Stacey
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, huh? Welcome to the senior pet podcast. I am veterinarian and senior pet expert Dr Stacy Bone. And with me is Ron de Vries. Ron is an animal health insider. Ron, how are you?

Ron
I am doing great. Thanks, Stacy.

Stacey
So today’s episode is gonna be, I guess, a little bit Maur science heavy and they tell you to never start anything with an apology. But we are going to do so real quick, which is that I think, in order to talk about aging and particularly why old age is not a disease. We have to talk about what happens as we age. And in order to talk about what happens as we age, we have to get into the nitty gritty of biology.

Ron
That’s where it starts to get scary for me, states.

Stacey
Right. And I’ll do my best. Thio keep this at an easy level so that Ron can understand and we’ll do from there. But there’s a lot of of, I guess, research and time spent on aging from way back in the day when we had people searching for the Fountain of Youth to people today that are doing things like DNA analysis and changing our genes to make us live longer.

Ron
Absolutely. And when I think of Harrison Ford, I quickly come up with the same reasons for looking for that fountain of youth.

Stacey
And so the topic that we’re gonna talk about is called Sinise INTs. And so there is your $10 word for the day, Ron and Citizens is basically a term that we use that describes the gradual deterioration of the body year of the cell as we age. And so, Ron, I have a little bit of trivia for you, But I’m gonna let you play along here and guests. So there are actually some species that don’t perceive a ble age. Do you know what those are?

Ron
Boy, that’s a tough one. A species that doesn’t perceive a ble a.

Stacey
I will tell you there’s three of them right now that we have what are called negligible. Sinise INTs which means in all terms, they don’t appear to age.

Ron
I know we haven’t seen any dinosaurs age, right?

Stacey
Yeah, those got taken out pretty orderly by a flying rock.

Ron
Um, I’m trying to think I don’t have a lot of experience with snakes. That might be one of my gases. Um, fish. I don’t have a lot of fear gets That might be another getting there.

Stacey
Yeah, you’re kind of edging on all sides of it.

Ron
Oh, boy. That means I’m not hitting my mark.

Stacey
Right? And 11 you wouldn’t get. So I’ll give him the three that we know for certain. So the first is the sturgeon, actually. So you were right when you were talking about faith. The second is the tortoise and the third. Actually, we didn’t realize until 2018 which is everybody’s favorite, the naked mole rat. And so, unfortunately, none of us yet have figured out how to escape aging. But there’s a really important part of this that we’ve we’ve mentioned and we’re gonna talk about it as well. Which is that aging itself is not a disease. Ron, why do you think ageing isn’t isn’t a disease?

Ron
You know It’s a great question. I think it all goes back to the process of aging isn’t a disease. It just so happens that as we age where we become either more susceptible to disease or I think I heard somebody say If you live long enough, you’re eventually going to get this or get that dependent if you’re a man or a woman And for men, I think it was always colon cancer. Rectal cancer. Um so I think it’s just Ah, you know, our bodies weren’t designed to live for 1000 years. But as good medicine on the human side gets us a little further along, we tend to see Maur disease states that we wouldn’t have seen back in the Cave Man days, which I would have never survived due to my poor vision.

Stacey
And and that’s the thing, right? I mean, aging is something that happens from the day one of birth to the day that we die. We age, so aging is a process. Ageing is not a disease, but there are things that happen during that process that are really, really, really important. And so the body is not perfect. Mind specifically is not perfect, but none of ours is perfect, and it makes mistakes, and it makes mistakes all the time and from the most microscopic level to the most macroscopic level. It’s not an infallible system. And so we look att, replication. Our cells are dividing all the time. And there are these little guys called telomeres, and telomeres are the cap that sits on the outer edge of our chromosome, and they’re there to take a beating. And so, basically, when we replicator, our cells divide, we shear off little ends of the chromosome and the telomeres take that hit, and they say, OK, we can keep handling, and we keep handling it until the body eventually cuts off too much. And what ends up happening is that the cell at that point can no longer replicate. And so as we age, those telomeres shorten. And so we think that’s why a lot of cells stop dividing at some point. So there’s that, and there’s also the fact that our cells are dividing. We have these things, which is hot button in human medicine right now, which is called stem cells, and stem cells are always making new cells. The thing of it is that we exhaust them right. We can’t keep using them over and over again without eventually running out of steam. And so we think that happened with stem cells as well. And so why we’re looking into stem cells is a possibility of stem cell transplants, and things like that will hopefully help us regenerate tissues as we age. So that’s, you know, boring Lee. What really happens to us as we age now? There’s a lot of theories that fall under the aging process. Itself, like wide is aging eventually lead Thio, unfortunately, passing away and one of the big things that’s looked out is mutations. And Ron, do you remember what mutations are?

