Pet Foods

            It seems to me the pet industry has problems. It concerns pet foods. There are a lot of them, they are high profit items, and each product has a very active sales program. Talking with pet owners they often reiterate sales pitches I’ve seen or heard on television or the print media, extoling often unsubstantiated nutritional advantages, of some diet. Or that imply diets that contain certain proven nutrients are less wholesome than their product. Without education in biochemistry and nutrition one is at the mercy of the huskers. There are some companies i.e. Purina, Hills, Pedigree, and Royal Canin that have been in business for more than 50 years they make products, available in grocery stores that pet owners can rely upon.

            Some pets have unique nutritional requirements that need a special diet available only from veterinarians. In these cases, the veterinarian will be responsible for assuring that the diet he/she prescribes will meet the nutritional requirements of your pet. 

Treating Rear leg Paralysis of Dogs

A dog that suddenly becomes paralyzed in the rear legs most often has had its spinal cord injured by a ruptured intervertebral disc. These are spongy tissues located between vertebrae of the back. It is crucial that such dogs are seen by a veterinarian within minutes or hours of paralysis onset. To delay examination and treatment for days results in paralysis becoming permanent condemning the dog to a lifetime requiring a two-wheeled cart for locomotion and months of rehabilitation. The veterinary profession recommends that early cases be subjected to surgical relief of the spinal cord compression. Some pet owners abide by this option but paralysis is a much too prevalent consequence.  It is most disconcerting to see such compromised pets struggling to get around. We have found that treating them medically, if started early, is the better choice that can return the dog to normal function.

For the affected dog, spinal cord inflammation is treated for one or two days with corticosteroids. Concurrently and thereafter the patient is given a synthetic antibiotic to counter cytokine formation in the injured spinal cord tissue while receiving vitamin support for metabolism in the damaged cells to keep them alive. Most affected dogs, when manually supported can stand by day five and if given careful, gentile assistance they learn to walk and by day ten are well on their way to normal locomotion running around our clinic and requiring no further rehabilitation. 

Bloody Urine

For two days she had seen Boots pass bloody urine in his litter box. That convinced her that the cat was suffering from bladder infection. On the third day she hustled him off to her veterinarian only to learn the cats’ malady was not infection but an inflamed bladder. Actually, when the veterinarian examined Boots’ urine with a microscope she could see no bacteria that could cause the bleeding. Urine sterility was confirmed by lack of bacterial growth on culture plates. There was no evidence of cancer or bladder stones, things that also cause blood in urine.

          It is not uncommon to examine both cats and dogs with an inflamed bladder but without infection. Cause of the inflammation in these cases has not been determined although many studies have been done. Treatment of these animals with antibiotics has been frustrating for although antibiotics may be helpful initially when they are stopped the bleeding tends to recur. Many years ago I was told that physicians sometimes treat patients with bladder cancer using a specific non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drug. I tried it on dogs and found it to be helpful. So then, I tried it on animals with inflamed bladders that had not been cured with antibiotic treatment.  Their bleeding stopped and never returned. I’ve been using the drug ever since. Be advised, not all non-steroidal drugs are helpful. We have found only one specific drug that works. To learn more please come into our hospital and we’ll talk about the problem.

Bring your dog in for a FREE Nexgard, a once a month flea and tick treatment. Please tell the receptionist where you learned about this valuable offer. Good for November and December!

Inflammasome Syndrome, A New Look at Illness

Many cats and dogs are brought to the hospital by owners with a history of not feeling well, their activity level is decreased as is their appetite. On examination, there may be apparent cause for their illness which is not unusual. We recognize these cases as inflammasome syndromes, and have been studying them for several years.

            Inflammasomes have been a part of illness for as long as man and animals have been getting sick. But the syndrome is only now being recognized, studied, treated, and reported in scientific journals. It involves the immune system. Infection, injury and systemic degeneration can all cause a collection of proteins called inflammasomes, to form in lymphocytes, a class of white blood cells. The inflammasomes release cytokines, of which there are about 100 types each with a specific contribution to inflammation and illness, such as fever, loss of appetite and malaise. We cannot quantitate cytokines as means of diagnosing the syndrome. Instead we rely upon the ratio of immature to mature neutrophils, another type of blood cell, and/or by understanding the pathology of an underlying inflammatory disease i.e. pancreatitis and infection.

