What are these spots?

In this episode of the VetLife podcast, Dr. Cliff Redford shares updates on his film and book projects, discusses his volunteer work with animals, and delves into a medical case involving a fox. He also highlights recent veterinary news and innovations, explores the health benefits of human-animal interactions, and answers listener questions about pet health issues.

First, if you haven't watched my film and live in Canada (or have one of those VPN things), you can watch it here:

https://youtu.be/oMUx3yuyznc?si=oagpg7bGnpbuyXlJ

Be sure to follow me on Instagram @drcliffworldwidevet.com and on Twitter at @drcliff_vet
Listener questions, episode suggestions, or if you have a good idea for a guest, email me at dr.redford@vet905.com
Additional information can be found at drcliff.ca

Transcript

Dr. Cliff Redford (00:08)

Hey everyone, welcome to another VetLife podcast. We got another solo edition today. I've got some great guests lined up over the next few weeks and there's ⁓ quite a few fun things in the animal industry news we're going to talk about. And I ⁓ got a great case that was sent to me by one of our listeners. So let's hit it. ⁓ I guess the first thing I want to talk to everyone about is my film.

⁓ It is now out, it can be found on the YouTube ⁓ TVO docs YouTube page if you're in Canada. ⁓ So just go onto YouTube, do TVO and then docs as in documentary and you'll find it. It's in the video section. It's doing well, we got a lot of positive comments. We had a great little time watching it. ⁓

at the Rouge River Brewery. I think I talked about this at the last episode. Anyways, it's been fun. It's been fun having people reach out to me and express their enjoyment for the film. ⁓ Yeah, it's a great film. Now, as far as that's concerned, everyone knows that we're trying to turn this into a television show. ⁓ And it's not end of hope. We haven't lost hope yet.

But the reality is, ⁓ this is our last kick of the can. I've been chasing this dream for about 12 or 13 years, and I think you need to keep chasing dreams, but this isn't just something where I can keep working harder and it's eventually gonna happen. I am not the key master, nor am I the gatekeeper. ⁓ Little 80s Ghostbusters reference there. ⁓ I am neither Rick Moranis nor am I... ⁓

Oh shoot. Sigourney Weaver. And you know, it's not up to me. And it's not up to the team from Surfdog Productions. There is a production company that's very interested in it. They also own their own channel. And they have some distribution strength around the world. However, they love it, but there's always one of those things. So they've sort of asked us to go out and find some other investors through

kind of like through distribution pre-sales kind of thing. I don't know, it's very complicated and I'm letting the experts deal with it. ⁓ And you know what though, thank goodness. Well, thank goodness. mean, I'm not dying here. This is not, ⁓ you know, I'm living a very good life and very happy with how things are in my life. And I'm very, very blessed. But I would be a lot more sort of saddened by this. ⁓

if I didn't have this book project to keep me busy. And boy, am I really glad that I signed with ECW Publishing or they signed with me or they liked my book. The book will be coming out in about 14 months, in about fall, late summer of 2026. Now the book's done. I have written 105,000 words, edited down to about 92,000.

which is about 300 pages and we may even edit it closer to 85,000. There's definitely a little bit of fat in the book that can be trimmed. But I mean, some people like a little bit of fat, so we have to kind of decide. ⁓ Jen has warned me, she's the editor, that she's gonna be reaching out to me soon and we're gonna start working on the editing process and she's warned me that there's gonna be a lot of work to do. ⁓ Not because she thinks my book needs work.

I'm sure it does, but she just says every book gets quite a few ⁓ rewrites and they really try and bring out something that is as polished as can be. ⁓ And I say, you know, thank goodness for them because I've realized over the years that I need to keep busy. ⁓ heard a quote once that was basically, wake up, it's like I wake up without the goal to be happy, but with the goal to be proud.

of myself meaning I want to get tasks done. I don't know who said it but they hit the hamster in the wheel in my brain right on the head. Don't hit hamsters. ⁓ But I definitely, you know, I need these goals. ⁓ Maybe that's why I do boxing. As far as boxing, I'm going to be competing again in two weeks, June 6th at Grant's MMA again in sort of the...

