A lesson in Blood Loss.

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Transcript

Dr. Cliff Redford (00:08)
Hey everyone, welcome to another episode of that life with Dr. Cliff. You know who I am and we don't have guests today. So you guys get to listen to me talk about various stuff in my life as a vet. That's why it's called vet life. it's actually been a pretty, a pretty exciting week, week and a half at work. So I wanted to go over some cases, et cetera, et cetera. My wife, actually, we just got back from Vegas. We had a three night, four day trip there.

There was a kind of a two and a half day conference from the company exponential, which is the parent company of her cycle bar studio of the franchise that she has the one studio as a part of. And they've got, I don't know, 350 cycle bars. but then they also have a, like a Pilates franchise cross fit, a stretch lab rumble box.

some other health health one, basically they're in the health and fitness, division. probably got maybe 3000 different franchises, or studios of different types all around. So it was really cool. I had never really been to Vegas other than just sort of a quick overnight where I didn't really get to see anything. we went to the highlight of our, of our day was, or our trip was going to hell's kitchen. Gordon Ramsey's place.

And, it was incredibly expensive and it was worth every single penny. it was probably for each of us for two cocktails and a main dish. And we shared a dessert. so three plates of food, right? Two main dishes and a dessert and then four cocktails. was, I think it was probably close to $400 American, 300 and 320 Americans, probably a little bit over 400 Canadian.

but a shout out to Tim bear. Tim bear is the, 60 ish year old bartender. we ended up having to sit by the bar. They didn't have room at the tables. It was that busy. They only take reservations. They do not take walk-ins and we would have had to wait about three hours or made a reservation or three hours later. So we sat at the bar, which ended up being way better. We didn't have to wait and we got to talk to this, this cool guy, Tim bear who, helped pick drinks for me.

and, you know, he made, he made suggestions. I'm sure it was the most expensive stuff on the, on the, menu, but boy, was it good. The best food, the best drink, the best experience, dining experience we have ever had. works been busy, et cetera, et cetera. now my last episode, I was going to talk about anemia, and the different causes. And, and so we're going to talk about that. And the reason I was thinking about this is I've had several cases that were brought to me.

sort of for second opinions. One was an Instagram case. It was someone that was reaching out to me from India and their golden retriever was quite sick. And, you know, they sent me the blood work and the vet didn't know what was going on. And I said, look, there's severe anemia here. So tell your vet to figure that out. Whatever's going on is causing this anemia. And he ended up being diagnosed with a blood parasite that was causing him to be, you know, sort of

aggressively weak. know, so when we run blood work, as veterinarians, we often don't know, like the differentials are huge. We don't know exactly what we're looking for. We're not necessarily trying to confirm something. Sometimes we're just trying to be pointed in a direction. And that's what happened with this case and it ended up working. Now, the other one is this beautiful dog named Zoe. We call her Zoe Bear. It was a very, very close friend of my daughter.

and the dog wasn't being, it's, I think wasn't being cared for well by the, by the veterinarian. they had run some really, really good tests and, know, saw that the dog was anemic and, knew that the dog had a tumor, but didn't want to proceed. And they were sort of just saying, go to referral, go to referral, go to referral. And that was going to end up being too costly. And they were just saying, well, we're not going to see you anymore.

and this isn't just what the owner was saying. This is what the medical records were saying. And which didn't make sense to me. Like what if, what if you have a family that, that truly doesn't have the money, know, they want to go to referral, but they don't have $5,000 for a CT scan or an MRI and whatnot, or, or a major ultrasound and imaging procedure. So what do you do? You don't just start your hands up and say, well, I don't know what to do at least prescribed pain meds, right?

Zoe, was able to give them about 10 more days, 12 more days. unfortunately she did have some pretty advanced cancer, but we did give her really good, really, really good 10 days with, just corticosteroids. prednisone can help a lot, in the dying days. And, they were very grateful for that, but Zoe had severe anemia. and so that was something that I was like, look, if we were to

sort of do more tests and spend a lot more money. the referral hospital would chase this down. This is the major clue. Let's make sure, you know, is there an abdominal bleed? is there a bone marrow abnormality? So I decided I ended up having a conversation with, with my, with some of my technicians, about anemia and kind of was explaining sort of the, pathophysiology of anemia. Now this is for cases.

where the anemia is severe. Let's say 30 % of the blood is gone. The red blood cell count is 30 % lower than, than before. So we're going to see if I can do this on the fly. So when you get anemia, the first thing, the first thing we are taught to do is to find out if it is what is called regenerative anemia. So if I get blood work back and it shows significant anemia, I call the lab up and I ask them to run what is called a reticulocyte count.

