DOG HEALTH AND MEDICINE

Your dog cant go to the fridge for a nosh if hes bored or rummage through the kitchen cabinets to see if theres anything good to eat in the house. That is, how much your dog eats and whether he maintains a healthy weight or becomes overweight is entirely in your hands. Thats a lot of responsibility, but it also completely empowers you to make sure your dog stays trim enough to be as active, pain-free, and happy as he can.

I noticed that the pupils of my Siberian huskys eyes were uneven. The right one was constricted almost to a pinpoint while the left was fully dilated! I immediately took him to my veterinarian. After the exam, I was told that in some dogs this was somewhat common and not to worry because my dog showed no signs of neurologic upset. After a while the pupils evened out. There was no change in his personality, appetite, or anything else. Your thoughts?

Think shunt, and perhaps a medical solution comes to mind, as in a shunt implanted in the brain that allows fluid to drain and thereby decrease swelling in that organ. A cardiac bypass is a shunt, too. Its a new route for blood to flow from one part of the body to another when the old route is blocked and needs to be gotten around. In medical terms, a shunt is simply a passageway that allows the movement of fluid from one part of the body to another.

When you bring your dog to the veterinarian for his annual or semi-annual exam, the doctor may very well ask you whether there have been any changes in your pet since his last visit. But the phrase any changes is rather vague, and besides, sometimes changes come so gradually that theyre hard to detect until they have become quite dramatic. Thats why paying attention to your dogs habits and lifestyle variations is critical in advocating for his continued good health. As we frequently say, you are the most important partner on your dogs health care team, the one who is most intimately familiar with his day-to-day life and therefore in the best position to make the first clinical assessment about whether something might be amiss.

This becomes particularly important as your dog reaches over from middle age into his geriatric years. Noticing changes in his behavior or demeanor that you can bring up to his doctor may help you stave off illness - or treat it at the outset, when its easier to keep symptoms in check and sometimes even reverse a health problem. Treating a disease at the outset rather than after it is far gone tends to be much less expensive as well.

Even if you have been providing proper oral care for your dog, you cant prevent gingival hyperplasia, an overgrowth of the gums surrounding the teeth that affects some of our canine friends. While the abnormal proliferation of gum tissue is not cancerous, it can prove painful, particularly when a dog eats. And it can lead to periodontal, or gum, disease. Specifically, it causes deep pockets to form between the surface of the teeth and the surrounding gums, which in turn allows plaque and tartar to build and can lead to infection, loosened teeth, and if it goes far enough, teeth falling out.

My friend Scott Leaver was 32 when he was diagnosed with a malignant brain tumor the size of an apple. After surgery, the oncologist told him that the cancer had a 75 percent chance of returning within five years - more aggressively the second time around.

A lot of dogs dont look bloated from the outside, says Tufts emergency and critical care veterinarian Claire Sharp, BVMS, DACVECC, referring to a life-threatening condition known in the vernacular as bloat, in which a dogs stomach twists on its axis and fills with gas. She speaks of people who contact the animal hospital when their dog doesnt seem right, saying, Im sure my dog doesnt have bloat because his belly doesnt look big.

My 11-year-old dog has pretty debilitating arthritis, and someone has suggested physical therapy. But that sounds ridiculous to me. How can a dog do physical therapy?

For creatures with such a sensitive nose, dogs seem happiest when they reek. This is particularly true of dogs who romp off leash, picking up bits of detritus in their fur and, if lucky enough, rolling about in something unidentifiable and rank, often the remnants of a dead animal.

You cannot start worrying about your pets dental health too soon, says William Rosenblad, DVM, a member of our editorial advisory board as well as the head of the Dentistry Department at the Angell Animal Medical Center in Boston. By the time you or your veterinarian see calculus/tartar buildup, there may already be serious periodontal disease occurring. I have seen calculus start to build up in dogs as young as six months, gum recession by eight months, and even a jaw fracture due to bone damage caused by periodontal disease in a 14-month-old dog.

Its understandable that people would like there to be a dietary component to treating and even curing cancer. We love our dogs and want to be able to do something for them in their time of need. But the incontrovertible fact is that cancer is the leading cause of death in dogs over the age of two. And in some breeds, such as golden retrievers, the rate of death attributable to cancer is greater than 50 percent (albeit generally late in life). We dont want pet owners to lose hope, says Cailin Heinze, VMD, DACVN, a board-certified veterinary nutritionist at Tufts.

At the Cummings School of Veterinary Medicine at Tufts, many veterinarians who see patients also engage in research. That is, clinicians routinely double as scientific investigators. Armelle de Laforcade, DVM, is one of those Tuft veterinarians who takes care of sick dogs and animals of other species at the same time that she participates in clinical research.