Subscriber Archive
Question: My bulldog is 9 years old and losing hair. Her skin is dry and it smells bad. Her ears have gooey junk in them and they stink too. Is this just because she is old? Dr. Nichol: Dry skin problems and hair loss are not signs of good health and, except for humans of a certain age, aren’t considered a normal part of membership in AARP. Your bulldog’s foul odor and her infected ears are indicators of a serious skin problem. More than just exuding B.O. she may have seborrhea and chronic infection. I consulted with veterinary skin specialist Dr. Rebecca Mount of Dermatology for Animals. Here is her response. “This poor pup! The odor is a strong sign of a secondary skin infection. It is really important to have a microscopic evaluation of her skin to ensure we are treating the right infectious agent. I have seen hair…
Puppy kindergarten teaches healthy play during the sensitive period of socialization. Mick and his BFF (Welsh corgi) wrestle with wild abandon. A fun loving pug considers joining the fun and then says, “Ah, no. I’ll find a kinder, gentler smack down.” For all the juvenile canine fisticuffs and trash talking no one ever gets hurt. They’re all delighted to have another go next week.
Question: I have an elderly female cat, age 18. She has for 10 years pooped next to the litter box, not in it. In the last month she has started pooping all over the living room and dining room carpet. Once in a while it looks like she had poop stuck since it is smeared like she’s dragging her rear end but most of the time it looks very deliberate. I can’t get her to stop. What can I do??? Dr. Nichol: There is no poop messaging being spelled-out on your carpet. Your cat’s long history of near misses indicates that she’d actually use her pan if it didn’t resemble a septic tank. Cats are fastidious by nature; in the wild they always find a fresh place to scratch and eliminate. Indoor kitties faced with stinky, soggy restroom facilities really want to bury their waste but just can’t take the…
The South rim of the Grand Canyon is a wonderful 70° in early November. It’s a really dry place. We dropped 1180 feet as we hiked 3.5 miles to this splendid dripping spring. It’s a shady spot at the end of a rather arduous and sometimes narrow trail. Climbing back out is a little harder but the Grand Canyon is worth it. Start early, pack a lunch, and lug a couple of liters of water. I love this place but I had to leave my good dog Mick Jagger home this time. No dogs are allowed in National Parks. That’s why most of our back country trips take us to National Forests. We’re both in our element.
Question: “Sage”, our female Lab mix, began to urinate on the bed during the night. She was diagnosed with a bladder infection, given antibiotics, and the problem disappeared. It reoccurred a couple of months later; another round of antibiotics fixed it. It reoccurred again, and this time the antibiotics had no effect. About the same time, my stepson, his fiancé, and their two dogs moved in with us. While the dogs seem to be coexisting harmoniously our hypothesis is that our Lab’s latest behavior is connected to the extra dogs. Her only issues seem to be at night, so our strategy is to have her spend the night in our garage. Are we missing something? Dr. Nichol: Actually, it is Sage who is missing something – her ovaries; they were removed during spaying, along with her uterus. Her bladder leaks during the night because her estrogen is diminished, weakening the…
Mike is demonstrating Rally skills with “Bree”, his Pomeranian. At Sandia Dog Obedience Club in Albuquerque, Mike and Rene are instructors in the dog sport called Rally. It’s like obedience but more fun. My Border collie “Mick” and I like it because we’re learning to work as a team. We’re having such a good time we plan to compete. Mick wants to be just like Bree.
Are baby boomers concerned about their cognitive abilities declining? It gets my attention. I published my residency research on cognitive dysfunction syndrome in elderly pets. There’s a whole lot of data, on dogs and on humans, supporting the benefits of healthy stressors like physical exertion and learning hard things. Caring for a pet can also make a difference for the aging human brain A study authored by Jennifer W. Applebaum, sociology PhD candidate at the University of Florida, measured long-term outcomes of cognitive tests on 1369 people over age 50. All participants had normal cognition at the start of the study; 32% of them were long-term pet owners. The pet parent group had less hypertension and a slower decline in their cognitive scores. You can’t draw a cause-and-effect relationship but this work supports keeping a pet to help protect against dementia. Interestingly, the pet parents in this group were more…
My Border collie “Mick” loves to work for me because he always earns interactions and sometimes food. Dogs aren’t in the mindset of pleasing a master; they look to us for access to essential resources like food and behavioral cues. They are programmed to earn their survival but it doesn’t have to be all business. Mick and his leader (that’s me) have good fun honing our Rally skills. Next week I’ll share a video titled “Circus dog? Robot dog? AI dog?” so you can see how it’s done by a couple of pros.
Last in a series Fear is a miserable emotion. It happens in-the-moment, before there is time to think. And it can be dangerous. Whether a threat is real or imagined you need to either get the heck outa there or drive off a scary monster – who might retaliate. Stimpy had trembled and hidden from visitors, but later chased those beasts while snapping at their heels. He’d improved. While his good leader Amy entertained guests, he stayed busy in the other room extracting bits of sustenance from challenging food toys and puzzles. Not bad. Amy now wanted Stimpy by her side as she swilled red wine with her pals. Was she dreaming? But if he could stay occupied… We knew that if he eyeballed another alien invader (anyone other than Amy) he could wig-out and relapse. She needed to keep him working. So I told Amy, that social butterfly, to…