Reticulous sites are basically immature red blood cells. And so if, if the bone marrow is functioning well and you know, let's say I get hit by a car. I get my spleen lacerated and I lose all this blood. And for some reason I'm not at the hospital, but I lose a lot of blood. within a couple of days, my bone marrow will start spitting out red blood cells. It's such a fast.

pace that they actually send out what are called reticulocytes. So these immature red blood cells. So all the reticulocytes do is if the reticulocyte count is elevated, then you have what is called a regenerative anemia. And so there's two classifications. There's regenerative anemia and non-regenerative anemia. Non-regenerative anemia is again, there's no reticulocytes. The body is not responding. So that's basically a bone marrow issue.

So there's something wrong with the bone marrow, the center of the bones that creates red blood cells, where it's not creating any more red blood cells or it's not doing it fast enough. And that pretty much tells us that there is likely bone marrow cancer. Now there'll be some other things that you might pick up on. There might be a low platelet count also from the bone marrow called thrombocytopenia. There might be a low white blood cell count also from the bone marrow.

called leukemia. Now, if you get all three of those, if you get anemia, thrombocytopenia and leukemia, then your dog has, I believe, or cat, it is called pancytopenia, which is basically everything coming out of the bone marrow is not at an accurate level. You've got decreased production. And again, then you're dealing with massive bone marrow cancer, most likely. So.

When you look at anemia, you find out if it's responsive or not. because there are only three sort of generalizations or I'm generalizing here. are three, classifications of the cause of anemia. One is reduced production. And we've just kind of talked about that. Number two is blood loss and blood loss. is.

fast enough, so high that the bone marrow can't keep up. And that's when you'll get these massive reticulous site counts. so blood loss. And then the last one is blood destruction. So let's remind again for the vet students out there, there's three, essentially three reasons, lack of production, bone marrow, loss, blood loss, and then, destruction. So we're to talk about destruction next. So

Regardless of the reason, if you've got massive destruction of red blood cells, you're going to have elevations in a chemical called bilirubin, or your animal is going to be jaundiced. The animal is going to be yellow. So a normal sort of a normal life cycle is approximately three months of red blood cells. And after a while, the body says, Hey, this red blood cell is getting old. can't do his job as well. Let's let's destroy it.

pull the iron, pull some of the other chemicals, recycle it. And we're going to get rid of this chemical called bilirubin. It actually goes through the liver, gets conjugated through the bile duct, like gallbladder bile duct into your stool. It is what causes your stool to be brown. So that is normal. But if you've got massive destruction of your red blood cells, then the liver, the bile duct, that process can't

up and you get hyper bilirubinemia. get elevations of bilirubin in the serum, in your blood. And you will see your cat or dog will have kind of yellow eyes, like the white of the eyes turn yellow, the gums turn yellow, the back of the throat, especially in cats. It's one of the first places we see jaundice. And there's other reasons for jaundice. If you're really paying attention, it would be like liver disease or bile duct abnormalities.

but for this case, we're talking about red blood cell destruction. and then you're going to see, you know, weakness and, you'll also get the Billy Reuben will spill out. The extra Billy Reuben will spill out into the urine. So you'll get this almost ice tea color urine. but that is something that you can all figure out with blood work. So if you see anemia and it is responsive, so the reticulocytes are elevated.

And so, know, the bone marrow is working okay, or most likely working okay. All these things, there's, you know, the occasional outliers, but this is, this is, you know, 95 % of the time, this will sort of get you to your, your discussion or get you to your diagnosis. So, then you see if the bilirubin is elevated and if the bilirubin is significantly elevated, you know, you have destruction. So what can cause destruction? Well, this golden retriever in India had a parasite that was attached to the red blood cell.

The spleen, the body recognized this red blood cell was infected and it destroyed it. And you know, it destroyed it in, in, in fast levels resulting in anemia, autoimmune conditions. these self allergies, like lupus in people, you know, the body all of a sudden becomes air quotes allergic to its own red blood cells and starts destroying those red blood cells. And that's something we can talk about more in another.

in another sort of scenario. what else, what else? guess if you have a tumor on your spleen, then it can, that tumor can cause sort of damage to the red blood cells. it, it sort of slices a piece of the red blood cell off. it's like going through a filter that's not quite, functioning well. so that can cause it and that can cause destruction of those red blood cells. end up becoming what are called schistocytes.

So instead of urethrocytes, which are the Latin name or the medical name for a red blood cell, these become schistiocytes, which are under the microscope. look like someone has like chopped a tiny piece off of it, like cleaved a section of the side of the red blood cell. I'm trying to think of some other ones. if you, if you feed your dog a lot of onions, the onions will cause oxidative damage to the red blood cells.