⁓ Yorkville, Vaughan, Richmond Hill kind of area. I don't know who I'm fighting, some guy out of another club called No Excuse out of Burlington, but it'll be fun. ⁓ Hopefully it's a banger, hopefully we each get a few bruises and no one gets hurt ⁓ or injured I should say. I don't know, maybe either or.

But hopefully we'll all come out smiling. That's the goal. And we can all go back to work. I got to work the next day on a Saturday. So hopefully, hopefully everything's fine. But these are these things I do, I think, to keep my brain busy. Who else out there in the podcast listening world is like that? And it's not an ADD thing. I can definitely stay very focused. That's how you write a book. You stay very focused. ⁓ It's just a hyperactive brain, I guess.

⁓ but I wanted to share with you some of the stuff that I got an email recently from ECW and this is sort of where I became really, really excited. And I guess, you know what, I'll just sort of summarize it. It was like, it was basically saying, Hey, welcome to the ECW team. And here's our initial off author package, meaning, you know, information about ECW. And this is stuff I'd kind of already known about, but now it was very formal. ⁓ and.

you know, they talked about the plethora of marketing that they have at their disposal and how they work with, ⁓ Barnes and Noble and Indigo chapters and these major book stores, as well as the independents all across North America in the, not only getting your book into their stores, but into the windows and into the, at the corners of the, recommended tables, you know, if they have like Sarah's list and.

Ross's list and whoever the different readers the different people working at the bookstore can make recommendations. Bear with me one second my crazy dog Bo is chewing on our dustpan.

This guy's this guy's a savage man. He, ⁓ talk about, I think he has ADD. He, he can't sit still and it's kind of raining out right now. So he can't really go outside. Doesn't really like to go outside when it's cold and rainy. That's only 14 degrees Celsius, which in Fahrenheit is cold. ⁓ it's probably what? 55 ish. ⁓ I don't know. ⁓ something like that, but it's chilly.

⁓ so he starts to just chew on things, ⁓ toilet paper, random plastic. He chewed up, ⁓ my skipping rope, my boxing skipping rope. He, he chewed up the lactic acid sort of, a mask, the cardio mask that makes me feel like Bane from Batman that I wear that helps me, ⁓ basically makes my workout extra awful. ⁓ and helps build mental toughness as well as build up lactate threshold.

Maybe he doesn't want me to box or he's saying my cardio, your cardio is enough, dad. Don't worry about it. Your cardio is amazing. Focus on your jab. Focus on the fundamentals. Who knows? but he basically chews on a lot of stuff. so anyways, we get this, I get this email from the, from the team and they go off talking about the massive number of marketing, ⁓ tools that they have and how well they're gonna, they're gonna work for me. ⁓ and the 40 or so books a year that they, that they publish.

So this is a mid-level, know, highly respected mid-level publishing company here in Canada. And they talked about how they plan to try and get it into ⁓ Australia and Europe and non-English speaking countries. I really, I'm going to try and find a way to get it translated into Greek with me having family in Greece. It'd be really, really cool if it was in Greece ⁓ as well.

⁓ for obvious reasons. And part of the book is about the, think there's about three chapters about the time that I did some volunteer work during a wildfire, ⁓ that had ravaged a community and, and hurt a lot of people, killed some people and killed a lot of animals. And so we went in afterwards and, helped out. ⁓ so it's a very touching, ⁓ part of Greece's sort of annual problems that they have. And, and, and it really shed a light into the rescue groups that are, that are there. But.

So the other thing that ECW had was they basically had homework for me to do. And first of all, they talked about the three or four steps of editing that are going to occur. And they created a document that I have to start filling out with a list of all the photos I would like in the book. They end up doing the final choice, but let's say I pick 30 photos and they ended up picking 20 of them. I have to have names and descriptions of all 30. ⁓

but also descriptions that are going to be used should the books be printed in Braille, which is really cool. ⁓ I don't know how many people still read in Braille. Would they just do audio books? ⁓ Or do they like the tactile feel that we appreciate? I prefer books versus audio books, even though I listen to podcasts so much. It's not my preference. ⁓

And then they, you know, they said build up and this is, this is an article or a document that's sent to all the authors. So they talk about social media. ⁓ and they say the two big ones are Instagram and Twitter. Well, my Instagram handle at drcliffworldwidevet is pretty busy. and I got a handle on that. ⁓ but Twitter, I have not, let's call it Twitter instead of X Twitter. I have not used probably in six or seven years at least, ⁓ maybe even 10.

