Your Top Pet Questions Answered: Dog and Cat Parent FAQs

Your dog swallows a sock, digs through the bathroom trash, or snaps up something off the sidewalk and suddenly you’re doing the mental math: “Do we wait, or do we go now?” We tackle those exact moments with Dr. Mike LoSasso, Chief of Staff at Frisco Emergency Pet Care, and get honest, practical guidance designed to help you prevent an emergency vet visit when possible and act fast when it matters.

We talk about what ER teams actually see most often, including the problems that show up year-round like foreign body ingestion, medication exposure, and GI emergencies. Dr. LoSasso shares simple pet-proofing habits that reduce risk in real homes with real life mess, plus the key detail every pet parent should track after an ingestion: what it was and how long ago it happened. That timing can determine whether induced vomiting is an option and whether you might avoid surgery.

We also dig into prevention beyond the living room floor. We discuss core vaccines that keep pets out of the ER, with a focus on parvovirus protection for puppies and leptospirosis risk in North Texas, even for “mostly indoor” dogs exposed through wildlife urine in yards. Then we address common misconceptions about raw diets and pet food marketing, including food safety risks like salmonella and E. coli from repeated handling, and why paying more doesn’t automatically mean better nutrition. We wrap with a clear reminder that dental disease is not just bad breath, it can impact whole-body health over time.

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To learn more about Frisco Emergency Pet Care visit:
https://www.FriscoEmergencyPetCare.com
Frisco Emergency Pet Care 
11201 Preston Road 
Frisco, Texas 75033 
469-287-6767 

Transcript

Welcome And What We Do

SPEAKER_00 0:03

Welcome to the Frisco Emergency Pet Care Podcast, your trusted source for expert insight into emergency veterinary medicine. Hosted by Dr. Mike Lostasso, Chief of Staff at Frisco Emergency Pet Care, this podcast brings you essential information to help protect the health and safety of your dogs and cats. Serving North Dallas with 24-7 emergency and critical care, the team at Frisco Emergency Pet Care is here when every second counts. Now, let's begin.

SPEAKER_02 0:47

And the answers may surprise you. Welcome back. I'm Julie Schwenzer, co-host and producer. Back here with Dr. Mike Lasasso, the Chief of Staff at Frisco Emergency Pet Care. It's always good to sit down with you and talk, Doctor.

SPEAKER_01 1:00

Appreciate being here. Thank you, Julie.

SPEAKER_02 1:02

Yeah,

Seasonal ER Cases And Heat Risks

SPEAKER_02 1:03

thank you. And before we like dig into today's topic about some FAQs from pet parents, we did just talk about how Dr. Lasasso has been in the emergency practice for over two decades and left general medicine. So what would be great to accomplish too in this episode is asking you some questions to avoid having to go to the emergency pet chair. And we appreciate everything you're doing to save all these animals. So what do you run into the most often right now, this time of year, in terms of emergency cases?

SPEAKER_01 1:35

There's not a lot of seasonality. I mean, the things that we see with weather, thankfully, we don't see a lot of heat stroke, but this is the time of year when we would, right? As things are starting to heat up, and it gets a whole lot worse around here in August and September than it does in June. Uh July can be pretty rough. It just kind of depends on the year. We do see more allergic reactions. We potentially see more snake bite this time of year, although we don't commonly see a ton of snake bite in our area. It happens. But the rest of the things that we see, the bloody diarrheas and the eating of the socks, those kinds of things that we see in emergency practice, they're not very seasonal.

SPEAKER_02 2:19

And

Preventing Sock Eating And Trash Raids

SPEAKER_02 2:20

it seems like it's very hard to avoid, like if you have a Labrador or one of these vacuum breeds, then they might just grab something and eat it. Like, how do you even avoid this?

