Announcer
Welcome to the senior pet podcast, A show dedicated to giving our senior four legged family members. They’re happiest and healthiest lives. Now join our senior pet experts. Veterinarian Dr Stacy Bone, an animal health insider, Ron de Vries, as they discuss why old age is not a disease.
Stacey
Welcome, everybody to the senior pet podcast. I am Dr Stacey Bone. And with me, as always, is Ron de Vries. Ron, how are you?
Ron
Stacey? I’m fantastic. Thanks for asking
Stacey
greats. Great. And so last episode, we kind of discussed the physical exam again. We’re kind of laying this this overall picture of hopefully stuff that people can refer back to as we go in. And we talk about the diseases because things like the physical exam in the history and all that kind of stuff is important. Today’s a topic being no less so, which is the topic of diagnostics. And so, Ron, what? What? When I say a diagnostic, what do you think of?
Ron
Boy, I think of some type of test that’s gonna look for something that’s wrong with me. Exactly. This case, our senior Pat.
Stacey
Yeah, in a lot of times, I guess the best way that I can describe it for nonmedical people is a diagnostic is a test that is done to try to prove a suspicion for a disease. And so if I think that you have diabetes Ah, blood sugar is a logical diagnostic that is going to be done to see if you truly are a diabetic and then not only our diagnostic test done to diagnose, but they’re also done thio monitor, and so will recommend doing continued diagnostics if we want to monitor a disease process, what we’re gonna do real quick as we’re going to step aside. And I’m blessed that I’m not currently a practicing veterinarian. I still use my veterinary skills, but it’s in a different service as opposed to a practicing veterinarian. And we’re gonna talk about diagnostics because this is a a tough, emotional crossroads for a lot of people. And I think this is where money and emotions tend to to meet most closely in veterinary medicine, and it’s a it’s a tough thing, and Rod, I’ll say, and maybe you’ve said it before, too. I know I have personally had to think about it with my own dogs, which is is the cost of this test worth the answers that I’m going to give from it. And so have you. I mean, I’m sure, especially when we’re talking about teeth, right? I’m sure that when your veterinarian said, Ron, we need to do full mouth X rays. You thought to yourself, Why is this worth it? You know how much is it gonna be? Right?
Ron
Those dollar signs always flashed through my mind, at least for a moment.
Stacey
Yeah, and I mean, I remember when I took my dog down to the University of Missouri because she was having some seizure activity. I mean, they started to talk about MRI’s in CSF taps and things of that nature. And, I mean, in the back of my mind, even me as a veterinarian who knew that these tests are super valuable. I mean, I’m thinking to myself, I’m gonna, um I’m gonna have to take out a second mortgage. T pay for this. And, Ron, you’ve been in the vet industry for a long time. I think that most of them are probably like me in the respect that I’m not gonna recommend that you do something that a I wouldn’t do to my own dog in that situation. But be that wasn’t necessary.
Ron
Yeah, and that’s certainly on the other side of the table. It’s always appreciated that the veterinarians not gonna recommend something that seems either not necessary or especially when we’re talking about a senior pet, right? The level of something that you might find Is it something that’s going to affect our dog, who may have, uh, two good years left in their life for our cat? That might be, you know, in the same situation. So I certainly appreciate as the as the patient on this side or the pet owner on this side when a veterinarian understands that the cost might outweigh the benefit at some point.
