DOG HEALTH AND MEDICINE

Something’s terribly wrong with your dog, and you take her to the off-hours emergency clinic. But how long will you sit there before she gets seen?

In developing countries where vaccination against rabies is not readily available for dogs, thousands of people die of rabies every year because the disease can be transmitted from canines to humans. In the U.S., only a handful of people contract rabies from their dogs each year. But that could change.

“There’s a patient I’m seeing right now, an 8-pound Chihuahua who has horrible neck pain,” says Alicia Karas, DVM, “but in one session I can turn him from a hunched, tense mess to a head-up, tail-wagging dog. He just unfolds. When you see an animal transform from miserable and quivering to relaxed and happy, it means everything. I can give a dog pain medication,” she says, “but imagine being able to do that with your hands.”

Because aspirin is available over the counter, a number of Your Dog readers have given it to their pets to relieve pain from such conditions as arthritis, gum disease, and post-surgical healing. On its face, such a decision makes sense. A nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drug, or NSAID, aspirin can reduce inflammation and can prove quite beneficial in relieving the inflammatory pain of arthritis or another disease. But it can also come with some serious side effects: GI ulceration and bleeding, vomiting, and sometimes out-and-out perforation of the gastrointestinal tract, which is frequently fatal. (Because of its potential to cause bleeding, aspirin has fallen out of favor for treating arthritis pain in people; other NSAIDs have been taking its place.)

Many dogs sometimes eat or drink so fast that food or water ends up going down the wrong “pipe,” and they make coughing or gagging sounds to try to expel it. But then there’s the chronic cough — the one that won’t go away. What is that about? There are a number of possible reasons. Here are the most common ones and what they sound like.

Three main reasons for giving injections at home — and how even the squeamish can get used to administering them.When a veterinarian tells a client that their dog requires regular injections, some people start out by saying, “I can’t do that; I can’t deal with needles,” reports Tufts veterinarian Armelle de Laforcade, DVM. But, she says, “people who think they couldn’t go near a needle, once they try it, realize it’s not that bad.”

Short-nosed (brachycephalic) dogs often have lifelong breathing problems because their pushed-in nasal cavities are too compromised for proper respiration. Now a new study says that a short snout predisposes a dog to sleep apnea, a condition of many interruptions in sleep throughout the night that are so brief they go unnoticed but can result in extreme daytime fatigue. People with sleep apnea are not only more tired than others, they are more disposed to a variety of illnesses that include high blood pressure and cardiovascular disease. The same may be true for dogs.

The smoke from wildfires coming south from Canada this year affected people’s breathing across much of the northern tier of the country. Dogs have it worse than people because they can’t wear masks to keep out toxic particulates. At least one major veterinary hospital saw an uptick in cases of breathing difficulties among dogs affected by the smoky air. Exposure can cause irritation to the throat, nose, and eyes and even coughing and gagging.

Signs of canine hypothyroidism — too little of certain thyroid hormones — often come on subtly and slowly, progressing over years, and therefore can be easy to miss or misattribute to advancing age. These signs often include poor coat quality, lethargy, mental dullness, exercise intolerance, and weight gain. If this constellation of symptoms describes your dog, it’s worth discussing whether an evaluation for hypothyroidism is in order, as treatment is available.

Your dog has intermittent bouts of diarrhea and vomiting and alternates between straining to defecate and having a sudden urge to defecate. Additionally, she is experiencing abdominal discomfort (rumbly tummy and flatulence) and a concomitant loss of appetite. Does she have irritable bowel syndrome (IBS) or irritable bowel disease (IBD)?

There has been a belief among veterinarians that some dog breeds are more sensitive to pain than others. And new research suggests they are right. But the breeds commonly thought to be particularly pain-sensitive may not be the ones that truly are. That’s because vets appear to be making their determinations based on dogs’ reluctance to come over to them and interact in novel situations rather than on the animals’ actual sensitivity to pain.

If your older dog has begun pacing the floors at night and having trouble settling down, it could be a sign of dementia, just as people with age-related dementia may feel restless at night with a sign of Alzheimer’s disease known as sundowner’s syndrome. When researchers at North Carolina State University studied 28 dogs ages 10 to 16, they found that those with dementia took longer to fall asleep and spent less time sleeping. The higher the dementia score, the less time the dogs spent in both REM and non-REM sleep.