Ron
That’s when things anomalies have my clothes?

Stacey
Exactly. Exactly. And so every time the cell divides, there’s a risk of it making a mistake. Usually the body catches that mistake, but sometimes it slips through the cracks, and that’s called a mutation. And so some mutations are innocuous. They don’t cause any problem. Some mutations are exceedingly dangerous, and I had a professor in vet school. They used to tell us that cancer on Lee takes three mutations. The first mutation is is that the cell needs to be able to mutate without being recognized, so the first mutation is it somehow gets around the body’s immune system. The second is that mutation creates it allows the cell to grow rapidly, and then the third mutation allows those abnormal cells and are growing rapidly to spread to other parts of the body. And so, if you think of it in that level, you can understand that that could happen at any point in time in our life. And that’s the unfortunate nature of things like infant or child cancer. Or when I diagnose an eight month old dog with lymphoma. Certainly we see cancer in an older animal, but it’s not because they’re old. It’s because their cells have divided so many times. The likelihood of making a mistake is there Does that make sense?

Ron
It does to me. Thanks for dumbing that down.

Stacey
Yeah, and I mean anything that causes mutations or even causes increased cell division is dangerous. And so we looked at inflammation right and inflammation we’re gonna find in the next 10 years, maybe even sooner than that. I think they’re probably starting to lean towards it. A lot. Right now, inflammation is the enemy of good health. And so the Maur inflamed. The more cell turnover you have, the greater the likelihood is of a mistake. It’s all a numbers game. There isn’t any magical science to this. It’s all sheer numbers. If you have a cell divides 100 times, that cell is way more likely to make a mistake than a cell that divides once. And sometimes those odds are not in your favor, which is why that cell dividing one time can occasionally form into something much more serious. So we talk about a lot of things in the body, like inflammation, and the other thing we talk about a lot is this’ll kind of abstract topic of conversation called oxidative stress. Essentially, we know that there’s a lot of things that happen to our body that causes oxidation, and oxidation is really, really, really bad. It causes tissue damage and all kinds of things. So we as humans take these things called antioxidants. Yeah, and there inert our food there in our multi vitamins and for dogs as well on cats, for that matter. We don’t really give multi vitamins all that often because we’re blessed with good nutrition that has most of those antioxidants in it. Ceron, I’m done like I know that was heavy but airy science. Yeah. So, uh, what we’ll do is we’ll take a quick break to let everybody just decompress for a second. What we’ll do when we come back from the break is well, actually, use what we’ve just learned. It will talk a little bit about how that affects senior pet care will be right back. Welcome back, everyone. So, Ron, the first bit of this episode I just beat people over the head with a biology book.

Ron
A real downer for those of us that aren’t that bright.

Stacey
I’m notorious for that. Unfortunately, So the next part of this episode hopefully will be a little bit more applicable. So in hindsight, if you’d skipped ahead like 12 minutes, he would’ve got here. But But we didn’t tell you that. So the the topic of conversation now is gonna be What does a senior pet care look like? So if we know that aging itself isn’t a disease, how do we as veterinarians, or how do we as pet owners handle on aging pet itself So, Ron, what do you think? I mean, when I say senior pact care versus, um, puppy care or even young adult care or middle care? What? What do you think the big difference is? Our speed,

Ron
I think. Yeah. When we, uh, what we discussed previously in a previous episode, Senior Peck here we talked about veterinary care. One of those topics or issues was as we get older, we need to make sure that we’re seeing the veterinarian just like a doctor on the human side Maur frequently than we did when we were younger. We were less after disease and disease. States as a pet owner were also needing to be a little bit more patient with our senior pets. For those of us that have seen your parent’s or grandparent’s or have experience with them, you know, you have to be patient with them as well for a variety of reasons.