Stacey
And I think you do need to have those candid conversations with your veterinarian and say, You know, I just can’t afford this. You know, we we understand that were humans, and we have the loans. Um, you know, there are times where I’ve had to make the decision between going out to dinner or paying a student loan. We get it. We know that that’s that’s out there. But have those candid conversations one of the ways that I would get around. It is as if I recommended a diagnostic. I wouldn’t do five diagnostics back to back to back to back. I would do what I thought would give me the answer. And with the caveat that I would tell you is the pet owner, I would say this may not get us our answer. You know, there’s a chance that I’m gonna have to come back in here and recommends, um next diagnostic step because, ah, lot of what we do in Vet Med are called Diagnosis of Exclusion. Exactly. And so diagnostic Diagnosis of exclusion is basically that we have ruled out every single other problem and has left us with This one is the most likely suspect. And so, you know, we really, really, really understand where you’re at. And there’s no veterinarian that looks down on you are or anything. But don’t take it out on the veterinarian, please. Or even the veterinary healthy. We know they’re expensive. Those costs are not set by us. They’re set by laboratories. And where that stuff goes, I mean, we’re just trying to give you the best recommendation we can to solve the problem, and you need to be able to have that conversation with us and say, you know, Dr Bone, I can’t afford that right now. Okay, understand that I’m gonna treat based on what I think is most likely going on. But the ideal world would be that, you know, we could do every diagnostic on the planet like you do in human medicine, and then pick up the pieces of all the information that you have so a little bit heavier. Start to this episode. I apologize, but it is It is something that I think is is very important for all of us to understand that, you know, we’re not out there money grubbing. We’re not just getting that. I mean, as an associate veterinarian, I was paid on salary, so it didn’t matter to me what tests you did. It didn’t influence what I got paid at the end of the week. So, you know, hopefully that’s the case. In most places that you go to. If you have questions, you can always email us and we can help you with that. But now that that is out of the way, Ron, why do we is veterinarians? You know, we’ve already talked about the first, which is diagnosis of exclusion, right? Why else do we recommend diagnostics again?
Ron
I guess I would think Certainly. On the preventive side, right? We’re trying to catch something early or prevent something from happening.
Stacey
Yeah, I think that’s a great one. What else? Who starts a run out of ideas at that point? Well, let’s think about radiographs. Why do we take radiographs?
Ron
Ah, well, from looking at some of these periodic ALS, I assume because you’re looking for a ball of twine that your caddy,
Stacey
right? So it’s It’s a way for us to look at something that we can’t see with our naked eyes. So that’s number two. The third thing is something that I think unless you’re a pediatrician, a lot of people don’t understand, which is when we walk into an examination room with with symptoms. We’re we’re doing some sort of a mystery finding event, right, and so are are, are animals cannot tell us what is going on. They can give us indications, but they can’t say my kidney, my right kidney hurts. We have to get that through the exam and then confirm it with a diagnostic. So that’s number three And number four is the unfortunate thing that a lot of our disease is present with the exact same symptoms. And so one of the most common ones that we get is Dr Bone. My dog is drinking more water. And I mean, I can tell you that roundabout I could probably list 100 different diseases that caused those exact same symptoms. So you come to me and I say, Well, we probably should do a blood work and then the fire back out and say, Well, is that necessary? Well, yeah, Unfortunately, it is because I need to rule out 99 of those to get the answer that I want. And if we’re lucky, we get it on the very first diagnostic that’s done. So, Ron is that kind of makes sense of why we do what we do.
Ron
Yeah, absolutely. And and it kind of hits to the point where the questions that you ask your pet owners are are almost every bit as important as the, you know, test that you’re trying to run.
Stacey
Yes. Oh, don’t hide stuff from us. Marijuana is becoming a really big issue right now, right? If your dog ate pot. Tell us because you know what? They’re gonna have to do blood work, and they’re gonna have to do drug tests. And they’re gonna do all this stuff. When If you were candid and open and said, Yeah, my dog ate four pot brownies before he came in here. Well, that totally allows us to free up some of those diagnostics and do other things with it.
Ron
They may not get that job with the sheriff’s department,
Stacey
right? And so, um, when When I think of diagnostics, Ron, we kind of covered this to some extent. But I divined it into into two main categories. One is what we call preventative or preventive diagnostics. And the other one call we call reactive diagnostics. And those air totally terms that I made up Don’t google those because they probably don’t exist in this world. But trademark ever. And the classification of it is just, you know, really first semantics at the end of the day. So, Ron, when you think about preventative diagnostics which we would define his diagnostics that are done yearly or twice a year just to monitor the well being of your pets, what air you’re like main preventative diagnostics that you think about what you’ve done with your pets for years.
Ron
Well, I’m always thinking about ah, you know, blood and urine. And we’re checking for, um, things like elevated levels. Like you said, How can we catch diabetes to keep it at my level? Right. How can we, um, make sure that there’s not a urinary tract issue going on those kind of things?
