Knowing what's real

When it comes to our pet's health the answers we seek are often muddied by 'experts' who write articles claiming that they know the answers. Their readers and followers read their articles and post on forums and 'help' out with advice they gleaned from those articles - experts themselves now. How does a common sense pet owner know where to turn for correct medical advice?

Well, duh, your veterinarian. But I too dabble in the world of Dr. Google. I know that we, A) want to save money, B) don't want to waste our vet's time on something idiotic, And C) Google everything anyway, even if we have the facts, because we want MORE facts, or better facts. I get that. So, barring your veterinarian, lets take a look at how we can tell fact from fiction in the articles shared by our friends, and turned up in our searches.

Cited studies: I'm going to tell you that anyone can claim to be an expert, but not everyone takes the time to find out if the snake oil that they're selling will work. Studies help separate the wheat from the chaff. Any article that tells you 'facts' but doesn't cite studies and the literature is providing hearsay and opinion. It could be learned opinion, or it could be junk. Without studies you are in the dark.

Are all studies created equal? No. Can studies be manipulated or twisted? of course, but, if a study is cited, then you can go look and see for yourself. If no study is cited you need to find your facts elsewhere.

This dog's cancer was cured by science

Sometimes articles will cite studies, but the studies and the article just muddy the facts. What are some signs to look for that can help you know that an article isn't medically sound?

Food solves all: There is only two conditions scientifically proven to be cured by a food change, and those are malnutrition and food allergies. That's all. Food does not cause cancer, and food will not cure cancer. There are no 'good' foods and there are no 'bad' foods, there are only adequate foods and inadequate foods. An inadequate food will not provide for your pet's nutritional needs and will lead to malnutrition. Want to know what the number one feeding regimen cited for vitamin and mineral malnutrition in pets is in the US? Raw and homemade diets, 1,2,3.

There are some diets that may help with some medical conditions. There is some anecdotal evidence that a higher quality, limited ingredient food may help with some pets suffering from allergic dermatitis or other forms of allergies (see how wishy washy that sentence was? punctuated with 'maybe's' and 'some's'? That's what science sounds like; uncertain in the face of limited facts).

Hills, Science Diet has a diet formulated for cats that stands in for medication in the event of hyperthyroidism. It limits iodine which is necessary for the functional tumor responsible for hyperthyroidism to produce excessive thyroid hormones. This food actually can be used to treat disease, and is unique for doing so.  1.

Unless your pet is too skinny or too fat, or allergic to beef, food ain't gonna cure what ails him.

Grain isn't evil. It's just grain

Cure-alls: We're back to the land of snake oil on this one. And while food, and feeding a raw or home-cooked diet is the snake oil du jour, it isn't alone. Essential fatty acids, various vitamins, garlic, etc... have all been touted as cures for everything from cancer to allergies (notice nothing cures things that need hard evidence that a cure has occurred, like deafness or a broken limb).

Nothing cures everything. Nothing. Sorry. And to my knowledge there is zero evidence linking any of the magic cures to an actual cure for anything at all.

The flip side of the cure-all equation is no side-effects. I will tell you right now that there is no drug, no chemical that is strong enough to affect an animal's body that is not, a) going to have unintended, unwanted, or unanticipated effects beyond those that we are seeking to treat, and b) dose dependent.

Here's an example from the real world. Aspirin was initially compounded from a naturally derived chemical found in the bark of willow plants. It has an analgesic (pain killer) effect in small doses. It can also thin blood, cause GI bleeding and ulceration, cause rashes, nausea, and drowsiness, in some children it can cause a fatal disease called Reyes Syndrome, and oddly, it can cause headache. Take too much aspirin and you can anticipate, vomiting, dizziness, confusion, hallucinations, rapid breathing, seizures or coma.  1,2.

A study of willow bark and the active ingredient found in aspirin found that even in same-species, same location trees the amount of drug ranged from 0.8%-12.6%. This is a huge variance (and why we shouldn't trust herbal 'remedies') Dose dependency is why we have Bayer and why we don't all have our own willow tree in our yard and strip off the bark on an as-needed basis. 1.

A row of Chinese herbs that were used freely in conjunction with 'conventional' medicine.

Anecdotal: Anectdotal means that someone told us that it worked. Its the old, "cod liver oil cured my cold" story (all colds are eventually cured, most in 24-48 hours, therefore, anything cures a cold after a day or two). Anecdotal evidence is weak at best, stupid and dangerous at worst.

You want to try XYZ food because your Aunt May's Golden Retriever had fewer ticks when she ate it? sure be my guest. You want to ignore a rattle snake bite because the rancher's dog down the road did fine with no treatment? You're an idiot.

Anectdotal evidence keeps the diet, erectile dysfunction, and baldness cure people in business. It is also driving tigers and rhinos to extinction, so it is no innocent thing to dump our money into stories of cures where none exist.

The difference between anecdote and science is numerical. Few cures are 100% effective, while because of the placebo effect, some cures will 'work' on just a few people. For instance, I believe that sitting in the spa 'cooks' disease germs and chases away colds. Now, there is a little bit of evidence that supports this (an elevated body temperature does kill viruses - hence our body's defense mechanism - fever) but to call it a cure sounds a little unlikely.

To test my anecdotal evidence we would need to eliminate the anecdotal aspect as well as the placebo aspect (after all, I believe it works). Lets say we took 1000 people with a cold and divided them into two groups. We do a placebo treatment on one (we need a placebo group to keep people from thinking it's working and feeling better -placebo is a very real thing) and my hot tub cure on the other. Now using the placebo group as the baseline, the percentage of people above the placebo group 'cured' by my hot tub experiment is the real effect of hot tub cures.