            We have found that certain specific synthetic antibiotics counter cytokine effects and we use these drugs to treat animals with inflammasomes. Several days of treatment may be required to show effect, but usually recovers is complete with no adverse sequelae. Also, animals that have had no trauma to nervous tissue may produce cytokines in injured nerve tissues which further damages nerve cells. Treating these trauma cases with the synthetic antibiotics has been reported to limit cytokine activity and development of further pathology. We have confirmed this in our treatment of dogs with intervertebral disc herniation. 

Nervous System Disease Treated as an Infection

 Perhaps you have owned a dog or known of one with a disease of the nervous system called granulomatous meningoencephalitis (GMC).   Affected dogs may be un-coordinated, stagger, have neck stiffness, seem confused or have other signs indicating brain and/or spinal cord involvement.  Veterinary medical texts claim it is an autoimmune disease in which the body is destroying the nervous system and recommend sick dogs be treated with prednisolone or some other immune depressing drug to depress the immune response.  But this is only effective during treatment once that stops symptoms resume or the dog dies.

     Here in the Imperial Valley I encounter a case about once a month.  And true to the medical books’ prophecy therapy with immune depressing drugs has been unsatisfactory.  Could it be that the nervous system degeneration is the body’s aberrant response to some unknown virus infection?  To test this conjecture sick dogs are given an injection of a corticosteroid along with a human drug that inhibits virus infections.  Also, they receive a synthetic antibiotic to limit inflammation and a couple of vitamin-like compounds to facilitate metabolism of disease-damaged nerve cells.  With 30 days of treatment patients return to normal suggesting that virus infection may be the underlying cause of GMC and that the virus-inhibiting drug is effective. 

Congenital Heart Disease in a Young Dog

He was less than a year old. His shiny black coat indicated he had been well cared for and was ready for the good life Labrador Retrievers enjoy. But as he lay on the examination it was obvious he was very sick. He had become acutely ill and as he turned toward me his eyes seemed to say, “It’s no use, Doc”.

          With mouth halfway opened he gasped for breath, but there was no sound of rushing air. I could not feel the femoral pulse. Nor, could I hear the heart beat with a stethoscope. These two signs indicated the heart was not adequately pumping blood. However, the electrocardiogram was not unusual. It could not define the type of heart disease, and he was too ill to do chest radiographs that might be instructive. There were sounds of air movement in the lungs, vesicular sounds, detectable with the stethoscope but no rates or creptations. This and his gasping for breath suggested the lungs were filling with fluid escaping from his blood. This is called pulmonary edema. The dog was treated for dilated cardiomyopathy, a common form of heart failure. And, although he was not coughing he was also treated for influenza, a virus infection which can cause pulmonary edema even though heart failure was considered to be a more likely primary cause of his symptoms.

          He died during the night. The necropsy next morning showed his lungs were indeed edematous. Enough so that, it was obvious he had drowned in fluids that escaped into his lungs from blood vessels due to stasis of blood flow that complicated inadequate heart function. The heart disease was not dilated cardiomyopathy. Rather, it was hypertrophic cardiomyopathy; a condition in which heart muscle cells proliferate increasing heart wall thickness. Scar tissue may form further compromising cardiac contraction. Eventually these changes lead to heart failure and death of the victim. Rare in dogs, it is common in cats in which it is thought to be inherited. I was told litter mates of this dog all died suddenly but no diagnosis of cause of their deaths was rendered. These deaths suggest hypertrophic cardiomyopathy in this young litter was inherited. As a rule, therapy of dogs terminally ill with this disease is not effective. Management of the disease is by prevention. Avoid mating of known carriers. 