Stacey
And so what? We called those in practices that was typically a comprehensive profile. And so, you know, again we go back to the very first episode that we did in this podcast, which we strongly recommend You go back and listen to, but when we when we talked about that, we said, You know, they’re they’re different things that happen as you age. And so for our senior pets, our yearly bloodwork are preventive diagnostic. That’s blood work is going to include a whole lot more than your one year old dogwood. D’oh. So typically it’s ah, full chemistry profile. It’s a full CBC. It’s urine testing. It’s a lot of times thyroid testing, and it’s solely based on hoping to identify a problem before it shows up. his clinical symptoms. So that’s one blood work. Your analysis? Absolutely. What else? There’s two other tests that I think about that we do very regularly on our pets. Just about every time you come in,
Ron
boy blood work. Your analysis, Um, stools.
Stacey
Yes. So you collected in whatever little fancy continue.
Ron
Always my favorite part of the, you know, hour before we go to the vet clinic,
Stacey
right? Is trying to find ah, wait over that in there and inevitably, you know, they don’t go when they all have always gone the morning that you go to the clinic. So, yeah, that’s a big one. I mean, unfortunately, intestinal parasites and things like that. Often times don’t have a lot of clinical symptoms of it. We think about tapeworms. So we just rescued a dog. Oh, we’ve had him now for three or four months, and I mean, a veterinarian doing great, you know, is crazy. It was itching a little bit, and he would occasionally have soft stools. And they had done a fecal test on him Prior thio us adopting him. And what was interesting is one day, you know, my wife comes up to me. She’s like, what is that in the stool? And there were tapeworm segments, you know, all over the place. And so a lot of these things can be insidious and not have any symptoms until they dio. And so that’s why we recommend doing a fecal test every time you come in. You know, bring that stool sample. Bring that stool sample because you can’t often see these things with your naked eye and secondarily. And this is always a little bit scary for a lot of people. Ah, lot of those parasites can transmit to immuno compromised people or Children. Um, and so we really want to make sure that those pets are not carrying those. And if your animal has been diagnosed with things like roundworms or hookworms and you’re worried about that, talk with your veterinarian or your physician because they can assuage your fears. But it is certainly possible.
Ron
There’s always some horrible picture in your in your veterinarian practice. I think it’s in the exam room that’s got some child who’s been affected by some sort of whip warm around worm or something that they transmitted from their patent. I look at it and I’m always turned off. But I guess if that’s the reminder that I need to get a fecal done, believe me, I will.
Stacey
Yeah, And it’s funny because we had a whole class in vet school. That was us talking about, you know, a legal case that went through the the child contacted roundworms from a pet and with the legal implications of the veterinarian. So the veterinarians air very on point with this as well. And the final kind of preventive diagnostic is the heartworm test, and the hard one test is the exact same thing. Heartworms are becoming more and more and more common as climate change, and summers and winters become a little bit warmer ends. We’re seeing more mosquitoes, and we’re seeing more heartworm. And so we need to test them pretty regularly just to make sure that they’re not developing heart rooms. Because again, ah, heartworm, you cannot see with the naked eye. And it doesn’t cause symptoms until it’s bad enough that it’s affecting the way that the heart works.
Ron
And your dog or cat does not have to go outside,
Stacey
does not have to go inside at all. Yeah, and so, um, that’s kind of the realm of preventive diagnostics. We’re going to take a very quick break. And when we come back, we’re gonna play this family feud style, and we’re gonna let Ron run through our list of what are called reactive diagnostics, so we will be right back. All right, everybody, welcome back. So we kind of spent the 1st 15 minutes or so of this going through. What’s a diagnostic? And why do we do him? And what a preventive diagnostic. So the next kind of logical step in this is to talk about what we call reactive diagnostic. So, Ron, we did define prevented. How would you define reactive?
Ron
Gosh, I would imagine it’s ah, if if the first ones were preventive. These are the ones that were reacting to something specific that the pet owners probably brought to our attention. A few the clinician hadn’t already seen it.
