DOG HEALTH AND MEDICINE

Q: I am fostering a dog from the local shelter with a skin infection. Her name is Dakota Johnson, and she looks like an American hairless terrier crossed with fossilized stone. Circular, crusty, sometimes oozing spots are all over her body. And some areas have what look like little pimples. The first two weeks of oral antibiotics, topical antibacterials, and anti-fungal treatment didn’t help. The next two weeks of allergy meds and steroids seemed to be be clearing up the situation. She was scratching less and became interested in eating, and her skin was seeming to heal. But on the third week of giving the steroids every other day things went downhill. New spots have formed, some of them sticky, and a weird smell she had is back. The shelter had a biopsy done and said she had allergies but gave no indication of what she is allergic to. Is there a blood or skin test to find out?

Readers have asked us the difference between an exam and a clinical exam. A clinical exam is simply the doctor’s examination of a patient’s body (dog or human) in person, rather than, say, by phone or by looking over medical records. It’s the “show” part of a medical show-and-tell, and it’s a critical screening tool.

Very mild dandruff on a black dog is probably nothing to be concerned about. Even a few white flecks against a black backdrop are going to stick out. But generally speaking, you’re not supposed to be able to see dandruff scales on your pet. Normally, as millions of cells in the top layer of skin—the epidermis—are renewed every three to four weeks (just as in people), the old ones slough off upon dying. It takes place microscopically and shouldn’t be viewable.

What people tend to think of when their dog has an illness with a grim prognosis is “a kind of binary option, either full-court treatment or euthanasia,” says Eric Richman, MSW, LICSW, a veterinary social worker who tends to clients at Tufts. But there’s “potential for middle ground,” he says, in the form of hospice and palliative care—“palliative” meaning pain-relieving as opposed to disease-treating.

If your dog was spayed before she had even a single heat, she has virtually no chance of ending up with mammary (breast) cancer. But her risk for that disease rises substantially if her spaying occurred after the first heat. And if she wasn’t spayed till after her third or fourth heat, any potential cancer-sparing benefit may have been lost completely.

AI—Artificial Intelligence—is often thought of as a kind of creepy, subversive use of information that does everything from allow students to cheat on their term papers to inadvertently promulgate falsehoods. But while it certainly can be misused, it also has amazing potential to do good, including in the care of dogs. It may even be able to help veterinarians pinpoint with better accuracy whether a dog has a heart murmur that would benefit from medication, an echocardiogram that would allow for further evaluation, or a referral to a board-certified veterinary cardiologist. In that way, it can both save people with dogs from spending money unnecessarily if the murmur is in fact not a significant health issue as well as better insure that a dog will receive prompt treatment if he does have a murmur that calls for further testing and/or a consult with a specialist.

It’s a common belief that dogs are more resistant to cold weather than people because of their fur, but that’s not true. Granted, longer-haired and thick-coated dog breeds like huskies and other dogs bred for colder climates are more tolerant of cold weather than dogs in general. But even dogs that don’t complain or don’t seem to mind are susceptible to frostbite and hypothermia. When the weather is extremely cold, shorten your outdoor time with your pet.

For our dogs as well as our human loved ones, we wish for health right up until the moment of death. Part of the reason, says Tufts Cummings School veterinary social worker Eric Richman, MSW, is that “some people tend to be uncomfortable with conversations about death and dying. If a dog dies peacefully in his sleep, they may see it as a way to avoid those difficult discussions.”

Your dog has always been perfectly fine but now has begun experiencing full-body tremors, or maybe tremors localized to one region, such as the head. Depending on the dog, the tremors range from mild to so severe that they are debilitating and perhaps include loss of balance. In some cases, they are accompanied by nystagmus—back-and-forth or circular eyeball movement that is clearly not in the dog’s control. The tremors tend to increase with exercise, stress, or excitement. What’s going on?

Let’s say “you have a 5-year-old female mixed breed dog who has been happy and healthy since she was a puppy. She has always been very friendly and loved to be petted. Recently she has wanted less interaction with her family and occasionally gets a little snappy when she no longer wants to be petted.”

Q: As someone who has had dogs for many years, I know the list of foods that are bad for them: chocolate, onions, garlic, grapes, and raisins. But just how bad are they? Can a dog really get sick eating even just a small amount of these items?

The survival rate for dogs in the hospital who stop breathing and undergo CPR (cardiopulmonary resuscitation) is low. Fewer than 6 percent make it out alive. In an effort to improve the odds, researchers participating in an initiative known as RECOVER— Reassessment Campaign on Veterinary Resuscitation—combed through almost 1,400 studies to ascertain which methods work best.