Stacey
Well, and I think accidents in the house right, because that was a big one for my dog is I mean, she started having accidents in the house occasionally, and it was it whether it was a concept of the cognitive disease or just that she couldn’t hold her bladder as much. I think back to when she was three and she could hold her bladder for 14 hours.

Ron
And now that number gets down to two hours. Right?

Stacey
Right. And so yeah, absolutely. I think freak frequency is a big one. You’re going to go more often with me as a veterinarian. I hate to expose this secret, but a lot of times the senior pet exams tended to be a little bit more thorough. And, Ron, I don’t know when you had Rudy and the vet, How long were those typical exams?

Ron
They lasted a little bit longer than when he was, you know, fully healthy and younger, because there always seemed to be something creeping up that we wanted to look into a little bit further.

Stacey
Yeah, you would. You would leave the room and you stick your head back in to be like, Oh, you know, one more question, And then I go One more question. And so like Columbo, right? And that we used to when we blocked these appointments, often our calendar at work. We would block a little bit more time for the senior pet appointment because invariably they’re gonna be problems. So, yeah. I mean, I think senior pick here is just that it’s a whole lot more of a fact finding mission. What do you have? What concerns do you have? And then how are we gonna deal with it? And I think what’s really interesting, Ron, is that, you know, if you look at human medicine, geriatrics and gerontology, which are probably you’re like, you’re too big things that are focused side parts of medicine that air focused in on seniors. We don’t have that equivalent in Vet Med. You know, we have some general practitioners like myself that are a little bit more enthusiastic about senior pet health. But as far as I know, I mean, you’ve traveled around a whole lot more than I have of you met. Any veterinarians with practice is completely devoted to senior pets.

Ron
No, you haven’t seen it yet, but I believe it’s on the horizon.

Stacey
I agree. 100%. And hopefully they’ll they’ll console to us whenever they do so and so. Yeah. I mean, and I think that when we look at senior petcare the goals of a senior pet exam and and senior pet care in general are totally different. So, Ron, if you think back to Rudy and you think back to spot even longer and you say to yourself I mean, what are the things that you consider to be the single most important parts of your senior pet care? Like, what goals did you have when you walked into the vet? You said, these are the things I want. Absolutely, no

Ron
are okay, Yeah, I think a lot of them revolved around general movement. How is your dog walking? Or, if you’re lucky enough, maybe still running or galloping a little bit,

Stacey
which is a factor of pain, right? I mean, that’s that’s that mobility. So I think pain is a big one. What else?

Ron
Aural health is certainly a hot topic when it gets thio senior pets and and you know what have you done on the preventive side leading to their right? That that’s that’s the one that tends to take a lot of time in those of us with break yo. Dogs certainly understand. Brushing their two is an even greater challenge than a dog with a nice snout on,

Stacey
and sometimes teeth just fall out.

Ron
Sometimes they do. And I always ask veterinarians like you, do you charge me for an extraction?

Stacey
Not coming. I never did. I never did

Ron
it just because you show me a bowl full of thief. I wonder how many I’m getting charged for. No, Uh, yeah. And that’s the tricky part of, you know, break your dogs in particular. But dogs in general and senior dogs is as they age, and maybe they get a little bit grumpier and going back to the pain side of it. Are they willing to let you brush their teeth still? And if you’re lucky, you started that process when they were young and they got used to it. But that doesn’t mean they’re going to continue to be as willing.

Stacey
And I think if we wanted to put a term on this, the term that we throw around in medicines, particularly veterinary medicine, is quality of life. And I think that that term is is used often and is all encompassing. But there’s two really big quality of life’s lives life’s that we deal with in veterinary medicine. The first is the quality of life of the pet. What’s the second one?

Ron
I would imagine the quality life of the pet owner.

Stacey
Yes, and that’s and that’s a huge part of this. And why that’s such a big deal is that really comes into play when we have these end of life decisions and we really have to have those conversations off. You know what amazes me? Sometimes I’ll never forget. We took a vacation to Vegas, my wife and I and we’d left a letter for the pet sitter. And I mean this thing probably border lined on a novel. I mean, it was multiple pages front and back. And I remember reading this thing and thinking to myself where those people, you know, I mean, we’ve you know, if Bailey doesn’t eat, you need to put a little bit of hot gravy on the food. And if she still doesn’t need and pick it up and come back in three hours and you may want to consider ah, plate versus of bull. I mean, we were flipping nuts.