Stacey
Yeah, and so we’re doing this to solve ah, medical enquiry. So something that I have found on the physical exam, like your dog has abdominal pain or there’s a little bit of crap it is or creaking in the back leg. I mean, we’re doing this as a as a way to confirm or to quote unquote diagnose a disease or to solve something that you’ve walked in the door with me, right, Which is basically that you say, You know, Fluffy is drinking a ton of water. Well, that’s not something that I’m gonna be able to prove on an examination. There are very few diseases that I can palpate that’s gonna get us a diagnosis of This is why your dog is drinking more water. So we’re going to do this as part of it. So in all of you can play at home and I am a veterinarian and not an audio technician, so there will not be any fancy sound effects. But I have a list of about eight different common diagnostics that are done in in veterinary medicine. And I’m gonna get put a little bit of a caveat on this in an Asterix and say there are way, way, way more tests that are out there. They tend to be very specific and done for very, very unique situations. These air, the ones that I’m going to say, our routine reactive diagnostic stuff that this day and age you’re going to see a lot of in practice or your veterinarian is gonna recommend. And because this is a senior pep podcast, you’re going to seal deal with them a lot with your senior pats.
Ron
Always a good reminder that because they’re older pets Ah, old age is not a disease.
Stacey
Yeah, and so I mean, you know, we do know that we’re gonna be recommending these Weigh more than these dollars, get 789 plus years of age. So, Ron, your list is nice and open right now, so why don’t you pick one and we’ll see if you’re right.
Ron
All right. I know there’s no such thing as a snap test,
Stacey
okay? And so I would actually put that under what we would call blood work, right? And so bloodwork falls in. So snap, Tess is a great one. There are a couple of different types of snap tests. The first is a preventive diagnostic, which is the heartworm snap test. Right? And then we’ll have what are called four D, as in dog X tests which are typically done for tick born diseases. So there’s that kind of in that big category. We’re also going to include a CBC, which is a blood panel, complete blood count and the chemistry profile and a chemistry for a profile is certainly going to give you information on liver function, kidney function, electrolytes, all that coming. Good stuff. So that’s one category, which is blood work. Ron, move on. What do you got?
Ron
What about when you’re, uh, physically taking something from a growth?
Stacey
Yeah, that’s a great one. So we call that hissed a pathology, histology or more colloquial. Li buy up, See? And so that is where if you come into me and you say, Dr Bone, I have a lump or we find it on a routine exam or even sometimes in surgery. Um, you know, let’s say a dog comes in for a bleeding spleen and we remove the spleen and there’s a tumor there. We will take that tumor, that tissue, and we will send that out to the lab and the lab will take very small sections of that and look at it under the microscope and say, you know, this is what that tumor is so little bit complicated. But the most important reason why we recommend that is there’s no other way to get that diagnosis So, Ron, if you weren’t aligned 17 different lumps on this table in front of us and say Pick the lie Poma. It’s very difficult for me to do that. I cannot look with the naked eye. And so when I give you ah, surgery estimate and it says hissed a pathology or biopsy on that, I’m telling you that probably what we need to do is send that tumor off once it’s removed to make sure that it’s not cancer, you know, and that’s a big difference, right? Tumors are just abnormal growths. Cancer implies that it’s much more serious.
Ron
Anything that ends in an oma always sounds bad.
Stacey
So biopsy is one. What else?
Ron
What about the rear end rectal exam
Stacey
s? I would include that in the physical exam, which can be a diagnostic in and of itself. But a lot of times that physical exam is going to be a very poor diagnostic, right, because I’m going to stick my finger in there and I’m going to say that anal gland feels abnormal. I need to do something to either confirm that it’s a growth or and then guy, I mean to surgery. So what would that be?
Ron
I imagine that it has to come from somewhere. And are we going to go deeper with the scope?