And these things result, they're, they're visible. These lesions on the red blood cells are visible under microscope work. They're called Heinz bodies. So you get Heinz body anemia. And so that is the immune system doing its job, recognizing that this red blood cell is damaged and trying to recycle it. and those treatments for all of those things. And then the last thing is red blood cell loss. So they're basically bleeding and there's.

There's really only three sort of general places they can be losing blood in their stool. Now this would be a chronic thing. Like you would have to, mean, obviously if they lost 30 % of their blood in a day or two through their bowel movements, you would notice it. but that's not impossible if there's a tumor that ruptures something like that, but we're talking about something where you're not really sure what's going on. So you can get slow blood loss.

through the bowel movements, you can run what is called an occult fecal occult blood fecal test. Occult meaning like hidden mysterious, like the cult or occult. So occult blood, fecal test. another common place is losing it through the genitourinary tract or the urinary tract. So essentially losing it through the kidneys. And there's various reasons for that, which I won't get into, but you can check the.

You can check the urine to see how much blood there is. They would have to be a lot of blood, sort of like a trickling that is going on forever. and people don't always notice it, you know, a dog pees on the grass. You're not going to notice the color. it is winter in Canada right now. and there is sometimes snow, but right now there's not snow in Toronto. So you wouldn't notice it necessarily. Right. and it's not like it's blood clots. It's usually a darkening of the urine, which.

even if you do check, you're just going to think, my dog needs to drink a little bit more. or it ate asparagus. knows? so that's a, that's a possibility. And then the most in, in, in Zoe's case, and in a lot of cases, in my opinion, the most common, especially for senior animals and Zoe was a, Ooh, 11, 12 year old German shepherd cross. or a German, yeah, German shepherd cross. this is beautiful, rescue story about how she was.

She was found in a ditch right after a major rainstorm, like a three day rainstorm in Macedonia, which is where Zoe's family's from. And this little puppy that was by itself and almost washed away in this rain ditch. And they went out in the rain and happened to find this puppy and brought her back and then fell in love with her. you know, there you go. And this beautiful story. So rest in peace, Zoe. Anyways, you know, the most.

Sort of common thing for blood loss for senior animals is in the body. So in the abdomen or to a lesser extent in the chest cavity, which is a little bit different than the lungs themselves. It's around the lungs in the abdomen is by far the most common. And by far the most common is a tumor on the spleen. Not only can it cause damage to the red blood cells. you get, destruction of the red blood cells.

But the spleen is basically a massive collection of blood vessels surrounded by a capsule. And when you get these tumors, primarily they're called homangio sarcomas. Homangio means blood or, or heme hemoglobin homangio. They all have, you know, sort of Latin root words that are all similar. you can get homangio sarcomas or less likely the benign fibrosarcomas.

there's probably some others, Haman geomas maybe. but basically a mass on the spleen causes the spleen to constantly bleed. because the spleen is a very fragile organ, with very little ability to blood clot and then whatnot. So if we get an older dog, especially a large breed dog, especially a German shepherd, they are for reasons I don't know. And anyone listening to this that

that knows, please, please reach out to me. Please email me the info is in the intro. The summary of the, of the, of the page of the podcast. I'd love to know why German shepherds are more susceptible or even large dogs in general are more susceptible. But, you know, it's, it's a very common thing. So if we see a older large breed, especially German shepherd dog with a history of.

lethargy, sometimes collapsing, like fainting, and anemia, especially responsive, then we're, we're unfortunately really, really thinking about hemangiocarcoma, the spleen. That's how common it was. now she ended up having, Zoe ended up having a tumor in her chest and that tumor was in between the lungs in front of the heart, in the area called the mediastinum.

so was a mediastinal mass and, I did some research and the most common was a tumor called the thymoma. you know, additional diagnostics weren't done to see if there was masses in the abdomen and see if that's where the blood was going. But cause it was kind of academic at that point. So, so to summarize it, anemia, if you get anemia, you first find out if it's responsive or not by checking the reticula sites. And that tells you if the bone marrow is working.

Because a lack of production of red blood cells is one of the three categories for anemia and for the cause of anemia. And then the other two are destruction or loss. And it's not hard to figure out which one of those three it is. It may not, you know, if I know it's destruction, I then have to do, I have to do tests or I have to figure out, why are the red blood cells being destroyed? Or if it's loss, I need to do tests to figure out, where's it going?

unless there was a history of a hit by car and a lot of blood loss, et cetera, et cetera. But at least it gives us these tests, give us a very, very almost laser pointed focus towards what we need to look at. and that was what was going on with both of these cases. So, you know, always interesting. And I, I, I love my, my field. I love my career. It's like solving puzzles.

and sometimes you solve the puzzle in it and it gives you a pretty bad picture. and other times you solve the puzzle and, and you're able to then, cure the patient. But, even in cases where you can't cure them, and you just have to focus on palliative care at that point, you can at least give some closure to the family, and allow them to spoil their dog for a few days, a few weeks, sometimes longer, sometimes months.

depending on the situation, know, animals have surprised us. But there you go. That is, is anemia. was a great conversation we had with, with my team and I thought it was something fun to talk about. So next we're going to talk about some viewer questions or listeners questions. I say viewer because these questions are also going to be discussed on the morning show tomorrow.