SPEAKER_01 2:29

Oh, absolutely. Uh, if you've got a poodle cross, if it's a doodle of any kind, whether it's a labradoodle, a golden doodle, a bernie doodle, a sheep a doodle, Aussie Doodle, what else are they doing? I for some reason, even though standard poodles do not usually eat things, all those poodle crosses will. Um, so yeah, so some of the way I mean it's good husbandry, good management is making sure that the kids and the husbands keep their socks put away, you know, throw stuff in a hamper. Uh, don't leave it on the floor because the dogs will get into that. Um, we see quite a few sock eaters. Um, see a lot of dogs will get into the bathroom trash. So keep your bathroom trash covered, ideally in a cabinet and put away. Um because you'd be surprised what goes into the bathroom trash that dogs just love. The things like corn cobs, I mean, pay attention. But sometimes even when you are paying attention, things will will fall. You drop something and

When Induced Vomiting Helps

SPEAKER_01 3:33

they are right there on it. We encourage people if they say, Oh, my dog ate this, it's like, how many, how long ago? And if you get to it pretty quickly, then we can induce vomiting. It doesn't sound very pleasant, but if we can get that sock back out and we can get that corn cob back out, um well, we can avoid surgery, right? Um, had a dog last night that that ate a rat that they was they were concerned was was uh had been poisoned, and while that rat probably didn't have enough poison in him to actually hurt the dog, you're better off not having that in there. So we induce vomiting. We induce a ton of vomiting in emergency practice because they ate somebody's medication, they ate a sock, they ate corn cob. I had a puppy that ate q-tips last night. So yeah, they'll eat things that she wouldn't think were food. They're not very discriminating.

SPEAKER_02 4:26

No, they're not. No, they're not. We have two labs and one, I mean, yeah, if it's

Vaccines That Keep Pets Out

SPEAKER_02 4:31

there. Now she's getting more picky as she's lived with us longer. Thank goodness. Now I know you don't administer vaccines, but would you say though that if all the recommended vaccinations are up to date, it does uh help pets avoid coming to you.

SPEAKER_01 4:46

I mean, absolutely for certain things, it absolutely helps keep them out of the out of the ER. So when we're talking about puppies being up to date on parvo as a puppy is absolutely critical. Um, we do not see a lot of dogs in for parvovirus that have had at least three vaccinations. Um, so that's done generally pretty early. I used to do it 20 years ago at six, nine, and twelve weeks. Those recommendations may have changed. The other one that's kind of a big one for us in this area is actually leptosporosis, which has only recently kind of been accepted back into the core, uh kind of considered a core vaccine, not just an optional thing. Uh, most of the lepto dogs that we see are little white fluffy house dogs that don't even know what grass looks like. I mean, these guys are clearly indoor dogs, but lepto is a bacterial disease that doesn't care what species you are, it'll affect people, but it also affects dogs, cats, raccoons, possums, squirrels, probably rabbits. Uh so if you've got that stuff in your yard or you've got those critters in your trees over your backyard and they urinate into your yard, your dog is exposed. And so you think, well, he doesn't really have the house. Your house may not be quite as safe as you think. Certainly here in my part of uh of North Texas, we've got bobcats and coyotes, but we've got a lot of raccoons and possums as well. When you've got trees, you definitely have exposure. And I think that it's a lot cheaper, a lot easier, and a lot less stressful to vaccinate them against lefto than to treat them for it.

SPEAKER_02 6:33

Yeah, those are some good points.

Raw Diet Safety And Food Myths

SPEAKER_02 6:36

What about misconceptions possibly that pet parents have about choosing food for their dogs and cats? Like, you know, the raw diets becoming more popular. Do you see any issues that happen in the emergency because of the the pet food choices like over time?