Stacey
So sometimes I mean, you can physically look at it and I’ll be honest with you. There are certainly general practices that have scopes, but a scope is typically just a method of diagnostics to get to the biopsy because they can look at it. But even, you know, when I got scope for acid reflux, they were able to see that I had an excoriation, but they still had to take a sample of it to confirm what it is. So what I’m actually recommending is what we call aspirin and cytology. And so what we’ll do is if I have a growth and this is typically done before we plan surgery. I will take a needle and I’ll poke it into that, um, tumor or a lymph node or or something else in the body. And I will spray a sample of those cells on the slide, and I can look at that slide myself or more often. If I’m trying to get a diagnosis, I will put it in the mail and it will go to a pathologist or a Scientologist, and they will read that. And what that does is is it’s really important because it gives us a game plan for the surgery, and so it gets a little bit complicated and will cover all of this. But if I have a red growth on the skin, there are times that an aspirin can say this is nothing to worry about. It’s gonna go away on its own like a bee sting, or that’s what we call a mast cell tumor. And not only do you need to remove it, you have to get very wide margins, and so I’m still going to remove it. And I’m still gonna send that tumor away to the lab because the lab is going to do a biopsy or hissed a pathology. And they’re going to say, you got this entire tumor. Does that make sense?
Ron
So they’ll know that because of the margins on the what you cut out will be clean.
Stacey
Exactly. And so not only do we do cytology on tumors, but skin impression smears um, you know we’ll do. Ear swabs sometimes will do. Nasal swabs sometimes will take a little bit of fluid, and we’ll put that on the slide and look at it. So cytology is a massive in veterinary medicine. I would argue that outside of blood work, it’s probably one of the most common things that’s done and their many just as many times that I’ve done cytology and house and said, I know exactly what this is versus doing cytology and sending it out to a lab. So those air kind of That’s the world of cytology. So now we have blood work. We have cytology, and we have biopsy. What else? Boy? Starting to run out of ideas here. So the first step when you come in and your dog is coughing, what am I gonna recommend?
Ron
Uh, cough, sir. Well, that happens on occasion. We’re probably going to try to find out what what the underlying issue is. Is it a kennel? Cough? What else may it be related to
Stacey
and so will sculpt the lungs. And then I’ll tell you, we need to do what?
Ron
Send it out.
Stacey
Well, send out what? What? Whatever
Ron
you’re getting from the lungs
Stacey
so most of the time will actually recommend radiographs. Another exit? Yeah. Yeah, on x ray. is going to give you a whole body image, right? And so if I have a chest or abdomen, I’m gonna look at this whole abdomen and one shot typically will take multiple of use to get an idea of what’s going on. But there’s another method for me to say. OK, we have a dog that comes in or a Catholic comes in with intestinal issues, vomiting commonly right? And so we take an X ray in the X ray doesn’t show us much. What’s a way for me, besides a scope toe look inside the abdomen?
Ron
What about something more like an MRI
Stacey
S o M r I C t pet scans echoes those air all gonna follow fall under what are called advanced diagnostics and those air typically referral diagnostics. And so that’s a great way for us to look inside the ears or the eyes, or even the brain or an organ or something along those lines to see it. There’s another modality kind of in between those two, which has become very popular in the last probably five years or so, which is in clinic ultrasound. And so that’s the big difference is is when I come in and I say, You know, we may need to do an X ray and ultrasound. I’m doing two totally different modalities. Toe Look at two totally different things so extra. His whole body ultrasound allows me to look within organs and Seymour detail. And the thing of it is, Is that probably man. Five years ago, that was really rare. There were very few practices that had in clinic ultrasounds. It has become very common now. I mean, I would say there’s probably 75 to 80% of practices have ultrasounds and even within that sometimes will recommend bringing in a radiologist to do an ultrasound for us. If we see something, really, we have no idea what this is, you know will bring in an older stenographer to do that, which is a veterinarian who’s boarded in radiology, who does older stands That makes sense of the difference between the two.
Ron
Yeah, I can’t imagine Well, having had both X rays and ultrasounds done and everything else, and seeing the charges, I come back from different doctors around the area. I know there’s a lot of specialists that are looking at these things So in the in the animal health world, that doesn’t surprise me that there are more qualified people to help with diagnostics
Stacey
so kind of moving forward when we do blood work. Often times will do urine as well, so we classify that together. But your analysis could be a diagnostic in and of itself, right, because if we have a dog that comes in that’s urinating more frequently or urinating blood well typically recommend well, we may not need to do a full blood panel. Let’s grab some urine and see if there’s a U T I. But that can sometimes lead us to more advanced diagnostics like an X ray and ultrasound, so you can get an idea of how this stuff builds on itself. Based upon what I see on that urine, I can then recommend maybe we need to do an X ray to look for a bladder stone. So, um, kind of moving forward are some less known diagnostics that you may not stag Ron. So in the essence of time, all I’ll give you one of them is blood pressure. And so blood pressure for senior cats and often sometimes senior dogs is something we should be doing very, very regularly. And so, um, cats especially get a lot of blood pressure’s it. Blood pressure issues with some of their diseases. They develop like hyperthyroidism or kidney disease, and so that should be a diagnostic. That’s done, but we’re seeing a lot more primary hypertension in veterinary medicine now. The problem is, is that blood pressures are not easy things to get in veterinary medicine, because imagine putting a cat on their side and hooking them up to a bunch of different things and trying to get them to stay calm.
