The first post! August 11, 2010

Hello, thanks for reading my new blog. As you can see in the side bar I am a recently graduated veterinarian. I am also a recently new resident of Vermont. I’ve had the dream of having this type of column from my very first week of veterinary school. I remember the day I first thought of it. One of my professors was telling us that there will always be questions that clients will want to ask the vet but either forget or feel silly asking. He claimed that the difference between a good vet and a great vet is the ability to anticipate these questions. I thought to myself, ‘why not go one step further and give people an outlet for these questions.’ From the very first day I started at Riverside Veterinary Care I have offered my email to my clients so that they can email the questions they remember when they get home, or the ones they think of late at night but don’t want to call. This filled my inbox up very quickly! Then I had the idea of putting together this email or write in question and answer column. It only took a few weeks and here we are, our first posting! I am very excited! In this post I will answer two questions. In future posts I will answer three. Write in and I’ll try to answer your question!

1. My veterinarian recommended that my dog have her teeth cleaned but she’s older and I’m worried about the anesthesia. When is a pet too old for anesthesia? Becky from Castleton

Becky, I certainly understand and appreciate your concern for your older dog. We had a habit in our clinical year of veterinary school of reminding each other that “age is not a disease” meaning that just because an animal is old does not necessarily imply that it is sick or debilitated. That being said, older dogs and cats do have a tendency to develop diseases later in life that may affect their ability to metabolize, excrete or redistribute the drugs we commonly use for anesthesia. Preoperative blood testing, best done on the day of the procedure, gives us excellent insight into how well the patient’s liver and kidneys are functioning. The liver and kidneys would be the key organs involved in the metabolization and excretion of anesthetic drugs.

Other significant problems that will not be evident on blood work such as heart disease and obesity will be evident on physical exam. Of course your veterinarian should be made aware of any medication your dog may be on as well. From a well-informed position I can make adjustments to any anesthetic protocol to fit the requirements of a patient with nearly any condition or insufficiency. If it is something that really concerns me I will sometimes consult with a board certified veterinary anesthesiologist before coming up with a protocol. The insight of someone who does only anesthesia for a living can be priceless in some of these situations. Deciding which drugs to use when anesthetizing a patient is only part of the battle. The most important part of any anesthetic event is close monitoring. You’ll want to be certain that your vet not only has equipment to monitor anesthesia but also uses it and has an extra person in the room monitoring while the vet focuses on the procedure being performed. Ask your vet to explain anesthesia monitoring to you. If a client were to ask me on one of my really good days I might even give them a quick tour of the surgery suite and show them all our tools and how they work. While I could never promise you that an anesthesia event is going to go smoothly and there will be no problems I would be far more concerned about the long term consequences of periodontal disease on your dog’s heart, kidneys and overall quality of life than I would be about the effects of the anesthesia. Thanks for writing Becky!

2. How do I choose the right pet food for my dog?

Brittaney, your question is the proverbial can of worms for the veterinarian. Pet food is probably the one subject that I feel my clients really work hard at educating themselves about. Fortunately for my clients there is a lot of information out there. Unfortunately for them a lot of that information is based on misunderstanding, poorly constructed ideas or plain old paranoia! I am not in a position to put into print, or the online version of print, an endorsement for any one pet food over another. That’s not really what I do. What I will happily lay to rest is the odd notion some people have that veterinarians did not receive any formal training in nutrition. Nearly every subject in any of my medicine courses in vet school had some nutritional aspect to the treatment. Diabetes, renal failure, liver disease and even some of the less common illnesses all have nutritional components to the current therapies. So nutrition was there in my medicine course, it was in my surgery course especially the orthopedic and wound management parts. Nearly every aspect of our physiology course had something to do with nutrition, our biochemistry class was one hundred percent nutrition and then of course we did take an entire semester of a course called nutrition! In our undergraduate college studies we had to take a course in nutrition just to apply to veterinary school. I feel fairly well versed in nutrition. When I suggest a dog food what matters to me isn’t the price tag, the ingredients or even the reputation of the company. What matters to me when I make a pet food suggestion comes down to one tiny label on the bag of every dog food sold in the United States. A label is a legal document and as such needs to be accurate in representation. Some foods will have label that claims that this food was formulated with ingredients that meet the American Association of Feed Control Officers (AAFCO) standards while other food labels claim that feeding trials or tests have determined that their food provides balanced nutrition for the animal it is intended for. The latter label indicates to me that there have been both short and long-term studies that have looked into how nutritious a diet is for the animal it is intended to feed. These studies are available for me to read and I can then interpret the results and recommend foods based on scientific data. This is important to me as the health and well being of my patients is so heavily dependent on what they are being fed. I put a lot of my patient’s health on the line when I recommend a pet food and I need there to be science behind that recommendation. For your pet I would recommend looking for that label that tells you that animal feeding tests have been performed on their recipe and then feed comfortably knowing there is some serious science behind your decision.

Thanks for writing Brittaney!

Comments

[Katie]

These were very helpful posts; things that I've always wondered about but never asked my vet... just like you said!
I have a question about flea and tick medication. I recently had a baby and so I've been very aware of reading labels for certain chemicals. I noticed that pregnant women are advised NOT to apply or touch the topical oils applied to dogs (such as Frontline, Promeris, etc...) Obviously there is something "dangerous" in the ingredients. Could the odors be harmful to my baby or is the harm only through direct contact? Thanks Dr. Heath!