Ron
I can appreciate that. I’m sure I’ve left at least a 22 and 1/2 pager for somebody watching Rudy at some point, right?

Stacey
Well, I remember you saying at one point in time you didn’t. You sleep on the floor?

Ron
Yeah, in the closet, by the way, because he tended to find that his safe place. Right, cause as is, really, really got towards the end there. Hearing had left many years before he passed. And then his vision really started to g o and an outside of smell, which was, I think, the easiest way for him to know I was around. Andi was always much more comfortable knowing that I was around. But he found you know, that security in the closet with, you know, 34 walls around him. Knowing that, I guess his instinct was that nobody could hurt him there. And so, yeah, Dad had spent a little time on the floor with Rudy in the closet, and those were days. I try not to reflect on too much,

Stacey
and I mean, I guess I remember many times in practice and I’ll expose the veterinary way of thinking about this. So a lot of times, quality of life is always at the forefront of the mind of the veterinarian, whether or not it seems that way. And part of that whole discussion is you know, when we have a dog or a cat with a disease. Ah, lot of that conversation revolves around one. What’s your quality of life gonna be trying to treat this disease? You know, it doesn’t do us any good of the therapy that we give your pet. And let’s talk about steroids, right? Because steroids air the catch all they fix a lot of things in this world, but certainly different animals have different side effects to steroids from panting and pacing all the way to drinking bowls of water and having accidents in the house. And if that doesn’t work with your lifestyle, if you have a lot of really expensive Oriental rugs and you have a dog that’s peeing every three minutes, you know we may not be able to work that out. That quality of life becomes really important.

Ron
Short term medicine, right? Yeah, it doesn’t bode well for the longer term health of a senior pet.

Stacey
And so that’s that’s kind of the mindset of I think, the veterinarian and the pet owner when we deal with these geriatrics. Oh, I used a bad word. Super seniors and the senior pets is that we’re gonna talk and I could tell you There have been many times that I’ve been mid discussion and I’ve stopped myself. And I’ve said, How are you doing? How are you handling this? Okay. And we would end up finding out that the owners were on their last legs, you know, when they weren’t willing to accept that, maybe not even willing to accept. They were willing to disclose that. Yeah, they were at the end of their rope. And I would often tell people I’m like, Listen, you know, you’ve had this cat for 18 years of its life, and it’s been 18 glorious years. You don’t want the last three months tomar that entire life of of with that pet. And and so there’s a really, really conversation when we have seen your pet care and, you know, we kind of focused in on the doom and gloom aspect of it. But even quality of life comes into play. Like I say when we’re dealing with arthritis, for instance. I mean, if I’m gonna put you on an anti inflammatory, there are some things that we’re gonna have to understand because the number one side effect of an anti inflammatory is loose stools close, it is closed. You actually I mean, you’re near nailed on it. So it’s it’s G I in origin, but it’s usually G I ulcers and we use veterinarians oftentimes talk about kidney and liver. But in reality, those air like so far on the list, it’s usually G. I upset. So you have to understand that we need to monitor things when we do medication and stuff like that. So that’s really senior pet care. In a nutshell. I do think that we have to put in Asterix on this and say that Senior Peck here is evolving. It’s evolving all the time. We’re learning that there are new processes in new problems that deal with our senior pets. And, you know, thankfully, there’s a lot of veterinarians that are starting to look at these problems and develop solutions that address these things like Paul freaks and exists now because we need to have mobility enhancers for our senior pets. So that’s a little bit about senior petcare Ron. Anything else to add?

Ron
Nothing that I can think of. Stacy, we’ve touched on quite a bit already.

Stacey
Yeah, like I said, this is hopefully these of the episodes that people people learn To enjoy where we’re not spending 15 minutes talking about ourselves and we’re getting into the meat of science and medicine and things like that. So we were going to take a quick break and then Ron, I guess we’re up for a hot spot, right?

Ron
Ready to go?

