DOG HEALTH AND MEDICINE

Q: My dog has a mass on her spleen that has to come out. The tumor seems to be benign—tests indicate that it has not spread to other parts of her body. But it is growing bigger all the time and could rupture and cause life-threatening internal bleeding. The veterinary surgeon I have spoken with says that he’s going to take out the whole spleen along with the mass as that will be less risky than just trying to remove the mass itself. He says the “skin” of the spleen is delicate, and trying to remove just the mass could cause a rupture on its own. He tells me a dog doesn’t need her spleen. How can that be?

It used to be thought that animals don’t feel pain,” says Alicia Karas, DVM, a veterinary pain specialist who is board-certified in anesthesiology. It wasn’t that long ago. “The real start of recognizing that animals feel pain and might need medication for it was probably the early 90s,” she notes. “Until then, a vet might say, ‘If I give the animal pain meds after an operation they might move around too much and hurt their surgical sites, interfering with their healing.’ It was a myth that needed to be battled.

Hookworm disease in dogs is not showing any signs of decreasing, with the highest prevalence rates in the South, according to the Companion Animal Parasite Council. While the incidence across the U.S. in general is one case for every 100 dogs tested, from South Carolina going as far west to Texas, prevalence rates reach as high as one in 50 to one in 30 dogs. The incidence rate one step north, from Virginia going as far west to Kansas, is relatively high, too. But no state is immune, and even places as far north as Vermont and Montana have relatively high rates.

Although cats are currently at much greater risk of contracting bird flu than dogs, dogs can and have gotten sick with the disease, also known as avian influenza. A primary route of infection for a dog is eating a sick or dead infected bird. But drinking raw (unpasteurized) milk from a cow who has caught the disease can also spread the illness to a dog, as can eating raw or undercooked meat, says the American Veterinary Medical Association.

If you find a new lump on your dog you should of course have a veterinarian check it out to play it safe. But know that the majority of lumps and bumps on your dog’s skin are benign. Even a significant number of lumps under your dog’s skin are benign. If a bump is found to be cancerous, that doesn’t mean your pet is going to die from it. That’s because most of the cancerous masses on a dog’s body are non-metastatic, meaning they won’t spread to distant sites in the body. Granted, they can invade healthy tissue locally and thereby become life-threatening. But they’re most often not fatal if they’re treated without delay. That’s why anything at least a centimeter in diameter (a quarter of an inch) should be brought to the doc-
tor’s attention.

The price of prescription drugs for people in the U.S. can be two to four times higher than in other industrialized countries, while the same drugs prescribed for dogs by veterinarians can sometimes be considerably less expensive. So should you take medicines meant for your pet to treat your own illness? Definitely not.

Two years ago, the Food and Drug Administration approved a new drug for arthritis in dogs called Librela (bedinvetmab). Given by injection, the medicine reduces arthritis pain by binding to a protein called canine nerve growth factor (NGF). That prevents pain signals from reaching the brain.

You notice that the pupils—the black circles in the center of your dog’s eyes—are no longer the same size. One has become significantly larger than the other, blocking out much of the iris (the colored part). Or one has become significantly smaller. Either way, it’s not normal. Both pupils are supposed to enlarge to the same degree to allow more light in when the ambient light has dimmed, and they’re supposed to shrink to the same degree to let in less light when the surrounding light has brightened. The condition of one pupil remaining a different size from the other no matter what is called anisocoria, from the Greek aniso, meaning “unequal,” kore, meaning “pupil,” and the Latin suffix ia, signifying “abnormal.”

Q: I am fostering a dog from the local shelter with a skin infection. Her name is Dakota Johnson, and she looks like an American hairless terrier crossed with fossilized stone. Circular, crusty, sometimes oozing spots are all over her body. And some areas have what look like little pimples. The first two weeks of oral antibiotics, topical antibacterials, and anti-fungal treatment didn’t help. The next two weeks of allergy meds and steroids seemed to be be clearing up the situation. She was scratching less and became interested in eating, and her skin was seeming to heal. But on the third week of giving the steroids every other day things went downhill. New spots have formed, some of them sticky, and a weird smell she had is back. The shelter had a biopsy done and said she had allergies but gave no indication of what she is allergic to. Is there a blood or skin test to find out?

Readers have asked us the difference between an exam and a clinical exam. A clinical exam is simply the doctor’s examination of a patient’s body (dog or human) in person, rather than, say, by phone or by looking over medical records. It’s the “show” part of a medical show-and-tell, and it’s a critical screening tool.

Very mild dandruff on a black dog is probably nothing to be concerned about. Even a few white flecks against a black backdrop are going to stick out. But generally speaking, you’re not supposed to be able to see dandruff scales on your pet. Normally, as millions of cells in the top layer of skin—the epidermis—are renewed every three to four weeks (just as in people), the old ones slough off upon dying. It takes place microscopically and shouldn’t be viewable.

What people tend to think of when their dog has an illness with a grim prognosis is “a kind of binary option, either full-court treatment or euthanasia,” says Eric Richman, MSW, LICSW, a veterinary social worker who tends to clients at Tufts. But there’s “potential for middle ground,” he says, in the form of hospice and palliative care—“palliative” meaning pain-relieving as opposed to disease-treating.