ramblings of a vet tech student

maddi. vet tech student. main @holyhael

[drferox]

Anonymous said to @ask-drferox: Does it tend to stress animals out to have food given in a puzzle feeder INSTEAD of their usual food bowl rather than IN ADDITION?

I don’t think so, for most animals. They may be frustrated about getting the food if they’re not used to playing for their meal, but I don’t think it causes distress. Particularly if you take the time to show them how it works to get food.

They’re usually not distressed because they’re in control of what’s going on, even if it’s harder than they’re used to. I generally recommend people start with easier puzzles to not discourage the animal, but most enjoy it. It’s very rare that I don’t use a puzzle feeder for Wonka.

[drferox]

Hey DrFerox, I have a question, does the senior dog food actually make a difference or is it marketing? I have an old boi myself and was just wondering.

Not all brands are created equal. Some of the cheaper ones have no difference at all between their ‘senior’ and ‘adult’ food, but I think that’s less these days with some tweaking of the local consumer protection acts.

In general senior dog foods have a few common features, though not every brand has every one.

Lower calorie

Higher fiber

Controlled protein and more animal protein compared to plant protein

Lower fat

Added glucosamine, fish oil, or other joint supplements

Some are tailored much better than others. Dogs are often less active in their senior years, and they often require a more digestible quality of protein. Those old intestines are not quite what they used to be.

[drferox]

If you were wondering, this is what a gummy bear looks like on Ultrasound.

[journey-to-dvm]

Don’t forgot to keep your metronidazole doses low in kitties, or else neurological signs can occur!

Anisocoria: The condition of one pupil being larger than the other.

[vettectual]

my favorite tech is working today i’m so happy and relieved

[catsuggest]

mood

[theexoticvet-deactivated2022070]

Hyperthyroidism

Hyperthyroidism is another really common disease in cats. Usually cats older than 10 are affected but I have seen in it cats that were 6-7 years old. The thyroid glands are paired glands that live on either side of the upper trachea.

The glands secrete a few hormones that mostly regulate metabolism in some way or another. The ones we are concerned with in hyperthyroidism are triiodothyronine (T3) and thyroxine (T4). The pituitary gland secretes a hormone called thyroid stimulating hormone (TSH) which tells the thyroid to pump out T3 and T4. When the levels of thyroid hormones are high, this tells the pituitary gland to stop making TSH which then stops stimulating the thyroid.

In cats with hyperthyroidism, the thyroid either has a benign tumor called an adenoma or a cancerous tumor called adenocarcinoma. Adenoma is more common. These tumors produce T3 and T4 all of the time and don’t respond to a lack of TSH. This usually speeds up metabolism so affected cats usually are always hungry, lose weight, have fast heart rates, act hyperactive, and look unkempt.

This isn’t always the case though and some cats have different symptoms. Hyperthyroidism is so common that anytime  I have an older feline patient that just isn’t behaving normally or has vague symptoms, I test for it.

Lots of energy, weight loss even when you eat all day, sounds like a miracle disease right? Unfortunately without treatment it can cause heart failure and other issues so it isn’t a benign disease.

There are a few treatments for hyperthyroidism. Gold standard is radioactive iodine therapy. I 131 is injected into the cat and it is taken up by the thyroid which destroys the overactive gland. This usually cures hyperthyroidism but sometimes too much of the gland is destroyed and so we make cats hypothyroid and have to  start them on thyroid supplementation. Still, results are usually good and this is what I recommend to owners.

Another option is surgically removing the thyroid glands. This can be a complicated surgery and just like iodine therapy, sometimes too much is removed and they need supplementation.

A third option and the most popular with owners, is starting cats on a drug called Methimazole. This drug prevents the thyroid from building T3 and T4 and works fairly well. It has to be given for life and levels of thyroid hormones have to monitored to ensure we aren’t stopping too much. It can take some playing around with the dose to find the right one for the cat and there is the issue of giving a pill once or twice a day for the life of the cat. This drug can be compounded into a transdermal medication that is rubbed on the ear, but I find that it doesn’t work as well and it is very expensive.