Stacey
Awesome. We’ll be right back and

Ron
we are back. Welcome back to the senior pet podcast. Well, it’s time now to get to our well, one of our favorite topics. And that is our hot spots this weekend in ah, deference to our topic on senior pet care and what it means to be a senior pet. I want to talk about something that hits close to home for me on a regular, if not daily basis, and that is proper exercise and safety. I’m gonna hope that my wife doesn’t listen to this episode for one good reason. And that is, um, my hot spot is people that have dogs that do not walk their dogs

Stacey
when they’re not getting any exercise at all. Yes, and

Ron
I don’t just mean walking it because there’s a variety of different ways to get exercise, just like there is for us. But when it comes to our dogs, the reason that we need to get out there and walk our dogs and full disclosure. On occasion I will walk my wife’s dog and it is my wife’s dog because that’s she. Let us know that very early on both the dog and my wife. But I will take her out and Walker sometimes and not tell her that only because I can.

Stacey
Is that what marriage is after a long is hiding walks for me either.

Ron
I don’t know that we call that line when we’re trying to stay away and say yes and gray and reference to a senior Peta’s well, so yes, uh, sometimes fake. It’s walked, uh, on the on the sly a little bit, but, you know, getting back toe Why, right? It’s It’s for a variety of reasons and very similar to our exactly like we humans when we get older, it’s good for things like the mind. Right, Stacey? And you know, we’ve talked about cognitive issues and I think exercise eyes. Certainly one thing that we can do to help cognitive disease and stay in check.

Stacey
Well, I mean, think about how poor cognitively the lives of our pets are and weaken, you know, somewhat focus more on dogs here than cats. But, I mean, we goto work, were gone for 12 hours a day, A lot of times more.

Ron
If you live in California,

Stacey
right, and then you come home and you’re tired, and so you walk in the door, your dog’s happy to see you. You’re ready for dinner. You do dinner, you do work at home or you sit on the couch and watch TV and then you ready for bed. I mean, think about cognitively. What that’s like for your dog has been home by themselves, with no exercise for 14 plus hours.

Ron
Just looking at a wall at many. Chances are waiting for that Dorito, right? Yeah. So? So the mind is one great reason that we need to get daily exercise. The other. The other couple that I have in mind states and you may have more is this is wait aspect. You know we won’t go into and this episode what percent of dogs and cats because it’s important for cats to exercise. They just tend to do a lot of creeping on their own. But keeping their weight in check is so important to their health, and going out and getting actual exercise is so critical. The other one that I like to touch on is is the strength and the muscle mass that we can retain by getting exercise. Because, as we talked about in a previous episode, you know when that dog starts to age and just like humans, we start to lose that muscle mass. We start to look a little worse than we may feel in many cases,

Stacey
and there’s a lot of really good research into that. Right now. We look ATT, particularly hyper thyroid cats and, you know, hyper thyroid cats, which will get into, you know, in the future, lose weight very rapidly, and they tend to gain weight back very rapidly. But they they actually have started to show that the way that they gave back is not muscle. It tends to be fat, subcutaneous tissues. So, yeah, I think that’s absolutely, really, really interesting. Aging is not a reason to not exercise. I would argue that it’s a reason to exercise.

Ron
Yeah, you’re exactly right. One of the one of the things that I’ve been thinking about recently in terms of exercises, you know, why is walking so great? And number one? It’s a very, very low impact Exercise form, right? We’re not. We’re not pounding Our legs and feet and hips on the pavement were just sort of gently walking along, and that’s what we want our dogs to do as well. When we take them out, There’s a lot of things that we need to be cognizant of. The while we’re out walking our pets and senior pets even more temperature. Stacy, are our dogs a little bit more sensitive to temperature changes? They get older.

Stacey
Yeah, not even just temperature but humidity as well. And there’s two temperatures that we talk about, so we talk about the temperature of the asphalt. So a lot of times pa pads as dogs age thin a little bit, which makes them a little bit more predisposed. Thio thermal burns from the asphalt. The second thing is that, and again, it’s not even aging, but it’s the tissues and changes that happened within them. But we look at break yourself Alex or short muzzle dogs, or we look at your Labradors that can develop things like Lauren Geo paralysis, and those dogs become exceedingly susceptible to high humidity high heat.

Ron
And then there’s the opposite cited that the cold right? And when it comes to, uh, you know, we live in the Midwest, so where we tend to get all kinds of weather

Stacey
all in the same day

Ron
and one of those things we get is ice. And if you take your dog out in icy conditions, besides being slippery for both of you, it can also be dangerous giving that ice in there in between their paw pads.