Periodontal Disease

She was brought to the hospital because she had been sneezing for a week and the owner wanted it stopped.  This was the first time I had seen Trixy, an old, overweight Miniature Poodle. At first I thought she might have a chronic infection somewhere in the nasal cavity that was causing her to sneeze or maybe cancer in the back part of the nasal cavity.  With these problems one often sees intermittent bleeding from the nostrils and there may be reverse sneezing as if there was exudate draining backward into the throat, but this hadn’t happened.  Then, when Trixy was put on the floor, she did a forward sneeze trying to clear something from the front of the nasal cavity.  That was different, not what I expected. The teeth were the cause of the problem!  I could see they were massively caked with a greenish-gray scale that had accumulated over years.  It was accompanied by periodontal disease and that infection had progressed down the teeth causing them to become loose and painful.  In Trixy’s case, infection around the roots of the large canine teeth had eroded into the nasal cavity creating fistulas (holes) so that pus drained into the nasal cavity, causing poor Trixy to sneeze.  To treat this condition one can administer antibiotics which may control the infection temporarily only to have it resume when the antibiotic treatment ceases.  Another way veterinarians solve Trixy’s problem is to stop the flow of pus by cleaning the teeth with ultrasound (brushing won’t do), extracting teeth that are loose or infected and then, surgically close the fistulas between the mouth and the nasal cavity. 

Prevention by routine tooth cleaning is the preferred management of this disease.  Twenty years ago many dogs had fistulas between the mouth and the nasal cavity that developed when canine teeth with severe periodontal disease fell out.  This condition was especially common in small lap dogs that lived indoors and ate human table food.  But over time owners of these small dogs have eliminated table food diets and fed nutritionally balanced commercial dog food which has prevented bone degeneration around the teeth from developing.  They also have had their pet’s teeth cleaned routinely by a veterinarian.

Treating Puppies with Parvo virus Infection; A Study

Start of the parvo virus season is just around the corner. It extends through fall, winter and spring and is most prevalent in low desert areas such as the Imperial Valley. Affected puppies vomit, and suffer from diarrhea. If neglected, pups can become very dehydrated and death is a common outcome. Some owners treat sick puppies themselves using over-the-counter remedies too often with disastrous results.  Years ago I learned that the drugs used to treat sick puppies were critical. Sometimes when one of the penicillin drugs was used for treatment the puppy would develop a severe Clostridium difficile diarrhea, a very undesirable consequence.

 I did some studies to see what might or might not work. During the 2016 parvo season 61 pups that had tested positive for parvo were treated. They all got the same regimen: a liquid oral prescription for the gastro-intestinal bacteria, a small injection of a broad spectrum-antibiotic for other bacteria in their bodies and an oral antivirus medicine used in people. Puppies were sent home with instructions to return the following day for further treatment. Most of the sick puppies were treated only once, and only one of them died. Perhaps the antivirus medicine was most helpful I am not certain that it was but I continue to rely on it.

Acute Pancreatitis

This is a story about acute pancreatitis in two small dogs; one was a young male and the other an old female. They had been vomiting for several days, would not eat, their abdomens were tense and painful, and they had low-grade fevers.  The disease developed spontaneously in both dogs.  Serum lipase and amylase, two enzymes normally found in pancreatic cells, were elevated three and ten times the normal level. When pancreatic cells are injured some of the enzymes they contain leak into blood and become important for diagnosing acute pancreatitis. The pancreas is located in the abdomen alongside the small intestine and contains several enzymes that digest food when they are secreted into the intestine.  Normally, while within pancreatic cells, the enzymes are inactive.  However, enzymes can become activated inside the cells. When activated, they injure the cells by digesting them, thereby causing inflammation and the disease, pancreatitis.

            To counter the inflammation and pain from the pancreatitis both dogs were treated morning and night with minocycline, an antibiotic with cytokine-modulating anti-inflammatory properties.  Within 24 hours the dogs appeared to feel better, for they were more active and in less pain.  At 48 hours serum amylase and lipase levels had returned to normal in one dog and near normal in the other. Treatment was continued for 10 days and full recovery was uneventful.  The promptness and extent of response to treatment of pancreatitis were greater than anticipated and suggest there was modulation of inflammatory cytokine effects in the pancreas and/or suppression of intracellular enzyme activation by minocycline.

Image courtesy of Mike Barid - Flickr

Tear Stains in Dogs

It is common to see Shih Tzu dogs, as well as Pugs and Miniature Poodles, with tear-stained faces.  This condition relates to inherited anomalies of facial structure.  The consequence is impaired drainage of tears through the tear ducts.  Instead, tears spill down the face.  Iron in tears stains the hair and the constant wetness results in infections, dermatitis and pain.