Monday, December 16th. Of course, this podcast is not launching until December 17th. So tomorrow is yesterday and now is two days from now. So, but we've got some Christmas questions we're going to talk about because that is the theme of the morning show. And the first one is a question from Ethan. And Ethan asked me, my dog has started to lick his paws excessively. Could this be allergies or something bigger that I should be worried about?

I tried cleaning his paws often after walks, but he still does it. What can I do to prevent it? And then he sent me this gorgeous photo of Rudy, all dressed up in, in his winter gear. So I had already reached out to Ethan, just in case it wasn't chosen. Cause I don't know if it's going to be on the morning show or not. and I basically said, look, allergies we definitely see. And although Rudy is young, so it's not impossible, but it's not.

as common in young dogs. typically see allergies start up around two or three years old. So this, this past fall, this past autumn, I don't know which one, which word you guys use. This past fall, was probably the worst season for airborne allergies I've seen in dogs in the, in my 26 year, 27 year career.

And other veterinarians in Ontario are saying the same. There was a, we did have some like a strange sort of heat spell in the spring. And the summer was unusually warm. There was supposedly some sort of mold that was, that was growing on trees. And that's what animals were, were sort of presenting with allergic signs of allergic skin disease. And us humans, we breathe in pollens and dust and

And ragweed and flower stuff and grass and all that stuff. and it gives us itchy eyes, itchy nose. We, we sneeze that sort of thing. Dogs inhale it and it creates an immune response and allergy response of certain immunoglobulins that result in itchy skin. So typically it is the lower half of the dog, the belly under the arms, the feet, that sort of thing. So this is possible.

That Ethan has some airborne allergies. I'm trying not to say seasonal allergies, cause that's technically not correct. but I also said, look, you know, it doesn't sound like that to me. it sounds more like, there is something that is, is causing regionally itchiness, maybe a bacterial or fungal infection of the nail beds. so I asked him to, you know, check the nail beds where the nail comes out of the paw.

very closely, see if there's a discoloration. Obviously talk to your veterinarian. They can take a little swab of the Q-tip, throw it under the microscope, see if there's excessive bacteria or yeast. and I said, it could be depending on where he lives, and depending on how cold it is, it could be, like salt on the road. there is a pet friendly road salt you can use in your driveway, but it's about 40 % more expensive than a regular road salt.

and probably doesn't come in massive quantities and obviously cities aren't going to be using that. They're going to be watching their budget. They're going to use regular kind of rock salt mixed in with sand. but he cleans, he cleans Rudy's paws, consistently after the walk. So I doubt it's that. So I basically said, yeah, it might be allergies. might be, infections, speak to your veterinarian, and, and there's easy treatments for both of them.

That was a, it was an interesting question. appreciate it. So then, Jim from Hamilton asked, how do you keep a gate jumper from running out the front door when guests arrive? this is a great, this is a great, question. how do you keep both dogs and holiday guests safe? it sounds like, it sounds like these dogs are, are hyper and he showed me, he sent a photo as well.

Of his puppies with their adult dogs. call them all puppies, puppies with Santa Claus and they're all little tiny little things, little Chihuahua types. And, so you can just imagine, you know, these guys are amped up when guests arrive. And this is very, this is very tricky to treat, to train because as guests arrive and it gets the animal all psyched up, that becomes a reward for the animal. any sort of reaction.

You know, bark, bark, bark, bark, and then people sort of back off or they, or they bend down to give a treat or, you know, I know these dogs aren't, aggressive, aren't dangerous. you know, they're not going to, they're not little land sharks. but any of these things are still rewards. So you have to start weeks in advance and it's this constant thing. And what I tell people is if you have this, need to, instead of stopping.

the behavior or the reaction of getting excited because good luck, that's not going to happen. You want to turn that excitement into a preferred behavior or preferred action. And hopefully these dogs are treat motivated or food motivated. And if they are, you need to get them so that they consistently sit or lie down sits easier. They consistently sit.

