DOG HEALTH AND MEDICINE

When you bring your dog to the veterinarian for his annual or semi-annual exam, the doctor may very well ask you whether there have been any changes in your pet since his last visit. But the phrase any changes is rather vague, and besides, sometimes changes come so gradually that theyre hard to detect until they have become quite dramatic. Thats why paying attention to your dogs habits and lifestyle variations is critical in advocating for his continued good health. As we frequently say, you are the most important partner on your dogs health care team, the one who is most intimately familiar with his day-to-day life and therefore in the best position to make the first clinical assessment about whether something might be amiss.

This becomes particularly important as your dog reaches over from middle age into his geriatric years. Noticing changes in his behavior or demeanor that you can bring up to his doctor may help you stave off illness - or treat it at the outset, when its easier to keep symptoms in check and sometimes even reverse a health problem. Treating a disease at the outset rather than after it is far gone tends to be much less expensive as well.

Even if you have been providing proper oral care for your dog, you cant prevent gingival hyperplasia, an overgrowth of the gums surrounding the teeth that affects some of our canine friends. While the abnormal proliferation of gum tissue is not cancerous, it can prove painful, particularly when a dog eats. And it can lead to periodontal, or gum, disease. Specifically, it causes deep pockets to form between the surface of the teeth and the surrounding gums, which in turn allows plaque and tartar to build and can lead to infection, loosened teeth, and if it goes far enough, teeth falling out.

My friend Scott Leaver was 32 when he was diagnosed with a malignant brain tumor the size of an apple. After surgery, the oncologist told him that the cancer had a 75 percent chance of returning within five years - more aggressively the second time around.

A lot of dogs dont look bloated from the outside, says Tufts emergency and critical care veterinarian Claire Sharp, BVMS, DACVECC, referring to a life-threatening condition known in the vernacular as bloat, in which a dogs stomach twists on its axis and fills with gas. She speaks of people who contact the animal hospital when their dog doesnt seem right, saying, Im sure my dog doesnt have bloat because his belly doesnt look big.

My 11-year-old dog has pretty debilitating arthritis, and someone has suggested physical therapy. But that sounds ridiculous to me. How can a dog do physical therapy?

For creatures with such a sensitive nose, dogs seem happiest when they reek. This is particularly true of dogs who romp off leash, picking up bits of detritus in their fur and, if lucky enough, rolling about in something unidentifiable and rank, often the remnants of a dead animal.

You cannot start worrying about your pets dental health too soon, says William Rosenblad, DVM, a member of our editorial advisory board as well as the head of the Dentistry Department at the Angell Animal Medical Center in Boston. By the time you or your veterinarian see calculus/tartar buildup, there may already be serious periodontal disease occurring. I have seen calculus start to build up in dogs as young as six months, gum recession by eight months, and even a jaw fracture due to bone damage caused by periodontal disease in a 14-month-old dog.

Its understandable that people would like there to be a dietary component to treating and even curing cancer. We love our dogs and want to be able to do something for them in their time of need. But the incontrovertible fact is that cancer is the leading cause of death in dogs over the age of two. And in some breeds, such as golden retrievers, the rate of death attributable to cancer is greater than 50 percent (albeit generally late in life). We dont want pet owners to lose hope, says Cailin Heinze, VMD, DACVN, a board-certified veterinary nutritionist at Tufts.

At the Cummings School of Veterinary Medicine at Tufts, many veterinarians who see patients also engage in research. That is, clinicians routinely double as scientific investigators. Armelle de Laforcade, DVM, is one of those Tuft veterinarians who takes care of sick dogs and animals of other species at the same time that she participates in clinical research.

Your very fragile dog is in need of surgery. Or she comes to the emergency room with unexplained bleeding from her mouth. Or she has a kind of kidney disease that can potentially make her blood too viscous and not able to flow easily enough; her clotting factors may be on overdrive. In all these cases, and many others, a veterinarian has to run tests of coagulation to see if the blood is too thin and making the dog more prone to bleed, or, conversely, too prone to clotting.

Its understandable that people would like there to be a dietary component to treating and even curing cancer. We love our dogs and want to be able to do something for them in their time of need. But the incontrovertible fact is that cancer is the leading cause of death in dogs over the age of two. And in some breeds, such as golden retrievers, the rate of death attributable to cancer is greater than 50 percent (albeit generally late in life). We dont want pet owners to lose hope, says Cailin Heinze, VMD, DACVN, a board-certified veterinary nutritionist at Tufts. But food is not medicine. Its food. Theres no evidence right now that were going to fix anything with diet. Its so hard when people whose dogs have cancer come to us and feel like the Nutrition Clinic is going to be able to make the difference in how long their pet lives. However, we can help make sure that pet owners are feeding a diet that is as optimized as possible using the knowledge that we do have, whether this be a commercial diet, a home-cooked diet, or a combination. Veterinary nutrition researchers are always looking for the ways in which dietary patterns impact disease, but they simply havent uncovered anything yet that will change the course of cancers impact.

Tufts veterinary nutritionist Cailin Heinze, VMD, DACVN, is frustrated. Despite what people read on the Internet, she says, there is no magic cancer diet. Not only is there no evidence that any specific type of diet is related to the development of cancer in dogs, there is also no clear evidence at this point that any diet can slow the progression or increase the survival of a dog with cancer. Feeding pets with cancer is a subject very near and dear to Dr. Heinze, whose main research interest is investigating the interactions between diet and metabolism in pets with cancer, in the hopes that someday we will be able to make better nutrition recommendations for pets (and people) with that disease.