DOG HEALTH AND MEDICINE

Google free vaccines for life and you will see page after page of veterinary practices that engage in this very type of program - free vaccines annually for dogs who are patients at these clinics. They all operate a bit differently, but heres the gist. If you take your dog to the clinic once a year for her wellness visit, vaccines deemed necessary at that time will be given at no cost.

English bulldogs, French bulldogs, pugs, Boston terriers, boxers, Pekingese, Lhasa apsos, shih tzus, affenpinschers, Japanese chins, Cavalier King Charles spaniels. These are many, but not quite all, of the breeds considered brachycephalic, meaning they have pushed-in faces. And people love them. Their impossibly adorable big eyes, flat noses, and heads that are often large in relation to the rest of their bodies are the very qualities that draw us to infants, and we want to hug these dogs up. Indeed, the French bulldog and the English bulldog are numbers 4 and 5, respectively, on the list of the most popular breeds in America.

Frances Fineberg of Oviedo, Florida, is worried for her two-year-old golden retriever, Amos, and for good reason. He hates going in the car, but the Fineberg family is about to take him on a vacation that involves an 8-hour road trip. They cant board him while they are away because he is a service dog. Ms. Fineberg believes its not the heat of the car thats causing the problem.

A number of the surgeries I perform involve removing tumors from dogs feet, says John Berg, DVM, a soft tissue surgeon at the Tufts Cummings School and the editor-in-chief of Your Dog. Likewise, veterinary dermatologists often say that the feet are among the main areas where dogs are affected by allergies. Lots of diseases strike the foot pads also: liver disease, some autoimmune diseases, even an illness that hinders blood flow to the foot. Another way of putting it: a dogs feet can carry a heavy load.

With all the television dramas centered around hospitals, its hard not to pick up some medical lingo. Many Americans know, for instance, that Code Blue means a patient has gone into cardiac arrest. The only chance for the patient recovering is CPR - cardiopulmonary resuscitation performed with the crash cart and paddles.

Emotional remove, repetitive (sometimes self-injurious) behaviors, unexplained and often aggressive outbursts, trance-like staring. These are some of the hallmarks of autism, a disorder currently identified in one in 59 children, according to estimates by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Its a particularly fraught conundrum. On one hand, using dogs in laboratory research has led to improved cancer treatments, the discovery of insulin, the development of the pacemaker, more effective pharmaceuticals, and the heart-lung machine used in open-heart surgery - advances that in many cases have helped dogs themselves as well as people. On the other hand, the sturm and drang has intensified between the 44 percent of Americans who live with dogs as pets and the researchers who depend on them to improve health. No matter how much medical good lab dogs do, more and more people see their dogs as family members and do not like the idea of their pets species mates having to live in cages and be subjected to possibly dangerous, toxic, and sometimes painful treatments - even for the noble cause of medicine. Perhaps thats part of the reason that in 1979, some 211,000 dogs were used in biomedical research and in 2016, 61,000. (For perspective, more than 3 million dogs enter shelters each year, according to the ASPCA.)

First the bad news. The geographic distribution of ticks that can infect dogs (and people) with Lyme disease is spreading. The Northeast has had the problem from the outset, and no area of the U.S. is completely Lyme disease-free, but the Companion Animal Parasite Control Council now says theres going to be an increase this year, with Lyme disease making its way to areas that have not been of particular concern, like the Midwest and the Southeast.

I just took my dog to a new veterinarian for the first time, and he said she has high blood pressure. He wants to check it again in a few days. Im concerned. She is only 3 years old and has never had high blood pressure before, but the doctor thinks it might just be white-coat hypertension - transient high blood pressure resulting from anxiety because she has never been to this office before. Can a dog really get white-coat hypertension?

The number of dogs who died in overheated parked cars during the last week of May 2015: 11, according to Veterinary Pet Insurance.

The risk of death for dogs under anesthesia used to be one to two deaths in 100 patients, says Lois Wetmore, DVM, an assistant professor of anesthesia and pain management at the Tufts Cummings School of Veterinary Medicine. Now were down to about one death in 2,000, Dr. Wetmore says. Were headed in the right direction.

Too many dogs end up with skin disease in the form of atopic dermatitis (inflammatory skin disease associated with allergies); pemphigus foliaceus (pustules and crusting on the skin surface); or perianal fistulas (which causes straining during defecation and often, a decreased appetite).