⁓ so I had to, ⁓ dust off the old password and start working on it. And, and I'm kind of enjoying it. It's actually, it seems maybe a little bit more intellectual, ⁓ than Instagram is. ⁓ and you know, it's because I'm starting out and I'm, I'm following people that, or organizations that I want to follow, ⁓ with a specific task in mind.

⁓ and you know, so there's a lot of animal rescue groups and sort of NGOs and, ⁓ animal, animal sort of activists themselves, ⁓ actors and singers that are, that are known for being, ⁓ animal activists. And then I have a lot of friends in the media that I'm starting to follow them as well that are documentarians and journalists, video journalists and whatnot. ⁓ so it's been fun. So if you guys are on Twitter, ⁓ if you guys are on X come find me it is at.

Dr. Cliff underscore vet. I think you can also search for Dr. Cliff worldwide vet. ⁓ But yeah, so they got me doing that. ⁓ And then just a whole bunch of stuff. I'm have to start already rewriting some stuff and moving things around. And then they talked about the book cover and I have to go out and get a professional photo done of my face.

⁓ for that, for the headshot that goes on the back of the book. So this is all, this is all pretty legit, which is, which is exciting. ⁓ and again, it's nice to kind of keep my brain, keep my brain busy. ⁓ now as far as this week, ⁓ I wanted to talk about this, this amazing experience I had at shades of hope. It was, ⁓ you know, I go there every Thursday, I do some volunteer work pretty much every Thursday.

And it was a busy week, for various reasons. And there are a few interns that asked for the day off so that they could come in and work with me. So that's not part of their normal hours. That's the deal. and I hope they, I hope they, they didn't regret it. I hope I got to show them some fun stuff and they learned and, ⁓ some future veterinarians. Well, we had one case, and I'm to talk briefly about, and this is about a, a gorgeous two year old male Fox, ⁓ that had

come in and seen Dr. Wendy a couple of days prior and had some weird neurological issues. had been, he presented to another rescue and was with them for about a month. He'd had a basically a face and head full of porcupine quills. And there's a thought now because he's shown some neurological signs that one of the porcupine quills may have gotten into his ⁓ central nervous system, whether it's his neck or his brain.

and causing an infection because he's having these on and off again symptoms that I won't get too much into just yet. But Wendy had reached out to me saying, can you do a spinal tap to collect some CSF fluids, cerebral spinal fluid? And I said, yeah, I can do that. I didn't tell her I hadn't done it since 1997. And I'd only done one and it went well.

and it was on a dog. And so the reality is, thank goodness shades of hope had, ⁓ spinal needles, the 22 and 23 gauges. and, I basically just looked up on the vet information network and saw a video on how to do it. And, and I thought, okay, I'll just follow this video. I'm a bit of a cowboy and I got some pretty good skills and I can listen to instructions some of the time.

And so basically this video talks about how the animal, it was on a dog, but you know, it's pretty much the same. This video talked about how the animal must be under full anesthesia. So it not just heavily sedated, but we had to intubate, put them on an anesthetic gas. This procedure can be painful. ⁓ And if there's any sort of movement, you can cause irreparable damage. There can be bleeding, there can be infection. can cause.