            Facial staining can be helped by restructuring the face about the eyes through two-step surgery.  Initially, a small wedge of skin is removed at the medial canthus.  As the edges are sutured together openings of the upper and lower tear ducts are repositioned closer to each other forming a tiny lake where tears collect.  The second surgery is correction of the entropion of the lower eyelid which typically has closed the opening of the ventral tear duct.  By turning the eyelid outward the duct opens and tears flow away from the eye in the tear ducts and staining of facial hair is reduced as is infection and dermatitis.

Low back pain in a dog

The tail didn’t wag-couldn’t or wouldn’t, I wasn’t sure.  He stood there, tail drooping, looking at me with soft brown eyes that seemed to say, “please be gentle”.  He was big, a German Shepherd-cross breed dog that weighed close to 100 pounds.  His tail hadn’t swept the owner’s collectibles off the coffee table for several months.  Recently, she had spoken with me about the dog’s difficulty getting to stand on his hind feet.  I thought he might have cauda-equina compression syndrome, which would cause him pain on standing.  But now that he had come into the hospital it was clear his tail was also affected.   On rectal examination he showed pain when upward pressure was applied to the sacrum.  The spinal cord ends near the end of the lumbar spine and only nerves extend onward. The lumbosacral junction (where the spine attaches to the pelvis) had excessive flexibility and on radiographs there appeared to be new bone deposited in the spinal canal.  This was pressing the terminal spinal nerves against the roof of the spinal canal at the lumbosacral junction.  The dog could have been treated with an anti-inflammatory drug and pain would have been somewhat relieved but still he would suffer and eventually become disabled.

Instead, a dorsal laminectomy was performed.  His back muscles were separated over the lumbosacral junction and the tops of the last lumbar and first sacral vertebrae were carefully cut away with a rongeur to expose underlying nerves so that they were no longer crushed between the underlying new bone deposits and the top of the spinal canal.  The dog was placed in a recovery kennel.  When I checked on him at 10:00 that evening he still lay half asleep, but the next morning when I came in to visit him he jumped up, tail wagging gaily as he bounded out of the kennel.  His pain was gone and he can expect to live out a normal happy life.

Most dogs with cauda-equina compression syndrome require six to eight weeks to recover from surgery.  But the surgery is justified because in most cases it provides dogs prompt permanent relief from intractable back pain.

Cats and Bats!

“Louise, you were right to be concerned when your cats killed a bat.  Fortunately, our records show Calico, Blackie, and Daisy are current on their rabies vaccinations.  If they were bitten by the bat or even if they ate it they should be protected”.

            Rabies in cats is a greater problem in the country than rabies in dogs.  More people are bitten by rapid cats than by rapid dogs perhaps because they tend to befriend and cuddle small, warm, soft animals, i.e. cats and kittens. 

            Although it has not been shown that rabies is spread among cats by biting each other it is well known they can contract rabies from bat and skunk bites.  Both bats and skunks are reservoirs for the infection in the wild.  People can also be infected with rabies by bats and skunks and for that reason should leave these animals alone, for when infected they can survive for long periods with the virus in their tissues and can infect other animals or people months after they themselves have been infected.

            I have worked with rabid animals, but not in the Imperial Valley.  Early in the disease, affected animals seem to have difficulty seeing well or may be a little uncoordinated when moving.  They behave apprehensively as if realizing something is wrong that they do not understand and not knowing what to do, they may seek human comfort and become inordinately affectionate.  As the disease progresses their alarm mounts, they become fearful and may want to hide.  Then, within hours or days affected animals become very depressed or vicious, attacking objects, humans, or animals that move.

            To avoid exposure to rabies people should be skeptical of any abrupt change of attitude in their pets.  As a rule stray animals should be left alone.  Children should be especially careful and avoid them.  If one thinks he or she has an animal with rabies, they can call their veterinarian for advice.

            Vaccination against rabies is the best prevention, although annual vaccination of dogs is required by law, vaccination of cats is even more advisable.

Seizures In Your Pet

This is the sad story of a seizuring Chihuahua dog that died because of brain damage.  Several weeks ago a midnight call came from a lady that said her little dog had a seizure several weeks ago and had recovered from it.  However, this day the dog had begun having seizures at noon which continued almost constantly since they started.

