Showing 26 posts tagged with "science"
 [UPDATE - the webinar is focused on those of us who are pet bloggers - if you don't have a pet blog, get someone who does to get you an invite!]
One of the nice things about being a sponsored blog is the great information we get from our sponsors, Purina. Often I receive notification of projects, product launches, and events that Purina or one of our other partners is sponsoring or contributing to, and I'm almost always both impressed and surprised.
I'm sometimes surprised because before writing this blog, my perception of our sponsors, especially of Purina, was as companies that make dog food and cat food, and my understanding of them as a company ended there. Today, I know these pet companies do so much more! Yes, many are dog and cat food companies, or they make toys or leashes, etc. But, more importantly, I know often a lot of research and careful thought goes into each product.
With that in mind, I wanted to share this with all the pet bloggers out there: a webinar on healthy aging to be held on Thursday, March 25th. In conjunction with the upcoming Companion Animal Nutrition (CAN) Summit, Purina is hosting a webinar from 4:00-5:00 on Thurs, the 25th, to discuss "declining psychological reserves - defining aging; the role of nutrition in aging dogs (very important, as those who listen to our podcasts with Dr. Grace and Dr. Larry know); and aging and its effect on cognition."
Interested? Got a pet blog? Join us - contact sue.obrien@exponentpr.com" target="_blank">Sue O'Brien or Andy Jacobson, and they'll get you an official invitation. I'll be there. Let's learn what we can about healthy aging in our pets.
Hey, ya'all know I have a 17 year old kitty who means the world to me. I want all the information I can get on how to keep her alert and healthy as she travels into old age.
 You've probably heard a lot about probiotics over the last couple of years. Some major food producers have introduced probiotic supplements into the grocery store and advertised these products heavily. You can find probiotics in some yogurt brands and there are probiotic drinks and pills in health food stores.
At Purina, we studied the health benefits of probiotics for several years. In fact, yours truly was intimately involved as part of the product development work I did late in my tenure at Purina. I was part of the team that introduced Forti Flora to market in 2006. Forti Flora was the first probiotic supplement introduced for veterinary use with a guaranteed level of microorganisms.
The last statement is really important.
Many products claiming to have probiotics don't have enough, if any, live organisms to work their magic in the intestine. Forti Flora also has a special coating that allows the live bugs to pass though the acid environment of the stomach unscathed so they are alive and kicking when they reach the part of the intestine where they take up residence.
The folks over at Purina Veterinary Diets, including our own Dr. Grace Long, have compiled a series of success stories involving probiotic use in pets suffering from chronic diarrhea. I got an e-mail with a link to one such story last week. It's pretty cool to see something you worked on come to life and be a benefit to a sick pet. 
Alice, my buddy Phil's dog, is on Forti Flora, too. As you may recall from last year Alice was diagnosed with inflammatory bowel disease or IBD. She developed chronic vomiting and was losing weight. She probably has a food allergy, too, and she is currently on PVD HA formula and Forti Flora. She's fine when she stays on her diet but any deviation from the HA and she starts to vomit within 48 hours.
Forti Flora may be helping Alice due to the effect probiotics have on the immune system. In addition to strengthening the immune response probiotics have the ability to modulate the immune response. Basically, this means that they help the immune system respond normally as opposed to being overactive.
In the case of IBD, where the gut is suffering from an abnormal immune response, probiotics can lead to a more normal immune reaction which leads to less inflammation and relief of clinical signs.
If your dog develops chronic diarrhea, or suffers from a short term problem that alters his gut microflora balance, your veterinarian may prescribe probiotics. If so, we'd love to hear about the results. Send us an e-mail or comment on any of our posts and we'll let others know about your real life experiences with probiotics.
 Miles and Riley were up on Boston Hill yesterday with their respective human companions; Cheryl and Chris. Riley got in a little trouble.
Seems he found a ripe skunk carcass to roll in. Nice. Not only did he get the tantalizing odor of rotting flesh on his coat, he got the bonus eau de skunk as a complement. Really nice.
Miles refrained from the rolling action but, according to Chris, he was quite envious of Riley's find and new scent.
What's up with that? Seems like dog's are always finding and frolicking in some of the most objectionable stuff imaginable. At least to us. To them it's an entirely different experience.
As we already know, the dog's sense of olfaction is far more developed than our feeble human sniffer sense. Depending on how you measure it, a dog's ability to smell is somewhere between 100X and 1000X greater than ours. My wife is very thankful for that, by the way.
The sense of olfaction is a very important communication tool for dogs and this highly developed sense of smell is very important for successful hunting in wild dogs. The latter fact may provide a clue about one theory regarding why they like rolling in smelly stuff. 
Dead animals are an important source of food for wild predators. Winter killed elk or moose can be a windfall for a pack of hungry wolves as the snow begins to melt in the spring. If a pack member finds such a prize they may roll in the carcass to take the scent back to the pack. Kind of a "hey, look what I found!" communication. "Follow me, it's just over that ridge, or just follow my newly acquired scent and you'll run right into it," might be the human translation.