SPEAKER_01 6:53

I don't see a lot of emergencies because of food choices. I I get very concerned, I think all veterans get very concerned with the raw diets. Uh I fed my dogs raw for a while. I would buy a five-pound log of a raw diet, and I would open that entire log at once, five pounds worth of food, and I'd use two different size dishers, which are just custom-sized ice cream scoops, and scoop out an appropriate meal size for the two dogs I had at the time. The issue we have with raw food is not that it's raw, a dog can take raw food, it's that you're freezing and thawing and freezing and thawing, and how do you handle that? And it's coming out of the refrigerator, it's going back in the refrigerator, and people are not nearly as food safety conscious when they're keeping that around, and that's what leads to things like salmonella, E. coli overgrowth, and those kinds of things. Raw diets allow you to control ingredients, you don't have any cereal fillers, and the amount of dog waste in your yard goes down by 75 to 90 percent. I mean, it's amazing the difference it makes. At the time, I really liked the idea that I could control the ingredients, but I did not like the idea of actual raw food. So although I bought raw food for them and dished it out as if it was going to be raw food, I put that right into the oven. They went on a every one of those big meatballs went into a cookie, went onto a cookie sheet and was baked. You know, the kids had come down because they thought we were having meatballs for dinner. I mean, it certainly smelled good, and then those went into the freezer and I could pull out individually, I could pull them out, and there was never an issue with freezing and thawing. Once it was done, it was done, and it only got handled once. When you're if you've got a five-pound log of a raw diet that you're constantly accessing because every you're keeping a refrigerated, and every day you're getting into it and handling it, you just have so much potential. So, veterinarians in general are not real big on the raw diets because that potential is there. I certainly would not feed bones. I know the barf diet, the bones in raw food. Um, yeah, I'm not wouldn't be a fan. But in terms of which dog food do we feed? No, I wouldn't say I see anything on an emergency basis. I think one of the biggest misconceptions is the more you pay for dog food, the better it is for your dog. That's wrong, right? Personally, I'm still a fan of Purina dog foods. I don't go in for any of the fancy packaging, and it's not any nutritionally better. So I think that's the biggest misconception. I feed my daughter Purina food. It happens to be the really expensive vegetarian hypoallergenic one because she's a blue pit bull and their skin disease is legendary, but it's still a purine food. Purina does not pay me anything, by the way. I try to avoid the very cheapest stuff that I can. Um, I'm not I'm not a big fan of Old Roy, but at the same time, I don't have a problem with the the middle of the road. It doesn't have to be the most expensive bag you can find. You're not paying for nutrition, you're paying for branding. It's kind of silly.

Dental Disease And Whole Body Health

SPEAKER_02 10:11

And then another one is dental care and how important that is. Would you say a lot of other issues that dogs and cats can have, they start from the gums and the teeth?

SPEAKER_01 10:22

It's not something that I necessarily see a lot in emergency medicine that I could necessarily blame on the teeth. Number one, if you think about it, if your dog's teeth are really bad, his breath really smells, right? And you're like, oh, please don't breathe in my face. Well, imagine being in his position, he gets to taste that all the time. And and their sense of smell and taste is much better than ours. So that's probably a little overwhelming for them. But the gums are a very vascular tissue. Your mouth has got a ton of blood vessels, and when you have that much bacteria right next to your vascular system, then you end up potentially with a lot of bacteria in your bloodstream, and that will seed your kidneys, that can seed the valves of the heart. So bacterial endocarditis definitely happens. I've seen a couple of cases of that where we actually documented it, and you certainly can have bacterial disease in the kidney. Now, is that going to show up necessarily right away? No, but it's definitely going to take years off their lives. Yeah, keep the teeth clean. The dental shoes are not going to do it. You really need to have them clean. I used to do my dad's schnauzers three or four times a year because that breed has such awful teeth, right? Some can get away with it once every year, some once every two years, but it's definitely an important part of maintaining their health.

Part Two Invite And How To Reach Us

SPEAKER_02 11:51

Well, Dr. Lataso, I wish we had more time, and I invite you to do a part two on this if you're open to it. Okay. Well, thank you for answering these questions. Very helpful. Thank you so much.

SPEAKER_01 12:02

Sounds good, man.

SPEAKER_00 12:07

Thank you for listening to the Frisco Emergency Pet Care Podcast. To learn more, visit FriscoPetER.com. Call 469-287-6767. Or stop by 11201 Preston Road, Frisco, Texas, 75033. Open 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Frisco Emergency Pet Care is always here when your pet needs us most. Until next time, take care of your pets, and they'll take care of you.