injury in small-animal patents, but not any old radiograph will do. The best radiographs are obtained when good X-ray technique is combined with good patient positioning," says Anne Bahr, DVM, Dipl. ACVR, MS. "Often, veterinarians have good X-ray equipment but don't take the time to position properly and end up with suboptimal images. Dr. Bahr, a veterinary radiology specialist with PetRays, a telemedicine consulting company in Spring, Texas, says sedating a stressed animal can "do wonders for the quality of the images. John Feleciano, DMV, Dipl. ACVR, is manager of radiology at VDIC, part of the Idexx Telemedicine Division of Idexx Laboratories Inc. of Westbrook, Maine. A well-positioned study gives the veterinarian and interpreting radiologist the best chance to achieve an accurate diagnosis," he says. "Asymmetrical …
Man Just An Oddity To Some AnimalsAugust 9, 2010 Our Seminars in the Sun group experienced a rare aspect of the human-animal bond as we walked and swam past wildlife that had no fear. Every veterinarian is really an environmentalist and a naturalist and would revel in this feeling. Experiencing animals without fear is a big treat awaiting those who venture to the Galapagos Islands. Having no fear is an interesting behavioral trait. It is almost magical yet is natural for the animals living in Ecuador’s Galapagos Islands to lack the flight reaction when they see humans. What is this behavior all about? Is it genetic? Is it cultural or instinct or learned? Do the endemic species not know danger? Did the animals learn they are safe and hand that information down for generations? The sea lions and marine iguanas resting on land don’t move out of the way as people walk past them. In fact, some of the land iguanas approach people and seem to pose for pictures. The blue-footed and red-footed boobies (Spanish for “clowns”) are content to stand on rocks and preen and socialize and not fly away as boats approach their rocky dwellings. On the Water …
Bonding With Patients, VeterinariansJuly 8, 2010 Ten years ago, the American Association of Human-Animal Bond Veterinarians (AAH-ABV) introduced or refreshed the concept of pet hospice to the veterinary profession. Dr. Caroline Schaffer of Tuskegee veterinary college was president of the AAH-ABV at the time. She wanted to provide a platform for pet hospice. She asked me to present an oncologist’s version of pet hospice at AVMA 2000. Dr. Short asked me to give the profession my energy and perspective on end-of-life care. The first thing that came to mind was to give it a new name. Instead of hospice, I came up with “Pawspice” (rhymes with hospice) because there is a big difference between human and pet hospice. Pet owners and their attending veterinarians are the decision makers at every step of the way, especially when it is the right time to end the hospice and use humane euthanasia. Sadly, at the time of this writing, my husband and I are participating in hospice care for our dear friend Tony Soich. Tony is dying of tongue cancer associated with chewing tobacco and smoking cigarettes since he was a teenager. He has been battling tongue cancer and unable to eat for over a …