The final option is a prescription diet limited in iodine. Most cats do not like the food and those that do often stop eating it after a while. It is also important to ensure the cat isn’t getting any other food because it will stop the diet from working. I don’t have good luck going this route but some owners want to try.

All in all, hyperthyroidism is a good disease to have because it is treatable. It is amazing seeing how much better cats look and feel after starting treatment. I’ve had some owners come in for euthanasia only to have a happy, healthy cat only a month or two later.

(Images from: https://www2.vet.cornell.edu/departments-centers-and-institutes/cornell-feline-health-center/health-information/feline-health-topics/hyperthyroidism-cats)

[soontobedvm]

Me as a Vet:

[vetnursetails]

There’s no fixing that 😔

[vetnursetails]

Today was one of those extra spicy days

[vettectual]

i never want to be like lori

[why-animals-do-the-thing]

It's fairly common for people looking at elephants to notice that they have liquid seeping from the corners of their eyes. Some advocacy groups say elephants are crying because they're sad, but scientists say that elephants don't have tear ducts. If the latter is true, where is that liquid coming from?

If you’ve spent ever a little time around parts of the internet that deal with elephant advocacy, you’ve probably seen the stock photo above: liquid clearly running out of the inner corner of an elephant’s eye, looking for all the world like crying. It’s pretty much the go-to image for pieces about emotional complexity in elephants, and is generally used to represent the fact that people think they can cry tears of emotion. Except if you’ve spent any time at a zoo or around people who work with elephants, they’ll tell you elephants can’t cry because they don’t have the right physical structures. So what gives? The answer turns out to be, effectively, that going semi-aquatic for a while in your evolutionary history fucks up a perfectly good tear-producing system, and that effective science messaging is really hard. So. Uh. I went down a rabbit hole and spent two weeks researching how elephant eyeballs keep themselves wet. It’s actually pretty fascinating science, but since the above article I wrote is pretty technical, here’s a more casual rundown. 

Humans (and most mammals) produce most of our tear fluid from a big gland under the outer part of our eyebrows. It drains onto the eye, spreads across it when we blink, and normally just drains away into our nasal cavity through those tiny holes in the inner corners of our eyes. If our eyes get irritated, we produce more liquid to flush out whatever is in them; if we’re in an emotional state, the “calm yourself back down” part of the fight-or-flight reflex system makes the gland overproduce liquid that’s full of hormones and painkillers and stuff. In the latter case, the drainage canals in our eyes get overwhelmed by the amount of liquid produced, and you get the whole tears spilling out of your eyes thing. 

Tear fluid isn’t just liquid in your eyes - it’s actually a pretty complicated three-layer setup. Each layer is produced by a different type of gland and has a different purpose: mucous helps make sure tears spread evenly, then you’ve got the actual aqueous stuff which is anti-bacterial, and then oil on top of the watery stuff keeps the liquid from evaporating or falling out of your eyes all the time.

Probably during the period of time when it’s thought  the ancestors of elephants were semi-aquatic, they basically threw that entire system out of the window. Having a modified lacrimal apparatus (the set of glands and canals that are involved in tear production) appears to be a fairly normal thing for semi-aquatic mammals: modern pinnipeds don’t have an oil layer on their tear film, because when you’re underwater a lot you don’t need to worry about your eyeball lubrication evaporating. (This is why pinnipeds, when on land, appear to always be crying - there’s no lipid barrier creating surface tension and keeping the fluid on the eye.) Except…  the ancestors of elephants got rid of the whole water-based tear-producing system, not just the lipid layers. Including the drainage system at the corners of their eyes. And then, eventually, evolved to be terrestrial again. 