Ron
Just getting the cat into the vet clinic was job in itself.
Stacey
Yeah, everybody in that room is blood pressure is elevated, so it’s It’s a difficult diagnostic to Dio, and the final one is one that I’m gonna mention, because it does come up often on and I don’t think a lot of people understand it, which is what we call a culture when we have an infection. And we’re worried that at that infection is not responding to our general treatments that we have what’s called a resistant infection. And unfortunately, this is becoming very common in human and veterinary medicine, which is where our bacteria are evolving to be resistant to a lot of our antibiotics, and it’s a very, very, very scary thing. But the only way we have to diagnose that is to take a swab, run it on that infected area, put it in a tube and send it off to the lab. And the lab actually grows that bacteria. And then they do what’s called a sensitivity, which is where they put a whole bunch of different antibiotics on this grown bacteria to see how the bacteria responds to it. And if it dies because of the of the antibiotic. So really complicated process, but a very, very, very important one. Um, you know, when we come to some of these more resistant treatments and resistant infections, So Ron, that’s pretty much it. I mean, those are the things that when I think about doing in a general practice that we recommend often. But you can get an idea of how far into the woods you can go with these things
Ron
and the technology that we have now and how, how, why our pets are living longer and then why we have a podcast. Because senior dogs and cats are living a lot longer and on, and we’re grateful for it. And thanks to modern medicine and veterinarians like yourself, we have the benefit of that,
Stacey
right? And I think maybe you could understand why Sometimes veterinarians say, I could need to send you to a specialist. We’re not above calling in for reinforcements when we need Thio.
Ron
I drove by two that referral practices on the way here. So yeah, they’re they’re popping up all over, and they’re and they’re very valuable.
Stacey
And so that kind of covers diagnostics are on any questions about any of that kind of stuff before we had to break?
Ron
Uh, no. No questions, but I’ll probably come up with on while we’re on break.
Stacey
Okay, Perfect. All right, everybody, we will be right back with the hot spot, and we are back from break. So, Ron Well, what you got on your mind today? What’s hot spot?
Ron
Stacy? Something that has affected my life over the last few years. And, uh, today as much as ever. And, uh, after walking in the door and seeing your little ah well, puppies running around, I think probably the same thing. And that is, as our pets get older and turn into seniors and some super seniors, one of the issues that were almost bound to run into his deafness. And, um, gosh, when when I had Rudy around, I think his last you start to forget, right? I think it’s maybe been a CZ last two years. He might have been completely definite.
Stacey
Might have been longer than that.