This is the difference between science and anecdote, and these are the things we need to think about every time we see something that attempts to tell us about our pet's health (or our own, or the planet's for that matter).

Thank you for reading, and please join the conversation on Facebook.

Walking your dogs

I once listened to an entire lecture at an American Veterinary Medical Association Conference on the merits of walking dogs. The speaker was advocating for veterinarians to recommend that people stop taking about yard size (which rarely matters) and instead to recommend walking dogs to combat boredom, poor social skills, obesity and even improve motility and normalize stool (who knew?)

So, I did, I came back and began discussing the importance of walking dogs. I wrote articles about it and became a huge advocate of not just parking pets in yards and houses, but actually taking them out into the world to sniff bushes and meet the neighbors.

I still advocate that. But, recently, I observed the limitations of walking our dogs.

I fostered (and, ok, adopted) a young border collie. When I got her, she was a wreck; 10 months old and filled with manic obsessions. She couldn't be outside for more than a few seconds before becoming intensely focused on shadows (it was shadow chasing that got her ejected from her previous home.) She was reactive to everything, barking maniacally at other dogs and kids. She found random items terrifying (pinecones and a bronze horse, for example). When the world became too much to handle she ducked her head under the furniture and 'checked out'. I imagined, if I let her she could shadow chase or check out for hours.

Of course, the first question anyone would ask with a dog like this, is how much exercise is she receiving?

According to the previous owner, this little maniac went on a two mile walk every morning and then had a large yard to play (but in reality obsess) in. She had an Australian Shepherd friend to keep her company.

Two miles.

For many people a two mile walk is a huge feat. It is probably further than most people walk in a week. However, as I began running this little girl on the ATV, I saw her race my older border collie at well over 25 mph. I saw her charge off into the desert to chase lizards and the shadows of passing birds. Two miles is the starting point for our runs, but most often they are closer to four. The speed is 7 mph (a trot), though the dogs are off-leash and can choose whatever speed they desire. The terrain is uneven and has a 480' elevation loss and gain in the first .8 miles.

A two mile walk to a healthy dog is nothing. Imagine if every day you took your young five year old child out on a leash. They cannot run, they cannot play on the monkey bars, and they cannot swing on the swings. You walk them for 40 minutes (20 minute miles are about the norm for a moderate walk). Then you do nothing with them for the rest of the day. Oh, they have toys, and a playmate, and a flat dirt yard, but you spend no time teaching them anything, no time challenging their curious and devious minds, and they are provided no further outlet for their young brains and muscles.

A walk isn't going to cut it folks. Dogs, especially puppies, need to explore a world that has contours and different speeds. They need to walk on uneven terrain to educate their body about movement. Other dogs are useful for this, but so are hikes in the woods, runs off the bike, and off leash play in safe places.

Yes, off-leash. There are risks to off-leash, I understand that, and I am certainly not advocating it for crowded suburbs or places where strange dogs lurk. Almost all puppies are far more interested in being safe and at your side than off being eaten by wildlife. Nature helps us out here. Yes, diseases lurk in the soil, but we can be smart and mitigate as much of the danger that we can.

Why are we mitigating danger rather than simply removing it altogether? Because puppies deserve to learn to be puppies. They should be allowed to make mistakes and play and fall and explore. Life is too short to be afraid of all of the 'what-if's'.

I work in the veterinary field. I have seen all the 'what-if's' and I will tell you what experience has taught me: Most pets get injured falling off of golf carts, at the end of flexileads, in their homes and in their back yards than they do having fun out in the wilds. Here in Arizona, where rattlesnakes abound, I will see more dogs who were bitten on leashes and in their own yards than out hunting or running off-lead.

Do all dogs need to be off-leash? Of course not! Do all dogs benefit from off-leash fun? Yes. Does that off-leash fun have to take place out in the wilds? No, of course not. I had a great frisbee dog who could have been happy never leaving the back yard if there were a steady supply of frisbee throwers to amuse her. I am not advocating that every dog needs to run after ATVs and hike in the mountains to be happy. What I am saying is that few dogs will be unhappy if you add some more dimensions to their lives.

Cody, my little border collie bit a kid at ten months of age. This is a serious issue, and according to her former owners she did it because she was so focused on chasing a shadow that when the kid walked into the scene she bit him. The kid was uninjured, and so Cody got a second chance in rescue.

Cody now runs 2-5 miles a day with her co-dogs. She runs up and down steep rocks chasing varmints. She comes inside and falls to sleep and can sleep for hours, hardly stirring. In the afternoon she gets 15-20 minutes of training. Weekly she goes out into the big bad world and has more structured training. She accompanies me on outside chores (except when the chickens are out) and is able to go days without even seeing a shadow.

Puppies have both muscles and brains, and both of these systems must be exercised and challenged. Adult dogs too seem happier when their world is full of adventure - it's hard to imagine why anyone would even have to say this out loud.

I have owned a total of 18 dogs spanning from my childhood onward. All but the first dog was largely off-leash their entire lives. I lost zero dogs to wildlife, accident and snake bite. I lost zero dogs to arthritis or weight-related issues. I lost almost every single dog to cancer and old age.

We're all off-leash, and we're all always in some danger in life. Car accidents claim millions of lives, but no one would recommend not ever going anywhere because of the danger. Life is brief, it is wonderful, it is dangerous and it is thrilling, we should offer that life to ourselves and our dogs, and if that means a little bit of risk so be it.

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