            My first reaction was, this is bad!  When seizuring becomes constant permanent brain damage will occur unless the seizures are promptly stopped.  It might be hopeless but I had to try to relieve the little dog’s suffering.

            Sure enough, when the dog arrived 15 minutes later it was in status epilepticus, a constant seizuring state.  It was immediately injected with two drugs that are used as anesthetics.  The dog promptly stopped seizuring and was hospitalized for observation for the remainder of the night.  The next morning it was clear the seizuring had resulted in permanent brain damage!  The dog was now blind.  It could stand and walk but when it blundered into a corner of the cage it could not get out of the corner.   It just remained standing in the corner.  It could not eat or drink but was sent home with the admonition that further care would be futile.  He died two days later.

            Seizuring can be a sign of serious brain disease.  If your pet has a seizure contact your veterinarian promptly for advice on how to proceed.  If the pet has more than one seizure in an hour it should be placed on medication to prevent further episodes.  Letting the seizures continue without control in the hope that they will stop without care creates the risk of permanent brain damage.  Also, please be aware that syncope, fainting, as occurs with some heart conditions, can be confused with seizuring but requires different treatment.  Let your veterinarian help you and your pet differentiate between the two conditions.  

Ear Mites!

Crystal, a girl of the backstreets, was a pretty cat.  Several months ago she had a liaison with Horatio.  Her owner wasn’t aware of the clandestine relationship.  Really, there was nothing to tell. Two months later Crystal started scratching her ears.  There was dark- brown, cruddy exudate in them.  When I looked there were tiny white bugs crawling around in her ears.  Ear mites!  I heard of a veterinarian that put some ear mites in his own ears just to experience what a cat goes through with these pests.  They nearly drove him nuts as they crawled around.  These mites spend much of their life crawling around on a cat’s body where ear treatment doesn’t work.  Therefore, treatment in the ears must have a prolonged effect to kill the mites when they periodically visit the ear canals.  We see a lot of cats with mites, treat them, and send home drops to be administered when the cat starts to scratching again.  This is about once a month for indoor-outdoor cats where exposure to feral cats causing re-infestation can occur.  Strictly indoor cats are usually free of mites after two treatments.  But, all cats in the house must be treated.  If not, any untreated cat will be a source of re=infestation of all the others.

Another condition in cats that is clinically similar to ear mite infestation is due to a polyp growing in the ear chambers.  This can be confused with infection or mites and requires surgery for a cure.

Ear problems are very common in dogs.  But mites are rare.  I have only seen one case of ear mites and that was in a pup.  Yeast infections in the ears of dogs are very frequently encountered.  They cause dark brown to black exudate to form in the ears that is similar to that seen with cats that have ear mites.  However, treatment is very different for mites and yeast infections.  If yeast infection of dogs is not treated properly it can result in rupture of the ear drum leading to middle ear infection which is a serious, difficult problem to treat.

Spleenic Torsion

Rosey, an 11-year-old Labrador Retriever was brought to the hospital because she was depressed and had not eaten for 3 days.  She walked slowly with her head held low and showed no interest in her surroundings at the hospital.  On examination, her heartbeat was exceptionally rapid, about 200 beats per minute.  The abdomen was slightly distended and in it I could feel a large, firm tumor that I thought might be the spleen.  The spleen is an organ that blood flows through to be cleansed of defective blood cells and infectious agents.  With a hypodermic needle I pierced the body wall and removed a small amount of the tumor’s content.  Surprise!  All I got was a syringe full of dead and degenerated blood cells.  Whatever the tumor was, it was trapping and holding blood cells, not letting them return to the body’s circulation.  A blood count showed Rosey was anemic.  She had lost 70% of her circulating blood cells, enough so that resulting anemia put her at risk of dying.  It was assumed Rosey’s health problem was related to the abdominal tumor that must be removed.  But as anemic as she was she might not survive the operation.  So, we collected 400ml of blood from Bridger, the in-house blood donor, and while it was flowing into Rosey we opened her abdomen and found the abdominal tumor was, in fact, the spleen which had rotated in the abdomen.  Its blood vessels had been twisted, thus blood could flow into the spleen but not out.  The spleen was removed.  It weighed more than 1000 grams about 10 times more than normal. Rosey recovered and again is a happy healthy dog.