When told to sit and a treat is given. If you can get them to do that, you can then start having a little bowl of treats up on a shelf right by the front door so that anytime you come home and these guys are probably going to get excited when you come home, you get them to sit and you give them a treat. And eventually they'll start waiting for you at the front door. Like you, they hear your keys going in the lock or they see your car coming up the driveway and they're going to run to the front door and sit.

And basically say treat time is coming and then you can actually invite your friends to come to the house as a trial. Maybe neighbors, you know, obviously somebody who likes you because they may just come by for five minutes. You do this a couple of times, treat, treat, treat, you know, reward, reward, reward. And hopefully that's going to work. say hopefully because it's very, very difficult. Sometimes, unfortunately, all you can do is, is put them like downstairs.

you know, or put them behind a door so they don't escape. One of things I would recommend though is if you don't think it's going to work is, is have a leash on the dog just for those times. One putting a leash on a dog, especially when they're inside, it kind of changes their behavior a little bit. It's almost like they realize, okay, now it's serious time. gotta almost be like in work mode. but it's also a great thing that you can grab that leash or step on the leash. If the dog goes to bolt outside. One last thing is.

The guests coming over cannot sort of react to the dog. If the dog is bouncy and jumpy and barky and whatnot, they can't laugh. They can't play with it. Like they, basically have to ignore it. this is assuming the dog doesn't learn to sit calmly and get that treat at the front door. They have to ghost them basically so that eventually the dog may.

become desensitized to people coming over the say, what's the big deal with them coming over. They're going to ignore me for five minutes. I'll get excited five minutes from now. but it is very, very difficult to do. just, just, that's just the way dogs are. They like to, they like to talk to people. okay. Another question. Stacey from Colona asks, what is the best way to keep cats from chewing the Christmas tree? another great question. So.

This is important because the, the needles, technically the, the, like the pine needles, there's chemicals within the needles that are toxic, but they would really have to eat a lot of them. And that's not really going to happen, but the needles can cause gastrointestinal upset in theory. They could cause perforations, but they they're basically going to cause scraping and abrasive damage to the intestinal tract, vomiting, diarrhea, abdominal pain, that sort of thing. so.

Yeah, this is tough. So I would say if the cat is chewing on the trunk of the tree, then wrap it with tinfoil. That's kind of an easy trick. It kind of looks nice too. And the tinfoil deters them from wanting to go near it. but the other thing is getting a citrus oil, pet safe sort of spray, almost like a bitter apple, but it's a, like a citrus oil and you can spray it on the tree, at least in the lower.

whatever foot or two, guess a foot. and, animals generally don't like that. The vast majority of them don't like that citrus sort of flavor, even the scent. So they're going to stay away and it still smells nice for us. So those, those are some good, good, good tricks. All right. And last question comes from, Bruno the puppy himself asks, what should my

Paw rinse, P-A-W-R-E-N-T-S, a play on the word of parents. Paw rinse do if I eat some paper wrapping or tissue this Christmas. Excellent question. The first thing is do not induce vomiting. There are ways, I'm not going to say how, there are ways to make your animal vomit, but they can come with all kinds of dangers and complications.

call your veterinarian. and if the vet feels that the amount of paper that has been eaten could be an obstructive sort of issue, then the vet will have you bring the animal in and, us veterinarians, us experts will induce vomiting through a medication. usually use medication called apomorphine. we just had a case where a dog came in and non-client, this was yesterday, Saturday at the clinic. We get a lot of non-clients on Saturday because we're open until six.

And most clinics close at noon and the dog had swallowed a giant sock and it definitely would have obstructed. And then when he threw up the sock after we gave the drugs, he also threw up a bunch of food and a ton of tissue paper. So this dog had, he'd gone to town. He'd eaten a lot of stuff. but really just. Just be weary that your dog's probably going to get a bit of soft stool. Most of the time.

They can't eat enough paper to cause obstructive damage. If they really did eat a lot of paper, then call the veterinarian and go from there. there was a question that I forgot to pull up that was basically about, how do we stop our dogs from licking the water that's at the base of the Christmas tree? which is a great question. And the, the reality is, is Christmas trees.

have, they have fertilizer and pesticides on them and in them, which will leak into the water. This is obviously if you have a real tree, why would you have a fake tree sitting in water? And those things can make your animal sick. Generally it's just gastrointestinal upset, but still sick is sick. And you can have a lid. You can get some really nice festive looking lids and the tree skirts that can cover. You can even make lids.

pretty simply just Google it, instead of me describing it, but make sure that you change the water. I would say daily, cause that's going to avoid the pesticides and the herbicides and fertilizers from building up in concentration and make sure most importantly, I think is make sure there's a lot of water, fresh water elsewhere for your dog to drink or your cat for that matter.