⁓ embolism, almost like a stroke in the spinal cord. ⁓ and if you go too far, you can go right into the spinal cord itself and cause, ⁓ irreparable nerve damage, and essentially paralyze or, or, or permanently and seriously disabled the patient. And with this being a wild animal, it's never going to be released if that happens. So you put them on their side and you shave up the area, just sort of a reverse mullet, ⁓ that is

basically super short in the back, right down to the skin. And you do a full three-step surgical prep and you find the, the Atlas, which is the, the top vertebrae sort of holding up the head. And that's why they call it the Atlas. It's like that, that super strong man in Greek mythology that is holding the world. well, the Atlas vertebrae is holding up the entire skull. ⁓ and you find the Atlas with your.

non-dominant hand, which for me is my left hand. And with your middle finger and your thumb, you grasp the wings of the Atlas, which is basically the sides of the Atlas. you can feel it through the musculature and the skin and the fat. then with your, your index finger, I almost called it your Peter pointer. You find the midline of C1, the first cervical vertebrae.

and the rostral tip, is towards the head. So let's just say the start of it. And right there at the rostral, right where the, the, the top of C1 is, ⁓ is where you put in the spinal, ⁓ spinal needle. Now it did take me five tries. ⁓ I kept bouncing off of the bone. ⁓ I wasn't finding it correctly and I tried a slightly different angle and different positioning.

Um, and then I switched down to a 23 gauge. Um, it may have been because we're, had run out of 22. Um, but I'll keep that to myself. You guys don't have to listen to that part. Um, and the 23 gauge ended up finding it. And, so it finds the space and it advances. then you feel and kind of hear this popping noise, popping feeling as it goes through the dura matter, which is like a ligament structure.

part of the layer on the top of the spinal canal, not the spinal cord. The spinal cord is the nerves within the spinal canal. And once you feel that popping, you need to stop because that means you've gone through into the spinal canal, but not far enough to go into the spinal cord. And then you take out the, ⁓ stylet, I think it's called.

Basically the inside part of this pin or this needle and the fluid just slowly comes up due to pressure that's inside the spinal canal and the cerebral spinal fluid so coming from the brain, cerebral and ⁓ spinal. So from the spinal cord the CSF comes out and just starts dripping and it looks like water. It just drips a little bit slower so you can tell it's a touch thicker.

And we ended up taking 20 drops, 10 for one tube, 10 for another, which that equals about two mils. then, ⁓ and then we finished. And so it was, it was, I mean, it was fascinating. Obviously I, it's a shame this Fox is injured. ⁓ But ⁓ I was, I was, it was fun. It was fun sort of in a scientific kind of way. And ⁓ I get why new grads sometimes want to go into.

emergency and critical medicine right out of school because they get to try these and perfect these skills that they would have only learned and done once in school. ⁓ mind you, you could go 27 years without doing it like I did and then still do it. It's just, took me a few times. ⁓ so there you go. So we're going to find out why, ⁓ why this guy's got this neurological issue. It's going to tell us if there's an infection, it's going to tell us about diseases like toxoplasmosis. ⁓

a few other conditions, meningitis, things of that nature. So hopefully it gives us the answer that we need. ⁓ Now, so some fun little articles and fun little news before we get to the very interesting case that was sent to me on Instagram. ⁓ A couple of ones. So you know what? I just talked about a neurological case in a Fox and the vet practice news had this article recently ⁓ regarding a craniectomy.

In a dog and a craniectomy, ectomy is the suffix. Must be the suffix because prefix is beforehand. It is the suffix ectomy, which means the removal of. So hysterectomy is the removal of the uterus. Ovariohysterectomy removal of ovaries and uterus. That's what a spay is. A ⁓ castration, a neuter would be called technically an orchidectomy.

Now, what are the other suffixes with surgery? there's. Ectomy there's autumny, which is the opening and then closing of, so cystotomy, ⁓ opening up the bladder to remove stones, let's say, and then you close it gastrotomy and a rotomy. If you got to remove a foreign object out of the stomach or the intestines. So those are kind of common ones. And then there's pexy. Pexy is where you create a anchor. You sort of tie something.

⁓ stabilize something that most common would be a gastropexy, which they sometimes do in the super giant breeds like great Danes who get these, ⁓ torsion bloats where the stomach fills up with gas and then starts to rotate. And it's very, very dangerous and life threatening. So often when people go in, that's going to do an ovarian hysterectomy, a spay, they will do a gastropexy and they will basically suture the, the stomach wall to the, to the

abdominal wall so that it can never flip. ⁓ cause the bloat is one bit of a problem, but the biggest is the torsion because then it traps the gas. that's pexyectomy, otomy, pexieostomy is creating a permanent opening like a colonostomy. if someone has say colon cancer or colon surgery, they might have a colonostomy bag. So they've got a little, a little hole.