Another interpretation might be that Riley was laying his own scent on the dead skunk in an attempt to claim the prize as his own. That might be why Miles didn't partake. "Shoot, that Riley got to that skunk before me and now it's all his," could have been Miles' lament.
There are other theories, too. Another involves hunting and suggests that a predator might be trying to mask his own scent with something dead to throw off the prey species. Olfaction works both ways when it comes to hunting and if an elk smells a dead skunk instead of a live wolf she's less likely to be on alert. Advantage: wolf.
Finally, we have to understand that they are dogs. While we may really like the smell of lilacs, dogs may find lilac shampoo totally disgusting. How embarrassing to show up at the trail head or dog park with that nauseating aroma.
"What will the other dogs think?" your pooch worries. "Oh look, a pile of dog poop and just in time."
"Now let me off that leash, I've got some damage control to do."
Problem solved, for the dog at least.
 That's right. You may have been unaware that you were running a zoo, but if you have a cat you are part cat lover and part zoo keeper.
This bit of information came to me in a talk at last week's North American Veterinary Conference and I must say it was quite a revelation. According to Dr. Tony Buffington of The Ohio State University and the mover and shaker behind the Indoor Cat Initiative, our house cats are basically s olitary hunters of small prey. They tolerate us and in fact they are very dependent on us because we control their environment, or hunting grounds, as they would perceive it.
As you know, I'm and advocate of keeping cats indoors and I've written about that several times on the blog. I think indoor cats are less likely to get into trouble, are healthier in the long run and much less of a burden on wild bird and rodent populations. I still think that, but Dr. Buffington gave me a new perspective on this issue and it's something we should spend a good deal of time with on the blog.
His perspective is that forcing cats to live in certain environments may contribute to a host of chronic disease problems in cats. Furthermore, cats respond to their environment much differently than people or dogs, due to their unique perspective as solitary hunters of small prey. Not only are they hunters, but in some cases they are also the hunted, and they've been genetically programmed to respond as such. In the wild, cats are the prey species of any carnivore larger or smarter than themselves. For house cats those predators would be people, dogs and even other bigger cats.
We people and our dogs are pack animals by nature and we view the world much differently than cats. Pack animals have highly evolved communication skills that lead to efficient pack behavior. Cats don't have the same skills. For instance, cats perceive any form of discipline as an attack. Where you might give your dog a whack on the butt if he gets up on his hind legs to eat your food off the table, attempt to whack a cat and they think you are tying to kill them.
When you start to think about the world from the cat's point of view you can start to imagine how their living situation could have a big impact on their health. Imagine an environment that is chaotic, with people or other cats and dogs coming and going at all times. For a solitary hunter of small prey that situation would represent a constant threat. He'd have to compete for resources with the other cats while spend most of the day escaping or hiding from the threat of predation by dogs and strange people. 
On the other hand imagine an environment that is barren, that provides no stimulation at all. No chances to hunt small prey or even pretend chances to hunt small prey. The only activity being the sixteen hours of sleep a day interspersed with walks to the food bowl and litter box.
According to Dr. Buffington both situations lead to high levels of chronic stress and chronic stress has long been thought to lead inexorably to chronic disease. In fact Dr. Buffington has coined a term for this condition, namely, The Sensitive Cat Syndrome. As a renowned researcher on lower urinary tract disease in cats, Dr. Buffington is convinced that poor husbandry or poor "zoo keeping" with domestic cats and the resultant stress has a role in certain forms of cystitis.
We also know that many common cat disease conditions are far more common in indoor cats. Lower urinary tract disease, diabetes, hyperthyroidism and FORL to name a few are much more common in indoor cats. We don't know the exact cause of many of these problems and it could be that environmental conditions play a much bigger role than we think.
This does not mean that we should immediately open the zoo doors and let our cats out into the great outdoors. That could create its own set of stressful circumstances, let alone exposure to infectious disease. Instead we need to work hard to create an enriching environment for our domestic cats. Feline Enrichment is a term we will be hearing about much more often in the future. Proper enrichment of the domestic cat's environment will be just as important as physical exams, vaccinations and parasite control in preventing disease.
I'm so excited about this subject. Imagine if we could reverse some of the troubling trends in chronic disease through enrichment. How much of the precipitous rise in the incidence of hyperthyroidism in cats could be due to environmental stress? In the years ahead we will know more about that. In the meantime we'll spend more time talking about specific ways to enrich the lives of our cats in posts to come.
 We're off! Tom and I will be climbing in the car momentarily to start our trip to the North American Veterinary Conference in Sunny Orlando. We'll get to meet Dr. Larry for the first time, face-to-face! OMG! What fun we'll have. And, what wonderful things we expect to learn. What great people we'll meet.
Watch for short bursts of news, and pics. We have technology ready to support us but, technology being the twit it is sometimes, if we can't get the video and audio, we WILL get pictures and post text.
We'll be posting some content on the PurinaCare blog and the BlogPaws blog, too. Don't forget to check those.
(the Wabby is unphased...she's lying on the bed taking a proper kitty bath; she yowled forever in order to get us up and out of the bed!)
WATCH THIS SPACE!!! 
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