They're not going to want to drink the weird tasting water coming from the tree. unless they're really strange, which there are strange dogs and we love them and strange cats and we love them. but, the vast majority are, if they're drinking water out of the Christmas tree, they're doing it because there's not, an option elsewhere. I'm just now being reminded of, I think his name was snot. the big Rottweiler with the chronic sinus infection.

from, national Lampoon's Christmas vacation, the second best Christmas movie ever. The first is of course, Christmas story with little Ralphie who wants the air powered BB rifle, Red Rider BB rifle gun. and his friend gets triple dog dared into licking the frozen flagpole. I highly recommend everybody watch that. All, all three of us read for children, my sister, my brother, and I find that movie.

to be the funniest Christmas movie of all time. And so far, I think all of our spouses, even my ex-wife thought we were all ridiculous for thinking it as hilarious. I apologize if I'm speaking out of turn regarding my in-laws, my brother-in-law, my sister-in-law, but I'm pretty sure it's a very acquired sense of humor. It's a very dry, sarcastic sort of sense of humor. But we like that because that's how we roll.

That's how the Redfords are. but anyways, I think, snot this, this, this disgusting and misunderstood and probably misdiagnosed, Rottweiler, in national lampoon's Christmas vacation, kept drinking the water. it ended up causing the tree to dry out and then there ended up being a massive fire, because the tree was so dry and they had a spark from one of the faulty lights. but that is about it for.

Listener questions, send me in your questions at dr.redford at vet905.com or Instagram at drcliff, drcliffworldwidevet. And, and again, all that information is in the, summary. So at, in the morning show, we also talked about, or we will be talking about, or we already talked about depending on how you're looking at this.

there he goes. The first question was about Christmas tree water. So it was more of a question from the hosts. we were talking about unusual Christmas dangers. Everybody knows about raisins and fatty foods and chocolate and stuff like that. But we wanted to talk about things that you may not know. For example, Christmas or winter dangers, antifreeze. Antifreeze is made with ethylene glycol and ethylene glycol.

is highly toxic to cats and dogs, especially the cats, mostly because of their size. and it is the dosage makes the poison. and ethylene glycol causes, severe kidney damage to the point of kidney failure and death, unfortunately. and the problem with antifreeze is it's, is it sweet tasting. So, cats will, you know, if it's a little bit dripping out of your car or maybe you poured it.

Into your car, you're filling up the antifreeze and a little bit spilled and went onto the ground of the garage. Your cat may lick that up if they have access to the garage and it could kill them. So other than avoiding making a mess, you can actually get a pet and child friendly, human friendly antifreeze. And it's just made instead of ethylene glycol. It's made with propylene glycol works just as well. A tiny bit more costly.

But, if you have, if you have, pets around, especially cats, cause they roam, roam the house and maybe go into the garage. would recommend picking up. Ethylene, sorry, propylene glycol, not ethylene glycol. and then talking about antifreeze. So snow globes, snow globes, the water inside the snow globes, those are those things you shake and the, know, it usually a little scene with a castle or a beautiful little house in the winter time or Santa Claus.

And you shake it and the snow goes all over the place, right? inside this globe, in the snow globe, the water is antifreeze. and so if you accidentally drop or purposely you throw it, because things get crazy sometimes at Christmas and you smash that snow globe, clean the water up quickly. Because if you have a cat or a dog to a lesser extent, cats are really attracted to it.

and they start to lick it up and you go, cute. Fluffy is helping me clean up. no, fluffy is, fluffy is causing kidney damage. so, clean it up. doesn't mean don't have snow globes. have snow globes. but, just be aware. and then, the one other thing we're going to talk about if there's time on the morning show, yesterday, which is tomorrow, is, tinsel tinsel, the, you know, the, the little fake.

sort of strips of metallic looking stuff that is supposed to look like icicles or just makes your Christmas tree look nice. Cats love eating that stuff and to a lesser extent dogs. And we actually have a syndrome that we call tinsel gut and, you know, emergency hospitals, during the Christmas break, especially see a lot of these cats and dogs that swallow a bunch of tinsel and it gets bunched up.

into the intestines and it can be a really hard surgery because there'll be all throughout the intestines and you got to make multiple incisions into the intestinal tract into the various intestines to pull this stuff out. So I say stay away from it. If you have pets, keep, do not use that tinsel. You can get like this really, really nice metallic, they're probably plastic, but they look metallic, twisted, we're going to call metal, these twisted metal

things that look like icicles and are, and are, you know, safe for pets cause they're not going to swallow them. so you just gotta find something that's a little bit more appropriate. and that is, that is the stuff we talked about, in within seven minutes on the morning show. So, let's be honest, we're not going to probably get through all that stuff or it's not going to be as detailed, which is why it's great. Talking to, talking to.