⁓ leading into a bag, is where their, their pupe, where their poop goes. I don't know why I'm so nervous saying that. ⁓ What else is there? There's plasti. Plasti is creating a, a, a new or moving the hole, creating a new hole. ⁓ It'd be like a rhinoplasty. So if you get a nose job, they call it a rhinoplasty because rhino means nose, sort of. ⁓

I am missing something. It will come to me. And if not, you guys can shout it out. But anyways, so this, this, this story talks about, well, let's just go right to it here. Alrighty. So veterinary practice news, do, do craniectomy and dog highlights the power of specialty care. The story is about Tuba. Tuba is a seven year old female boxer.

that successfully underwent a sub occipital craniectomy to remove the cerebellar mass, the brain tumor that threatened her mobility and quality of life. And it's this beautiful photo of this gorgeous brown boxer with a white chest, almost like she's got a brown suit on and then the classic black nose and black lips. And then she's got her tongue hanging out as far as she could. And she's looking very, very happy.

⁓ and she's getting a neurological exam, ⁓ at the Dove Lewis, ⁓ neurology department. So this story is about a seven year old boxer named Tuba underwent successful suboccipital craniectomy at Dove Lewis veterinary emergency and specialty hospital in Portland, Oregon. After experiencing balance issues, advanced imaging revealed a cerebellar mass prompting the neurosurgeons to carefully remove the tumor while preserving vital neurovascular structures. So they.

took out a bit of her brain. ⁓ Post-surgical histopathology was started. A portion of Tuba's tumor was sent to the University of Minnesota for the development of a personalized cancer vaccine designed to help train the immune system to recognize and fight the tumor cells. So that's an interesting ⁓ sort of advanced science, advanced procedure where they can take, ⁓ with some tumors, they can take the tissue.

send it off to a very special lab that can create a vaccine specifically against that tumor and not even just that type of tumor. It's that tumor specifically. And then they can give that vaccine to the dog and the dog's immune system will be able to respond to the vaccine much better than it did and maybe better completely. Like sometimes the immune system doesn't recognize the tumor at all.

Um, so they're able to create antibodies and then destroy any microscopic cells that may have been, may have been, uh, that may have remained and certainly will help improve its chance of remission. Um, it says here in quotations, when faced with a diagnosis like tubas, families often feel like they have no options, but that not, but that's not always the case. Tubas family was determined to do everything they could for her. And with our specialized neural neurology team, Dr. Pastina says.

advanced imaging and surgical expertise, we were able to provide her with an improved quality of life and more time with them. So I'm just sticking needles and pulling out fluid from a ⁓ Fox's CSF from a Fox's spinal tap or spinal canal. These guys are ⁓ doing just incredible brain surgery. ⁓ And then this dog went home two days after surgery with minimal neurological effects following surgery. So wow.

Good job. Just an adorable little dog. Just want to squish your face. ⁓ so that was a fun little, ⁓ fun little story in the news and, kudos to the veterinarian specialists out there that are just able to advance medicine. And, and for those that are able to afford it, ⁓ they're able to really, ⁓ provide some amazing options for extending an animal's life and improving their quality of life as well. So.

Let's talk about how important animals are to us. ⁓ Here is a study that explores health benefits of human dog interactions. Well, we all know that dogs, when they just enter the room and cats too, and we're taking out people that are afraid of animals. Let's just say the average person who's not afraid of cats or dogs. When they just enter the room, the average sort of heart rate reduces, the average respiratory rate reduces. stop panting.

