Pawcurious Vet Blog: Pet help, stories, and information with Dr. V

We had a busy weekend. Someone had a third birthday party, which meant a lot of fun. And cake. And boxes and trash, too. It was worth it.

Everyone pitched in that afternoon to get the place cleaned up. And by everyone, I mean my husband and I, since the kids had too many new things to play with to be able to concentrate much on helping. They took off into the front yard with Emmett.

What’s this? Past the detritus, I mean.

Yup. It’s Emmett under a trash bag.

The kids have a close relative who underwent chemotherapy this year. One of the things she used quite a bit was her chemo blanket- she’d always be wrapped in some sort of warm covering to ward off the chill.

I haven’t told the kids that Emmett is sick- it wouldn’t accomplish much, at this point, but those big shaved areas on his legs are hard to ignore, as is the fact that he comes to work with me several times a week now.

This is the first time I’ve ever seen my kids give Emmett a ‘blanket’.

They are more perceptive that I give them credit for. I always knew they were sweet, though.

First, the phone call: “My cat has red bugs. What are they?”

After several minutes of trying to figure out what the person was talking about, we told him to come in.

My tech went into the room to look at the bugs in question, which had been extracted from the cat and gingerly placed in a Tupperware bug habitat. “Those are scabs,” she told the owner.

“What do you know?” retorted the owner. “You’re not the doctor.”

So I go in, and confirm to the owner that yes, those look like scabs. I examined the pet and found a few small scabs, some pink skin, and zero bugs.

“No, they’re NOT!” the owner insisted. “I saw them running around.” He picked up the Tupperware, took off the lid, and shook it a little. “They’re moving! Look!!” and when I looked down, the little pieces of dead skin were floating around on linty balls of fur.

I showed the owner under a microscope that the things he showed us were flat, keratinized, and had no legs, mouth, feet, head, thorax, or anything that typical bugs would have. Then he announced that maybe he accidentally picked off a scab or something, but there were for sure some other things on the pet that were bugs.

It took a long time to convince the owner that maybe, just maybe, there was another reason the pet was itching beside the red bugs, but he still took a dose of Revolution as he was leaving since “that gets the most bugs.”

This one is flying somewhat low on the radar, but Nutro has recalled several types of dry cat food. Here’s a snippet of the press release linked above:

” Franklin, Tennessee (May 21, 2009) — Today, Nutro Products announced a voluntary recall of select varieties of NUTRO® NATURAL CHOICE® COMPLETE CARE® Dry Cat Foods and NUTRO® MAX® Cat Dry Foods with “Best If Used By Dates” between May 12, 2010 and August 22, 2010. The cat food is being voluntarily recalled in the United States and ten additional countries. This recall is due to incorrect levels of zinc and potassium in our finished product resulting from a production error by a US-based premix supplier.

Two mineral premixes were affected. One premix contained excessive levels of zinc and under-supplemented potassium. The second premix under-supplemented potassium. Both zinc and potassium are essential nutrients for cats and are added as nutritional supplements to NUTRO® dry cat food.

This issue was identified during an audit of our documentation from the supplier. An extensive review confirmed that only these two premixes were affected. This recall does not affect any NUTRO® dog food products, wet dog or cat food, or dog and cat treats. “

If you feed your cat Nutro, you don’t need to panic. So far there have been no complaints about the food and it appears to be a precautionary measure. I.e, if your cat did eat some of this food, you’re not looking at the same sort of devastating illness and death suffered during the terrible melamine fiasco in 2007.

I received a fax from our emergency center yesterday morning (yes, we were open Memorial Day) about a dog who had died over the weekend. His littermate had died earlier in the day with bloody diarrhea, and he presented to the emergency clinic with the same. He didn’t make it.

A 2 year old dog, dead of parvo. Make that two 2 year old dogs, dead of parvo. Adult parvo deaths are uncommon, but not unheard of, especially in undervaccinated or immunocompromised dogs.