Talking to me here on listening to me on the vet life. What else? I wanted to give you guys an update. So most of you guys know, or some of you know that I am writing a book. I am writing a, hate to call it a memoir because that makes it sound like I think I'm important. But it's a memoir because it is a autobiographical, but it is only about a certain period of time. That's what a memoir is.

a memoir could last just a couple of days telling a story over a couple of days. A memoir could tell the story over 10 years, but it is not. I was born. Here's my life to, et cetera, et cetera. 50 years go by. is the book that is an autobiography or a biography. So I am writing a, a memoir called the wild life. A little bit of pun in words, cause it's also wildlife, the wildlife and adventures of a worldwide vet. And it's basically.

my trips around the world and, and the things I've learned and the adventures I've experienced, the time I've spent with my daughter, things like that. And, you know, it starts off with me going to Jamaica. and then, in no particular order, cause I'm to get them wrong. Greece and Egypt, and, Panama and Ukraine twice and India once I've been to India twice, but the book ends with my final trip to Ukraine.

during the war where things got pretty hairy and, the, the, the second trip to India is what's on the documentary, which should be coming to TV soon, hopefully. but I've been writing this book and I've been sort of dilly dallying it for the last couple of years, but I'm 90 % done. I've written, almost a hundred thousand words. It's going to be about 110,000 words. And then I'm going to have to edit it down to probably about 90,000 words max.

Which is fine. Cause I'm a little too, I've got like a written diarrhea, just blah. just, you know, tell everything and knowing that I'm going to be cutting it down. and that'll be my next step. And the book will be done as far as that first draft, by Christmas time. and then I've got, maybe I'm going to do, give myself a month to really, really cut it down. And we've been working, I've been working with a, a literary agent who's been, helped me do a proposal and we sort of talked to a,

ghostwriter who wouldn't be writing it for me because I've already written it, but would act almost like an editor to clean it up, to make it more literary. Is that right? Literary. The fact that I need, I'm not a hundred percent sure that word shows you that I need this assistance. And the gentleman I was going to work with, his name is Ethan. And Ethan's very well known here in Canada. He has ghostwritten or assisted writing edited like he's doing for me. Several...

bestsellers, and most of them sort of memoir types. and there's a great book written by Colin Campbell called, free days with George. and, I just finished it, and, so check it out. I'm actually going to try and get them on the podcast. So won't talk much about it anyway. we've, we've, we've approached a whole bunch of publishers, over the last year.

And they've all said no for various reasons. And I wanted to read you the latest email I received, or Hillary, the sales agent received and then sent to me from a very well known, very well respected, good size publisher here in Canada that's got ties through the U S and, Europe as well. And they know Ethan.

And they were very excited. Like they were at a book conference in Germany when they sort of got the go ahead to really start considering this. And when we sort of shook hands, when I shook hands with Ethan. And so she was really excited and she's going to take her back to her team, et cetera, et cetera. But things don't always go the way you want. I'm going to read the email out word for word. She says, I'm so sorry to share that after much discussion and deliberation with my colleagues,

we've decided not to offer on wildlife. I know this will be disappointing news and I'm truly sorry. As you already, as you know already, there's so much about this project that I find deeply energizing and exciting. I think Dr. Cliff is really special and I have such appreciation for his compassion, bravery and sense of adventure, all of which shine through in the proposal. As an animal lover, I connected with the huge range of fascinating

and illuminating anecdotes he offers. And I should add that I'm familiar with Evan's work and think he'd be a wonderful partner to Cliff and for this book. I was really hoping this would be a project for you and me to share at last, and I would have been truly honoured to work with Cliff. Unfortunately, my colleagues and I have had difficulty isolating who the audience for this book might be. And because of this, have reservations about our ability to break it out in the right way.

I know Cliff is a star in every sense and his star clearly just continues to rise. So it really does pain me to share this. I wish I had better news. I hope this book will find a home with the other publishers who have expressed interest because I really do think there's something there. I'm wishing you and Cliff the greatest success with wildlife and my regrets once again. So I was sent to that by my sales agent and you know, below is, below is her.

And I'm sorry, this isn't what you wanted to hear. Let's, let's just, you know, take the holidays to think and decide what we're going to, what our next step is. and I really wasn't interested in there's one other publisher, but they want to change things so drastically. I'm just not interested in working with them. And, I basically emailed my sales agent saying, Hey, I really appreciate the work you've done. I have to be honest.

I'm getting sick of receiving tons of accolades and all these wonderfully pleasant adjectives. And then a no. Like, he's so great, he's amazing, the story's amazing, we're so, I'm an animal lover, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. But the answer is no. I kind of said, it would just be nice if they just said, hey, we really appreciate you reaching out to us.