⁓ and our blood pressure goes down. ⁓ and then there's some long-term, term effects for people that actually have pets, especially dogs for people that are recovering from heart surgery. say having those dogs does improve our recovery times and our sort of health markers, such as blood pressure, such as cortisol levels, ⁓ such as resting respiratory rates and resting heart rates, that sort of thing. ⁓

Plus they get us to often go out for a walk and exercise and get our butts off the couch. So here is this newly funded research aims to uncover the mechanisms behind the health benefits of human animal interaction. So I guess you're going to find out, why does this happen? The human animal bond research Institute, Habri has awarded a new research grant to the university of Wollongong in Australia and they're

to study the effects of therapy dog interactions on heart and brain activity. ⁓ Okay, so they used 100 university students who had to report emotional measures and objective physiological data including heart rate, heart rate variability and electroencephalogram readings. And then they were comparing therapy dogs interactions to standard relaxation techniques.

Hypothesizing therapy dogs may be better, basically. I'm paraphrasing. ⁓ And so our preliminary study indicates that therapy dogs can favorably influence multiple human health related pathways, including the autonomic and central nervous systems, likely through reductions in stress and relax and increases in relaxation. The new study will yield insights into the mechanisms underlying these benefits for the human health.

for human health and facilitate the development of evidence-based practices to optimize future animal assisted interventions for improved health and wellbeing. This brings me to think of my good friend and patient, Friday the golden retriever. Everyone find him on Instagram. I happened to cross paths with Friday yesterday, today's Sunday. Yeah, it was yesterday.

I was out taking my dogs. was at work. was lunch break. I was taking my dogs out for a walk. two of them anyways, ⁓ Bo was staying back playing with his brother Bjorn, but it was Thalia and, Lana Poppy and, ⁓ Friday's dad very proudly as he should said, ⁓ Friday has now passed his probationary period in the St. John's ambulance therapy dog program.

He had been working with a trainer named Caitlin, who's actually joining our team at Wellington soon. ⁓ and doing, you know, learning how to stay calm, et cetera, et cetera. And then he passed and then he does 10 visits as a probationary period. And if he passes, which he just has, he will very soon get a uniform Friday's going to look so handsome in his uniform. I think I might ask Friday's dad to be on the podcast. if, ⁓

If he or his mother are listening or any of his friends are listening, get ready, man. I'm going to give you a call soon. I'll have you on and you can, you can tell us all about Friday's experience and kudos for you and to Friday for doing what you're doing. So these therapy dogs can really, really improve quality of life for people in ⁓ assisted living, ⁓ long-term care facilities, palliative care, et cetera, et cetera. So ⁓ kudos to you, man.

to you, Friday and to, to your dad as well. love it. ⁓ And we all know, we all know that animals play an important part of our lives. So ⁓ it'll be interesting see what this study finds out about how the mechanisms behind these, these physiological improvements. So there you go. There's some, just some interesting, ⁓ interesting things in the news. All right. For any of you who have been waiting with bated breath, I know none of you have been, let's get to this, this, this medical question.

⁓ so I've heard from this person before bear with me one second. I've heard from this person before, ⁓ regarding other questions and I'm always happy people can reach out to me. They can either email me, ⁓ dr.redford at ⁓ vet905.com. ⁓ they can also, you can find me on Instagram at drcliffworldwidevet or now you can find me on Twitter X, ⁓ at drcliff underscore vet.

Um, and send me your questions. I'm happy to, uh, I'm happy to check them out and answer them. All right. Where is, here we go. Luciana is her name. Um, okay. So she's asked me questions about her other pets and let's see what we have here. Do do, do, do, do. All right. This is a question about her mom's dog. Nope. That's a, it was an old one. We've already covered that one.

⁓ sorry, sorry. Okay. Hello, doctor. It's Lucy. And again, I have another issue with my son's Chihuahua. He's been getting these spots for about two years and we have to, we've took them to five different vets and they all say they really don't know. Maybe it could be mites or bugs. but wouldn't our other dogs have it? They wanted them on Brevecto and the research we've done on it is more serious than the spots. So we are scared of having a dog.

We are scared. Having a dog is like a child. It's so much ⁓ anxiety. We don't know if it's hot spots or the one doctor also said moisture, dermatitis and fleas, which I think we would see bugs. We shaved him and now we can see all the spots on this and the scab over and the there is no hair and sometimes it comes back slowly. Thank you so much for always being there. When I have questions, I live with anxiety and I feel like we are getting nowhere sometimes.