 Spleenic torsion is an unusual disease in dogs.  Success in this case was related to sampling the spleen and knowing its content before surgery.  If I had corrected the torsion instead of removing the spleen the dead-cell content in the spleen would have drained into the circulatory system and killed the dog.  Administration of blood during surgery saved time allowing us to proceed without first stabilizing the dog medically.

"Photo Attributed to emildom74 via flickr.com

Birthing difficulty

Once upon a time, when the world was young, I had a ranch practice in northern Montana.  It was a wonderful time and place for a young man.  Streams were filled with trout, pheasants were in every field, ducks in all the ponds, and every rancher had lovely daughters.  But delivering calves was my livelihood.  Laboring cows taught me a lesson germane to today’s small animal practice.  If a fetus is not positioned in the birth canal it will not be born, nor will the dam strain to deliver it.  The problem is uterine inertia for the uterus will not constrict and start the fetus into the pelvis.  In most cases intravenous administration of calcium will correct the problem.  The uterus can then constrict placing the fetus where it can be expelled normally.  But not always!

            Jessica, a four pound Maltese female had delivered one pup.  Then everything stopped!  For an hour she did not deliver any more pups.  Didn’t even try!  And yet her belly was still distended.  She remained pregnant.  I could palpate a pup out of position in the anterior abdomen.  This seemed to be typical uterine interia so I injected calcium and sent her home.  Often these cases will deliver a pup during the car ride home but not this time, nor during the ensuing hour.  She had to be returned for a caesarian section.  One has to get fetuses out of the abdomen or they will die, start to decompose in the abdomen, and the rotten material will kill the dam.  On reexamination the pup had not been moved.  It was no nearer to the pelvis then when the dog was initially examined.  During surgery I found the wall of the uterus surrounding the remaining pup had ruptured spilling the pup into the abdominal cavity and making it impossible for the pup to be properly positioned.  Why the rupture occurred I don’t know.  Perhaps it was due to incoordination of uterine contractions.  Both pup and mom survived surgery.

            Rarely did I find a cow with uterine rupture and the calf lying free in the abdominal cavity.  If one did surgery in time the cow might live but usually the calf was dead.

"Photo Attributed to S. Fulljames via flickr.com

Urinary blockage in a cat

Jack was in last week.  He needed vaccinations and his teeth cleaned.  I hadn’t seen him for a while, but for an old cat, he’s 18 now, he was sleek and vigorous.

     He wasn’t always this way.  One cold winter evening five years ago his owner brought him to me.  She thought he was dead but wanted to be certain.  At the time he was an indoor-outdoor cat and had been missing for several days.  When he came home his owner found his lifeless body on her back porch.  As she gently laid him on the exam table a quick glance convinced me it was time for condolences.  As the comforting words formed in my mind I saw just the slightest hint of a movement of his chest.  Could it be he was still alive?  If so, there surely wasn’t any time so spare.  The examination was hasty.  His heart was beating slowly and the pulse was so weak I could barely feel it.  There were no eye reflexes.  Body temperature was so low the mercury didn’t budge from the bulb.  His belly held a clue; the bladder was grossly distended with urine.  Quickly I performed a cystocentesis and drained the bladder of thick brownish urine.  He had feline urologic syndrome.  The urethra was plugged with exudates and crystals so he couldn’t void.  Metabolic waste products had backed up and accumulated in his blood and he had gone into a coma.  A blood sample showed an extremely high level of urea, confirming that he had uremic poisoning, complicating his condition.

     Jack was catheterized so urine would flow freely.  Intravenous fluids were given to flush the poisons from his system and we put him on a heating pad to warm him.  Amazingly, in an hour he was stirring, six hours later he sat up on his sternum and in two days he went home.  Now in his waning years, he lives the good life indoors.  Perhaps, because it is so easy to become the caretaker of a cat some people view them as expendable.  But not his owner, he has been her valued friend for many years.  A relationship that has grown over time, especially since his close encounter with death.