Ron
It seems like you has done his whole life because I only remember, you know, the last couple of years and then our dog, Fay, who I would say again, she’s a rescues. We don’t know her exact age. Let’s say she’s around 10. I think it was somewhere in the last year. She started losing her hearing and is it is pretty much completely deaf, and you don’t have to be a veterinarian or rocket scientist to figure out if your dog is deaf or not. There are some pretty easy tests to do, and as the owner, when they stopped responding to you, that’s a pretty good idea that they that they’re either going deaf for our deaf. And fortunately, when it comes to our senior pets, it’s typically a gradual process. And the great thing about that, if you will, is that you have an opportunity to to put some processes in place, I guess. And to me, the most important one is something that you probably should have started when they were young. And there are things like hand signals because that when they see that, they’ll know what you’re trying to do. And maybe it’s maybe it’s a simple has come here. Or maybe it’s something like we’re going for a ride or it’s time to eat whatever, whatever important hand signals you use, Um, and you already have one downstairs that you’ve been working on in some language as well. But it’s the deafness that you can also get confused. And what I mean by that is something that we also deal with quite a bit. And that is, is it deafness? Or is there an underlying cognitive issue? Really? And because senior pets are our thing, you know, we’re probably a little bit more prone to thinking Oh, my goodness. Is this the onset of a dementia or something like that? Where is it? Might not be, it might be. And I guess when you think of what’s better or worse. Deafness is better than the than the ladder. So when we start looking at different things like we might my pets starting to look confused, like normally when I do this, maybe when I when I get the bowls out, they come running. And now they’re not running or they confused or they not hearing it. So So luckily, like you had talked about previously Ah, the more familiar we are with our pets and they are with us. We’re able to diagnose things ourselves a little bit easier. And deafness is something like I said, I don’t need a veterinarian. T help me diagnose What’s interesting is the amount of pets that are death. And I think the study that I saw recently is at least 10% of all dogs, and I don’t I didn’t see a number for cats. I don’t think we know. But I mean, when you when you talk about a dog that’s a senior and if you say one out of 10 is death being in practices that surprise you?
Stacey
It does, you know, and I think because it’s inevitable issue of people would bring that up where they think say, You know, I think Fluffy’s losing their hearing and we don’t have a lot of really fancy tests in veterinary medicine for hearing right. I mean, you know what I would do? I would come up behind the dog or the cat for that matter, and I go and that’s it. And I mean it. Or I would jingle a set of keys or something along those lines. Didn’t see whether or not the dog reacted and and you know what? The end of the day were they even completely deaf. That’s a That’s a great question. You know, I have people come in and said, Oh, they’ve been dead for two years and I would yell or I would clap my hands and the dog looked right at me and I I would say, Well, there may be some selective hearing going on first often
Ron
my wife has that,
Stacey
and then I would you know, I would typically ask him and I would say, Well, let’s think about the house, right? So this is what you’re getting at is you know what happens if you open a bag of potato chips three rooms away. You know the old factory dogs are amazing, and that sense doesn’t often go away. But if you crinkle rapper, that’s an open and the dog comes full I and towards you there’s probably a decent teams. They still have a little bit of hearing going on. But yeah, 10%. That that does kind of shocked me a little bit,
Ron
considering, Ah, you know, we’re on our third pug on, and I honestly, I couldn’t tell you if our other dogs Sasha had hearing anymore or not, or if she ever had hearing. But we’re at least at 66% of our dogs have and Dow S Oh, so we’re making up for a few other people that don’t have those issues. The interesting thing is, where does where does it start? Where does it stem? And there’s certainly a lot of different issues ranging from, you know, those with chronic year issues. So when I think about Rudy, he had chronic ear issues. No doubt we were always getting his ears cleaned, and I won’t name all the products, but we’re should have been stockholders and some of the companies that make some of the great ear cleaners Uh, and there are some some that are better than others. So I certainly recommend if your dog has ear issues, continue to stay on top of those best you can and make sure that you make a point that your veterinarian sees it as well. If they don’t smell it
Stacey
right and that takes is even back to the last section that we’re talking about, which is, you know, the longer those ear infections set up shop and live in there, the greater the risk. Unfortunately, that’s you’re going to get a resistance. Your infection and some of those are, I mean, even very difficult things for dermatologists thinking ahead of I mean, they dio scopes and ear flushes and cultures and MRI’s and see tease of the years just to try to figure out if there’s a way to solve that completely. Wouldn’t by the time you get to that point, you know, unfortunately, the dog probably has significant hearing damage because of it. Yeah, and I would say that you know, we have to make a probably a pretty big discrepancy between hearing impairments and full blown deafness, right, because I think if we said hearing impaired we’re talking. About 98% of all senior pets have some degree of hearing loss. I mean, we do as well. Oh, husband, you know, And that declines as we get older, especially with the range that dogs can hear beyond our range. And so full blown deafness is is always an interesting thing whenever we can get it, you know? And I do think there’s a genetic predisposition to that as well. We do have bear testing and you in veterinary medicine like you do in humans, you know, And I can’t remember that.