The owners stated their dogs were up to date on vaccines at our clinic, leading the befuddled emergency doctor to postulate this was the new 2c strain of parvo that is much more virulent (their words, not mine). There is a lot of panic in the dog community that there is a new parvo virus that the current vaccines don’t prevent against. Having a previously healthy, vaccinated adult dog come down with parvo is certainly a cause for concern and I can understand why that would be very worrisome.

Only problem is, when I looked at that dog’s history, we never vaccinated him for parvo. The owner had declined every vaccine except rabies. Having a previously healthy, unvaccinated adult dog come down with parvo is, sadly, not unexpected.

Although there was a lot of brouhaha last year when the new strain hit the news media, the current evidence is that the parvo vaccines in use right now do provide excellent protection to all strains of parvo.

You protect your pet against CPV-2c the exact same way you protect your dog against CPV-2a and CPV-2b. Vaccinate your dog. Despite the hype, there is little evidence to support the idea that this strain is any more “killer” than the other ones. There is no “good” parvo virus to get. It’s much sexier to blame some killer mutant virus you had no way to protect your pets from, but the truth is, if you neglect to vaccinate your dogs for parvo and they die a horrible death, it’s not CPV-2c’s fault. It’s yours.

On this Memorial Day, when we’re honoring the men and women who have given so much in service of their families and neighbors, I’d like to also recognize the thousands of canines who have given the same.

Although dogs have been used in military actions for as long as someone has been around to record it, it wasn’t until World War II that the United States officially recognized the use of dogs in war through the creation of the “Dogs for Defense” program. Interestingly, the breeds initially used were limited to German Shepherds, Belgian sheep dogs, Doberman Pinschers, collies, Siberian Huskies, Malamutes and Eskimo dogs. While this program originated with the Army, many of us are probably more familiar with the later and more famous Devil Dogs of the Marine Corps.

Today, the Department of Defense Military Working Dog Program in San Antonio trains dogs for all sectors of the military, as well as bomb and drug detection dogs used in border patrol activities, airports, and other domestic capacities. Check out this photo essay of dogs in Iraq. A few things have changed over the years- I’m pretty sure I saw a springer spaniel in there amongst the German shepherds, Dutch shepherds Belgian Malinois that are the currently preferred breeds.

If you look around at the links I’ve referenced above, you’ll find some great sources of individual stories of dogs in each military campaign since WWI. Although I just spent the last few hours poking around to get an idea of the role of the canine in military history, I could easily spend days learning more. I’d do a disservice by trying to capture what they accomplished in this short post, but if you are at all interested I would encourage you to spend some time reading about the amazing job these dogs have done- as scouts, protectors, sentries, companions, doing jobs no human could with a steady determination.

In honor of the day, I ordered a book called War Dogs- the process of writing this post has gotten me very interested in this little discussed facet of military history. There is an unrelated documentary, also called “War Dogs“, about the dogs trained for combat during the Vietnam War. Unlike the well deserved retirements in the States earned by those dogs in other military actions, dogs used in Vietnam were not repatriated. At the end of the war, less than 200 dogs returned to the States. The “War Dogs of the Pacific” looks to be a more uplifting look at dogs in combat with some happier endings.

To those who have served our country, both human and non, thank you.

Please let me come back as a dog that lives in Carmel.

I just got back from a most wonderful mini-trip to see a friend (if you read this blog from day one you would remember my mention of Candie from vet school) who is now an emergency vet up in Northern California. She mentioned that she has been to Carmel a few times and suggested we go grab dinner there one night and try to spot Clint Eastwood.

While I didn’t see Dirty Harry, I spotted a good 50 dogs in a one block radius- in and out of stores, wandering into cafes and boutiques, and generally living the good life. Doris Day owns a hotel up here- dog friendly, of course- and several of the restaurants not only welcome dogs, they have special menu items for them. Dogs in Carmel live better than my human kids. People up there probably spend more on them, too.

I haven’t ever really entertained the idea of vacationing with my pets, mostly because I don’t think big hairy Goldens are received the same way as, say, a Yorkie in a Gucci bag, but being up there made me think that maybe it can be done. I know pets are generally accepted more readily in Europe, but here in California seeing them out and about to this extent was a real rarity.

Anyone here ever vacation with their pet? How hard was it to be accomodated? Would you do it again?