We took a good look at it. decided it's not the right fit for us. Period. Or say, you know, thanks for sending it. We took a look at it. We don't really think we can sell it. you know, that's sort of what she's saying here. she, reservations about our ability to break it out in the right way. I don't need to hear all this. I don't bullshit about, you know, yeah, maybe she does think.

I'm amazing and the stuff I do is amazing and she's so attached and blah, blah, blah. Well, if that's not going to make you pick up the book and, and, and sign a deal, then I don't need to hear about that. Cause I don't really care that you're going to buy it. if I publish it with somebody else. So, you know, I, I, I sent this email or I drafted this email to Hillary and then I waited, I've learned to wait and not send it. And then I sent it after a while. I was like, no, this is appropriate. I'm not saying anything.

rude to Hillary and, this woman's never going to see it. But like it just, it just both with the book and yes, I'm sensitive and bitter, maybe, but mostly sensitive. I'm not bitter cause they don't owe me anything and that's fine, but I'm getting sensitive because both with the TV show project and with this book project, I have heard so many times about how wonderful the respective project is and how entertaining it is and how it.

They can see it's going to be this huge success and they're so excited and they're so attached to the animal rescue side of it. And this and that, but it's not for us, but it's a no, but you know, not at this time. you know, let's, recoup maybe again in six months. Give me a break. Stop blowing smoke. And then what, what is that saying? Don't, don't piss on my back and tell me it's raining.

it's kind of like that. heard that from, what is that? What is that guy's name? Dennis Hopper, Dennis Hopper. think it was from, speed, when it cannot Reeves, movies. where he says, don't piss on my back and tell me it's raining. that'd be some pretty warm rain. anyways, so, so that is, something that is going on in my, the rest of my vet life that is not directly veterinarian related, but it kind of is because it has to do with this book.

But, so, things are, things are frustrating. So I'm just, I'm still writing. I'm still finishing the book. I've got, I've got a, a, I've got someone in the UK, a publisher in the UK that's, that's looking at it. doesn't mean anything. They just said, yeah, we'll take a look at it. was through a kind of a favor of a friend. and then I have another publisher in the UK that, did express interest.

They weren't signing anything, but she basically said, we won't even look at it until you're done your first draft. because too often they've, you know, gotten excited about something. And then, the writer was 80 % done, which is what the case was, a couple months ago. And she said, Nope. you know, too often in the past we've done that and then they never end up finishing where things take way longer than it was supposed to. So.

come back to us, really interested in looking at it once you're done the first draft. So that's what I'm going to focus on. I'm going to focus on these two publishers and I'm going to focus on writing it, getting it done, getting it done by Christmas. Once I sat down and now they have this sort of personal deadline, like I've just told myself, you will get this done before the, it's actually the end of the year. I'll get it done by the end of the year. I've sort of made a promise to myself, a commitment to myself.

and most importantly, I told my wife and so then she's gonna, she's gonna give me a hack for, for not getting it done. as she should, that's what I've asked her to do. So she's been pushing me, which is great. so, if, and if none of them are interested, I'm just gonna polish it up and I will wait. I'll be honest. I'll wait and see what happens with the film. you know, and it's very unlikely, but maybe the film.

is a huge success and it gets turned into a TV show. And if all those things happen, then a publisher is going to want to get involved because of the sort of notoriety of the author, which is me. but if none of that happens, then I'll eventually publish it myself. I'll do self-published through Kindle or, who knows, but, either way it's going to happen. I would just prefer it to be a through like Penguin house or something like that.

so I think I've rambled on, my good friend Chelsea, wants these, wants these episodes to be over. can't remember if she said she wants it to be an hour or if she wants it to be over 40 minutes, so that she can listen to it all the way to and from Costco or while she's at Costco. so there you go, Chelsea. It's, 51 minutes approximately. I hopefully, hopefully that's enough. Other than that, you know, share the podcast, give me some ratings.

I talked about some, my weird ratings that on Spotify, I'm a five star podcast and on Apple, I'm like 3.6 or 3.7. I'm actually going to start reading out some of these, some of these ratings on the air, without actually reading them prior hands. So, it'll be both, humbling and rewarding. So thanks again. be kind to animals, be kind to yourself and be kind to each other. And what else could I say? Merry Christmas.

Happy Hanukkah, happy holidays. and, be kind to any aspiring authors, if you're a publisher out there and don't piss on their back and then tell them it's raining. Just say, say no, thank you. It's not for me. Anyways. Thank you guys. I love you guys all for listening and, we'll talk soon. Cheers.