Ron
Were they let a bear loose?
Stacey
Yeah, I think the University of Missouri is the closest thing to us that that does it. And that’s a neurologic function. Test of the years also realized that their other senses are pretty flipping powerful. Their sense of smell, their sense of ah, vision. They’re appropriate septic senses. I mean, they have a lot of other stuff going for him that we don’t
Ron
Yeah, living a long, healthy life does not mean you can’t be done without hearing. And I think most of our dogs have been great examples of that. There is one. Interesting. I don’t know if I’d call it a statistic. But there’s certainly a lot of AH authorities out there that believe that there is some correlation between those white coated dogs and deafness.
Stacey
Absolutely, donations are big one, you know. Not that they’re fully white coated, but what happens is is that there’s ah, really interesting relationship between genes and typically, white coated blue eyed dogs will oftentimes be death. And there’s some sort of color combination there, with the eyes and in the skin coat that then lead to that. You’d have to ask somebody with a way more intelligence and genetics than what I have, but it’s It’s not uncommon to see blue eyed white dogs be deaf
Ron
and the you know some of the signs that if you think or because you have such a great relationship with your pets, you start seeing some of these things. Don’t don’t immediately attribute it to the cognitive issues when there’s excessive barking or they’re sleeping more or, like we had talked about, not easily woken right when that door opens or you jingle your keys. Normally they would jump up and start going at whoever’s breaking in or, they think is breaking in. In some cases, they’re just starting to go, Daph. And those things kind of go hand in hand. Believe me, if I had poor here and I’d probably sleep Moore’s well,
Stacey
we call it sleeping The sleep of the dead, which is kind of Ah, I mean, it’s not the greatest term for it, but these air. When you and I remember when Bailey like the last price, six months of her life, you know, you would come home and she’d be asleep in her bed and you kind of go over and you first watch to see if he’s breathing, and then you kind of just barely touch her. And then, you know, they always flip out of their ever loving mind started. Yeah, you know, when you feel bad about it, I think that the problem comes is when you get co existing diseases, which, unfortunately, is what happens. Thio. So many of our senior pets, right, which is you know, not only are they a little bit deaf, but they also have cataracts, and then they also, you know, you Sprinkle in a bit of a cognitive issue there. Now you’ve got three different problems that are all playing against each other to really kind of change the quality of life for the pets. And certainly a lot of them can inlet, you know pretty well I think, in the grand scheme of things, But as those processes all get worse and worse and worse is then when you start to deal with, you know, you Haller for your dog to go outside and they don’t listen anymore. Now you have to go pick him up and you take him outside. You can’t let a senior pet wander around the yard unsupervised because they can get out or they don’t hear something coming or, you know they don’t see something coming. So there’s just some changes to your life as a pet owner that you have to make
Ron
a lot of great tips there. Stacy, when you’re out, especially in public, right? A lot of us have our backyards, kind of Ah, you know, baby proofed or senior dog proofed, as the case may be, um, but the hard streets out there are not, you know, senior dog treated in that. So, um yeah, it’s It’s a very interesting issue. It’s a hot spot with me. And, uh, hopefully everybody that has the opportunity to pay a little bit closer attention to your your dogs and cats is they get a little bit older and look for those signs, and hopefully they’re they’re more related to hearing and not the cognitive side. I’m sure we’ll get into a little bit more as we go forward.
Stacey
Yeah, that’s a lets a multi partner, huh? You know, because it’s just a interesting topic of conversation, first and foremost and, you know, know that again, this is where the history part of I think the examination comes in a lot mentioned that stuff to your veterinarian. But mention all things that are going on because again it can help us to determine. Is this cognitive is this deafness isn’t a combination off both, and so really helps? And I guess, unfortunately know that if it is deafness, there’s not much weakened D’oh! Well, look at the ears will make sure that the year drums air. Okay, we’ll make sure there’s no middle or inner ear infection going on. But at the end of the day, I may say, you know, this is kind of part of the aging process ages in the disease, but we do lose the ability to hear certain frequencies as we age. All right, well, I think that does it for today. Um, we will be back in a couple of weeks and again, you can always email us at the senior pet podcast at gmail dot com, and we will speak with you all again soon.
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