Stacey
Yeah, and I mean, I I think that there’s so much here because I found myself saying that about my dogs as well. Well, you know, she’s she’s old, so probably don’t want to go for a walk. But, man, I mean the benefits of regular exercise, and I’ll be honest with you. Let’s not just throw the pets out there, but let’s throw the pet owners as well. I mean, I don’t think that there’s a one of us in this world that wouldn’t benefit from doing a 30 minute walk a day. I mean, I think it would all improve our mind, sets their mindsets, cognitive muscle and decrease fat. I mean, there’s just so many benefits from it. So I would say Get off your couch, turn off the podcasts or even better,

Ron
listen to the podcast as you’re walking, There you go, your portable device.

Stacey
And, um, you know, really kind of just being a little bit more cognizant of what’s going on that are pets, you know, really do the sedentary lifestyles. And while we’re always gonna argue that ABS Air made in the kitchen exercises a really fundamental part of this and I’m gonna throw a quick shot out there for cats because I know we did through a little bit on dogs as well, cats are are a little bit more difficult, right? I mean, cats sleep 22 22 hours a day. It’s a glorious existence, but there are some things that you can do to help really get them a little bit of exercise, so laser pointers air really good. You can put the food bowl on one level of your house and then put the litter box on a different level of your house. Assuming that your cats does not have any urinary issues and that can help. Really? You know, even one or two trips up and down the stairs can keep a cat a little bit more active than you know, the ones that just lay around on the window sill all the time.

Ron
I know there are people out there that also take their cats for walks. They’re very few and far between. Lovely swapped. I am always love on shockingly when I see something like that love one of the other things that wanted again to simply on the senior Pats side of exercises. What are some of the things that we can do to make exercise in a little bit better for our senior pets? And the things that I’ve come up with with the help of our friends of the A, K. C and the Pet Health Network is just thinking like we can alter our walk by making it shorter, right? We can alter it by making it a little slower that that even works for me. But you know you want to give them the opportunity in terms of their mind. Get out there in smell things, see things get some fresh air and again like you said Doctor Stacy. That’s for all of us. Um, you know, like we talked about previous episodes. There are dogs that like to swim, and if you’ve got a dog that’s a swimmer and and maybe a pug is not a great example of that or any single dog, but but those dogs that love to swim get him out swimming again, very low impact and an amazing form of exercise for them.

Stacey
And if you do need some help, I will toss out a quick shout out to our rehab veterinarians and veterinary technicians. You know, if you have a senior dog who has arthritis or did something along those lines, they can really help you. One. Get your dogs physical endurance up, but two can come up with exercise plans for you and your pet.

Ron
Yeah, absolutely. And those folks do a wonderful job. Using hydrotherapy as well is a great way to get your dog in water while not forcing them to swim. So, yeah, just some of the ways that we can alter. What we do is our pets give a little bit older, become senior, sometimes super seniors. It doesn’t mean that they don’t still need exercise. We’d argue that they need more exercise. But watch out for for some of the signs that we’ve gone a little bit too far. Don’t, as they say in sports, don’t try to play through the pain?

Stacey
We don’t want to do anything that’s that enhances pain. And keep in mind that if you do take your dog for a walk and they seem painful the next day, that may be a great indication that they need to be on in the anti inflammatory or supplement or even nutrition that’s based towards mobility.

Ron
There’s certainly a lot of great products out there that can help address that. Definitely and say, See, that’s all I had on the hot spot Stop.

Stacey
Well, I think, Ron, that is gonna do it for today’s episode we’ve talked about before. You can always email us at the senior pet podcast at gmail dot com. If you wanna have lengthy discussions on telomeres and aging, we are here for you the whole time. If not, we will be back in two weeks with another great topic. I believe we’re going to start diving into what, Um, the senior pet veterinary visit looks like so tune. And then thanks a lot. Thank you for listening to the senior pet podcast. Be sure to subscribe to catch our next episode and follow us at the senior pet podcast on your social media of choice. The information in this podcast is not intended or implied to be a substitute for professional veterinary advice, diagnosis or treatment. Please consult your veterinarian with many concerns about your individual pet.