So, in absence of the normal glandular system for lubricating their eyes, elephants… appear to have basically hijacked a bunch of the glands they did have left (one on the third eyelid, as well as ones external to the eye that normally lubricate the eyelashes) and started using them to keep their eyes moist. Because these are modified skin glands, they produce really weird fluid - lovely combinations of watery liquid and mucous and sebum. But, because elephants no longer have those drainage systems for tear fluid, it doesn’t have anywhere to go; their watery eyeball goop builds up and then spills out of their eyes at the inner corner. There’s actually a specific groove in the skin that moves it diagonally away from the eye in both species, which is why the spilled fluid tends to look like “tear tracks” rather than just a wet mess near the eye. 

TL;DR: when it looks like an elephant is crying, that’s just the regular eyeball moisture draining out visibly because they don’t have canals to carry it into the nasal passages like most mammals. 

Here’s some other fun stuff about eyeballs and elephants and crying that made the above overview a bit overwhelming when I tried to include them in paragraph form: 

Without a lacrimal apparatus, elephants can’t produce emotional tears - the glands that normally get a message from the brain that says ‘hey you should produce sad tears now’ are just straight up non-existent. 

The white stuff that accumulates at the corners of their eyes is likely to be the mucous and sebum from the tear fluid that hasn’t evaporated; there’s no academic literature addressing it, but it occurs more on windy days when their eyes would be producing more tear film to remove irritants,and  the elephant care staff I’ve talked to said it’s considered to be a normal occurrence. 

The drainage from glands on the side of an elephant’s head is also not crying! It’s fluid seeping from a modified sweat gland, which (in African elephants) is actually triggered by the other end of the fight-or-flight system from crying; they start draining from their temporal glands during periods of high internal arousal, but it’s the “okay time to get amped” sympathetic nervous system that makes it happen - crying is a parasympathetic nervous system response that serves to help humans calm back down after a stressor. 

Asian elephants don’t actually generally from their temporal glands during strong emotion! Females rarely, if ever, produce fluid from them, and males generally only have discharge present fro them when they’re in musth. 

We don’t actually know a lot about the purpose of the temporal glands in elephants. It’s hypothesized that the secretions from them are some sort of chemical communication, but more research is needed. 

EDIT: tear duct appears to be a colloquial term that is used to reference both the little tubes between the gland that creates tears and the surface of your eye, and the duct that drains tears into the nasal cavity of both mammals. This is part of the confusion around the term. Either way, saying “elephants don’t have tear ducts” is an interesting way of phrasing things, because what’s more important is that they also don’t have the gland that creates tears. 

Second TL;DR: Don’t trust information from any “elephant expert” who attempts to claim that elephants cry emotional tears. It’s just straight up anatomically impossible, and the “alternate” (temporal gland drainage) isn’t analogous to the internal states in which humans cry. Anyone who purports that elephants cry emotionally either hasn’t done their research or is purposefully misrepresenting normal elephant physiology as a manipulation tactic. 

[drferox]

Just found out about capnocytophaga canimorsus 😨😨😨 terrifying

Capnocytophaga canimorsus is one of those hidden delights that lurk in the mouths of our carnivore companions. There are countless bites and scratches each year, but the bacterium rarely causes a problem in healthy individuals. If you’re lacking a spleen or immunocompromised, however, you might get unlucky.

The bacteria can cause full blown septicemia and death, but requires a high iron environment. I wonder if dogs eating more red meat would have high levels in their mouths? It seems like it’s becoming more common, but that might be more because we can recognize it better.

But remember you encounter so many pathogens every day. You’re well equipped to fight most of them off, just don’t let dogs and cats lick your wounds. 

[babyanimalgifs]

[danandarnold-deactivated2024102]

@fabricatedghost

[why-animals-do-the-thing]

This may look cute, but that’s actually a really uncomfortable dog. The entire video is filled with avoidance behaviors (turning the head away), and the tension on the dog’s face (especially around the eyes and the base of the ears) once the egg is in it’s mouth is a dead giveaway. Yes, the dog’s tail wags a bit - but in this case it’s not a sign of the dog being happy. The dog is sitting stiffly, avoiding the person’s hands, and trying really hard to make the human happy while really uncomfortable. 