A case of canine Pancreatitis

Wilbur is a 7-years-old French bull dog whose vomiting started a week ago. He cried when his abdomen was pressed and he had refused to eat for the past several days.  Also, water consumption had declined.

 He was a very sick dog when brought to the hospital.   Several abnormalities of his serum chemistry profile suggested he might have acute pancreatitis, for the blood study showed dehydration, inflammation, and stress.  He was started on intravenous fluids to rehydrate him and sustain kidney function.  An overnight blood test confirmed the diagnosis of acute pancreatitis.  Next morning all food and water consumption was stopped and drugs were administered to depress stomach-acid production.   Acidic stomach contents passing into the small intestine can aggravate pancreatitis so it must be controlled.   Also, he was given a low dose of antibiotics as insurance against infection in the region of the pancreas.  Intravenous fluid therapy was altered to provide essential energy and protein building blocks to help with healing.  He was maintained on this program for two days.  Then, drugs were dispensed to prevent vomiting and continue reduced gastric acidity and he was sent home. Such treatment would permit him to eat and drink without aggravating the pancreatitis and still facilitate continued healing.  

Illness of a kitten

“Doctor Howard,” Robin called from the intensive care ward, “he ate, the kitty ate, a little.” 

Mrs. Andrews had found a dying kitten in the alley behind her home the previous day.  When she brought him to the hospital he was so weak he could not stand.  About four weeks old, he was mostly bones, frizzy fur, and fleas.  A Siamese, and quite handsome we thought, in spite of his wretchedness, with black outline of his eyes, nose, and mouth.  On closer examination we found the black markings were flea dirt.  There was no outward sign of infection other than the parasites, but the membranes of the mouth and eyes were almost white because he was so anemic.  I supposed the anemia was due to fleas draining his blood as they fed, which was partially correct.

            Our first order of care was to rid him of the fleas.  JoAnn, knowing the little fellow might be killed by routine flea treatment, dampened a piece of cotton with flea spray and gently rubbed the hair against the lay getting the chemical to the fleas but not on the kitten’s skin.  Then, with a flea comb she and Phyllis removed the poisoned pests.  This took more than an hour. 

            In the meantime, John found the kitten’s blood cells had hemoplasma organisms on them.  These bacteria, spread by fleas, sensitize blood cells which are then destroyed by the spleen faster than the bone marrow can replace them.  We had our diagnosis, but what to do?  While JoAnn bathed, dried and warmed the little tyke, we caught Tazz, the clinic cat, varmint control officer, and donor of blood for ailing kittens.  We transferred six milliliters of his blood into the kitten’s abdominal cavity so it would flow into his circulation giving him essential blood cells, protein and immune factors.  Then, just a tiny bit of antibiotic was injected to start controlling the hemoplamas.

            By this time it was getting late in the day so Robin fed him milk replacer with a dropper and put him to rest in a small cage with an insulated heating pad to warm him.  The next day he was able to stand and, as mentioned earlier, eat.  The day following he was released to Mrs. Andrews’ care with two more weeks of antibiotic treatment.  He recovered and grew to be a handsome cat.  Never cross or arrogant, he seemed to understand that he was in debt for his life.

            When you consider adding a new pet from any source to your household, you should realize that the new animal may be carrying a disease that can spread to resident animals.  To help avoid trouble be sure your existing pets are current on vaccinations, and regardless of how healthy it seems, have the new pet examined by your veterinarian before it is introduced to its new home as Mrs. Andrews did. 

A Big-Stinky Problem

“Doctor, my cat has a big, stinky problem!  Every-once-in-awhile she will leave a small, really foul-smelling spot somewhere in the house.  What is this and what can be done about it?”

            This problem is more common to dogs than cats, but it is the same in both species.  Animals have a gland on each side of the anus that secretes a smelly material thought to be used for marking territory as the animal defecates or rubs against the ground.  Sometimes these glands spill their contents spontaneously resulting in a spot somewhere in their surroundings and a nauseating odor.  Also, sometimes the glands become blocked this irritates the animal which tries to correct the problem by scooting across the floor.

            Permanent correction of the problem demands surgical removal of the glands by a veterinarian.  It takes a few days to a week for healing to occur and the dog or cat forever remains free of the problem.