DOG HEALTH AND MEDICINE

What I would really like to know is how my 10-year-old mixed breed got a huge tumor both on and in his spine that showed no symptoms until he became suddenly paralyzed three weeks ago and had to be rushed to the emergency room, where he ended up having to be put to sleep?

We have a shih tzu who has been diagnosed with dry eye in both eyes. Our veterinarian prescribed OPH Optimmune Ophthalmic Ointment, but the results are mixed at best, and at $65 per small tube we find it financially difficult to keep up a daily application routine. We had a suggestion from an ophthalmologist who treats people that we look into over-the-counter eye drops that contain oil, but he said we might have to try several before finding one that was right for our dog.

He might not live through the night wasnt what Susan and Marty Gavin were expecting to hear. Yes, their 13-year-old cocker spaniel, Henry, had fallen over when he came up the stairs earlier that evening. But we thought the emergency room vet would say epilepsy or some sort of brain seizure, Henrys dad, Dr. Gavin, says. He fell on his side and was moving his limbs.

Some dogs suffer from a genetically inherited skin condition called ichthyosis. They are born with the disease, and the skin becomes drier, scalier-looking, and more prone to infections with age. Thats because the skin barrier - the bodys envelope - breaks down and loses its ability to keep out foreign substances. (The disease strikes people, too. Infants who have it usually develop abnormal-looking skin within the first year of life.)

For the last day or two my dog has stopped urinating. He strains and maybe a few drops come out, but theres no stream to speak of. I know that a dog will sometimes miss a bowel movement. Is this the same thing?

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.)