DOG HEALTH AND MEDICINE

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.

Your very fragile dog is in need of surgery. Or she comes to the emergency room with unexplained bleeding from her mouth. Or she has a kind of kidney disease that can potentially make her blood too viscous and not able to flow easily enough; her clotting factors may be on overdrive. In all these cases, and many others, a veterinarian has to run tests of coagulation to see if the blood is too thin and making the dog more prone to bleed, or, conversely, too prone to clotting.

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. But food is not medicine. Its food. Theres no evidence right now that were going to fix anything with diet. Its so hard when people whose dogs have cancer come to us and feel like the Nutrition Clinic is going to be able to make the difference in how long their pet lives. However, we can help make sure that pet owners are feeding a diet that is as optimized as possible using the knowledge that we do have, whether this be a commercial diet, a home-cooked diet, or a combination. Veterinary nutrition researchers are always looking for the ways in which dietary patterns impact disease, but they simply havent uncovered anything yet that will change the course of cancers impact.

Tufts veterinary nutritionist Cailin Heinze, VMD, DACVN, is frustrated. Despite what people read on the Internet, she says, there is no magic cancer diet. Not only is there no evidence that any specific type of diet is related to the development of cancer in dogs, there is also no clear evidence at this point that any diet can slow the progression or increase the survival of a dog with cancer. Feeding pets with cancer is a subject very near and dear to Dr. Heinze, whose main research interest is investigating the interactions between diet and metabolism in pets with cancer, in the hopes that someday we will be able to make better nutrition recommendations for pets (and people) with that disease.

Wobblers Syndrome is the result of a compressed spinal cord, either from overgrowth of bone or ligaments or a herniated (bulging) disc. The telltale signs are a characteristic wobbly gait and holding the head down, with an outstretched neck. Unfortunately, the condition usually goes unnoticed until its far along.

A traumatic event that wont stop haunting you. An expectation of the worst at each and every moment because life is no longer to be trusted. An ongoing nightmare that causes disruption and dysfunction, interfering with normal activities. Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, PTSD, not only afflicts humans but dogs too. Dr. Nicholas Dodman shares his diagnosis and treatment of a recent patient.

Some evidence has come to light, at least in lab animals, that blocking certain types of adrenalin receptors just before or a short time after a traumatic event can keep PTSD from developing. How do you block them? Apparently with a class of drugs known as beta blockers. The drugs dont erase the memory, but they keep it from imprinting in such a way that it causes flashbacks. It doesnt allow the memory to color…

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Your Dog interviews Elinor Karlsson, PhD about her work in how the study of genetics in specific dog breeds sheds light on disease processes in humans, and how that might lead to treatments (and even preventatives) for both species.

Dogs and people have a very similar number of nucleotide bases that make up our DNA, that is, all of our genetic material. Their genome contains 2.4 billion bases, while ours contains 2.6 billion. And while two dogs of different breeds are as different as any two people, dogs within a breed are 99.9 percent similar. Why is that? …