[scoretheearth]

I just took a few vids of Teener performing a ‘hold it’ that shows a really nice contrast against the demeanor of the golden retriever. Relaxed face muscles, soft eyes, no side glances, ears perked. Can’t be sure why the golden looks so stressed, but if that’s the face you are looking at when you are training or interacting your dog, you’re definitely doing something wrong.

[why-animals-do-the-thing]

These are a really great visual contrast to the first clip, thank you for adding them! You can see that while there’s a little tension around Teener’s mouth in these videos, it’s mostly focused at the back of the mouth - where he needs to keep muscle tension in order to hold onto things - rather than the entire skin of the lips, as the first dog shows. Teener’s eyes are focused and the skin around them is taught in use, but it’s not a hard tightness. (In the first video, I can’t quite tell what he’s holding, but it appears to be some sort of crunchy treat.)

A bunch of people in the notes questioned why it was important to talk about the first video. For those of you that did: you’re right in that the dog is not being abused, nor is it the end of the world that he’s being made uncomfortable for a little bit. But it’s still really important to teach people to understand how the body language of an uncomfortable dog differs from that of a truly happy one, because being able to telling the difference might matter quite a lot in another situation and be the difference between someone getting bit or not. Videos like the original one are actually super important in that learning process because they’re an example of dog giving off mixed signals. 

[theexoticvet-deactivated2022070]

Medical Record

2/6/12

11.1 lbs, BCS 6/9. Long discussion with owner about weight loss and dangers of obesity. Gave handout on proper diet amounts.

7/12/15

16.7 lbs, BCS 8/9. Discussed weight loss with owners. Cannot free feed and give treats. Peanut is dangerously obese and is at huge risk of diabetes.

9/4/15

17.0 lbs, BCS 8/9. Owner declines diet advice said “I don’t want to hear it.” Warned owner that Peanut is not healthy at this weight and very concerned for diabetes.

8/1/18

22 lbs, BCS 9/9. Presents for excessive urination, urinating outside of box and not grooming. Blood glucose 472, urine dipstick shows glucosuria. Advised O that Peanut is diabetic and needs insulin. O declines and elects euthanasia due to cost of insulin.

“I wish we could have done something to prevent this.”-Owner

[theexoticvet-deactivated2022070]

Interesting Avian Fact

Birds have fairly long nail quicks and their blood pressure elevates during exams. These two things mean birds can easily bleed during nail trims so we cannot cut their nails as short as a dog or cat. A bird can actually bleed to death from a nail trim.

[drferox]

Good day and thanks in advance for your time, Doc! Recently a friend of mine has had to deal with her cat's mammary cancer, and it got us wondering: why is preventive mastectomy not a thing in spayed pets? Mammary cancer seems to be a pretty common one, so what makes it not worth it? Would it be a difficult surgery, too expensive, not worth the risk/stress of the animal since cancer it's actually not that common? We are in Europe so it might different but we'd love to hear your thoughts about it

I’d argue that mammary cancer rates depends entirely on where you live. Here it’s pretty uncommon, especially in cats, unless those animals have gone through multiple heat cycles, eg ex-breeders. 

Desexing before the first heat massively reduces the mammary cancer risk. Desexing between the first and second heat still reduces the mammary cancer risk, though not as much. I understand some regions of Europe are not as pro-desexing as Australia is.

A bilateral mastectomy is a massive procedure for a dog or cat. It’s not just removing a couple of little lumps, it’s removing every scrap of tissue from the armpit to groin, on boht sides, down to muscle. You are basically skinning a third of the animal, and it has significant potential post-operative complications and pain. Especially if you compare that to a routine spey. 

A juvenile spay is our best method of preventing mammary cancer, and it’s hard enough to talk people into that a lot of the time, let alone a bilateral mastectomy.