Luciana, feel for you. And I basically center, said, send me a few photos. And I did say Brevecto is an excellent treatment. Trust your vet. Meaning don't, you know, don't Google things like side effects for drug. Well, you know, you can do your own research. ⁓ during COVID, I think the American government was saying, don't do your own research. ⁓ everyone should always do your own research, but recognize you may not have the, ⁓ let's say the training, let's say the academic.

⁓ foundation to understand everything that you're reading, but you should still feel free to do your own research and then it'll, it'll increase the value of the conversation you have with your doctor, with your veterinarian. but I did kind of say, look for vector was excellent and you should, your animal should be on it regardless. So the photos she sent me basically. Hi, babe. I will see you soon. My wife is heading off to cycle bar to teach a class and I have to join her.

which means you don't have to listen to this for much longer. Ha ha. ⁓ so she sent me a photo and it was basically these black spots and, the skin seemed dry and just the skin was hyper pigmented. ⁓ and certainly the coat seemed dry and unhealthy. Now she had shaved it, but you can kind of still see that there are areas where, ⁓ it was very patchy alopecia patchy.

baldness and thinning, let's say. So then I said, how old is he? Is he itchy? Is he on any other meds? Or does he have any other health conditions? He's seven years old. He doesn't try to get to his back, but he rubs his face in blankets and itches his ears and paws and little scabs around his lips that he tries to scratch. And everything we took up as serious, we look up as serious on Google and the hole around his butt turned black.

He scoots his butt all the time, but they say he's not impacted. He's been on no meds. So when I see this, I basically say, look there, and this is what I said, Doris said, look, there's a whole bunch of possibilities. This could be an autoimmune condition. This could be a thyroid condition, which does affect the coat and the health of the skin in various mechanisms. ⁓ This could be a strange sort of

nutritional disorder. I think it's zinc. Yeah, it's a zinc responsive dermatitis. It didn't really look like that. Didn't really look like a ringworm, but that's possible, which is a fungal infection. And I basically said, but the thing is, is when she said that the ears are itchy and the bum is sort of irritated and itchy. Ears and rears we say is often food allergies. ⁓ 75 % of dogs with chronic

⁓ or recurring ear infections have food allergies, which we'll get to in another, in another podcast. ⁓ so I basically said, look, you should do a base panel, chemistry, CBC, and include the thyroid. it's going to rule out a lot of different possibilities. And if all of that is normal, then you really should consider a food trial. ⁓ the, important thing is, is right now the dog is not in danger. The dog seems quite comfortable.

⁓ so it's not like we have to jump to something a little bit more invasive, like surgical biopsies of the skin, but that may end up being a tool, ⁓ that is a very, very effective diagnostic tool. ⁓ and if he was more uncomfortable, it's something that I'd be recommending. ⁓ so she basically said, thank you again and very much. And I will do that. So you're very welcome, Luciana. And thank you for, ⁓ providing us something to talk about. So I just don't ramble on.

So what you guys think? ⁓ couldn't remember what that, I'm pretty sure there's a sixth suffix. ⁓ Pexyplastyotomyectomyostomy.

Darn it. This is going be bugging me. Anyway, send in your answers if you can think about it. Goldstar, I will say your name on the podcast if you can think about it. See if you can beat my dad, because he's definitely going to be sending it in. He sent me something about something I'd asked. I got to check. Maybe it's time for another Dads Knows Best segment. Anyway, so thanks again, everyone, for listening. I appreciate you giving me a chance to keep my brain busy.

and talk about stuff that maybe you don't care about, maybe you do. But I appreciate it very, very much and I appreciate you guys incredibly. Follow me on Twitter X if you're on there. Send me your questions, send me your cases. ⁓ Share and give me a good review, et cetera, et ⁓ And and check out my film on TVO Docs YouTube page if you've not already. I will add a link at the bottom of the... ⁓

the intro thing I think I already have. It's on the bottom of my little summary thing there. That's it. Thank you very much guys. Be kind to animals and of course be kind to yourself and to others. And ⁓ thank you again. Cheers.