Dear friends, 

I have been very busy rootling through all the information my Mom brought back from her latest veterinary meeting.  I wanted to get this stuff to you earlier, but there were some questions I had to ask Mom about what I read.  Some of what she brought home sounds too good to be true, like the new pill for doggie weight loss, and other stuff is just plain icky and I needed to find out if I was giving you the straight scoop on stuff like those awful "itch mites."  But she's been too sad to talk to me much, since Sofia died. I have a terrible dog secret to share.  Well, it's not really terrible to me but some of your people might think it is.  Did you know that sometimes we dogs and cats are not as sad as our owners are when another pet in the house dies?  Now, buckaroos, don't get me wrong - I thought Sofia was a pretty cool dog, even with that disgusting drool habit she had.  But, I didn't like having to share my Mom with her and now I am thrilled that I get Mom all to myself (well, I still have to share with the cats, I guess).  And now no one digs up the bones I work so hard to bury, and I don't have to share the couch, and life is pretty good.  I am a little sad that my Mom is so sad, though.  But, I did get her to cheer up a little over the Labor Day weekend - I actually made myself act ridiculously excited about going out on the boat so I could get her out there to talk shop a little - and now I have such good stuff to tell you! 

So first of all - those oak leaf gall mites, AKA  "itch mites" - darlings, you don't need to worry about yourselves having one of those embarrassing moments when you have to scratch somewhere you shouldn't scratch in public.  Although your owners may itch from them, they seem not to be bothering us dogs and cats too much.   By the way, if you have to impress another canine or feline friend, these mites are called "Pyemotes herfski" (I don't know who thinks up these names.)  Did you know that if you lived in the south, where they make even the dogs eat grits, there are so many itch mites that they splatter up car windshields?  Ewwww.  At least here, they get killed when it snows.  And even better news - the itch mites like to snack on baby cicadas.  So if you have been bothered by the big red buggy eyes on those ugly things when they crawl out of the ground, you can now rest comfortably knowing that itch mites feast on those babies!  I was so freaked out by those cicadas, I had to bark myself silly when they started emerging this summer.  Then I ate one, and found out how deliciously crunchy they were, and I ate a whole lot of them, and boy did I get in trouble when they came back up a few hours later!  In my defense, I did try to get off the bed when I felt sick..... 

Ooooh!  Here's something else cool!  Well, it's not cool really, except in the sense that we may have some answer to why so many cats are going hyperthyroid at such a young age.  Did you know that a generation ago, this was a lot less common in cats than it is now?  And it was mostly in older cats?  And now, I hear about lots of young cats getting it.  Did you know that no other animals, besides cats and people, get this disease a whole lot?  A lot of researchers - those ivory tower guys I told you about a number of newsletters ago - have looked and looked to try to find out why so many kitties have overactive thyroids.  Some think it is the amount of artificial gunk in cat foods, like soy and wheat gluten.  Others think it is fish-flavored canned foods.  Some think it is due to living inside all the time.  Definitely, I found lots of information showing that both eating canned cat food and living inside ratchet up a cat's risk.  Here is something new that maybe explains why: there is a really, really big association between the use of stuff that makes furniture and fabrics in a house flame-retardant, and how likely a cat is to get thyroid disease.  Researchers think that the flame retardants flake off into dust in the house and that is how kitties end up getting a whopping exposure - just by grooming themselves.   How could you reduce the risk to a kitty you love?  Well, according to information that has been reviewed and approved for publication by the National Health and Environmental Effects Research Laboratory of the Environmental Protection Agency, you could get rid of old carpet padding, mattresses, and other furniture that contains foam material that is breaking down, since that releases a lot of this bad stuff.  Now, this next one isn't practical for most of you, but you could keep your kitties out of rooms that contain all that nice warm computer and TV equipment that cats like to sit near (or on), since when that equipment warms up, it shoots more of the bad dust into the air.  But here's an easy one everyone who loves their kitty could do:  you can feed at least some fresh (not out of a can) food, especially beef or chicken, as those foods have been shown to be associated with much less risk of thyroid disease.  At my house, all of my kitties eat a frozen raw diet that is rotated between beef, chicken, rabbit, and turkey. 

Here's some really good new news for dogs with lymphoma: there are a lot of very exciting newer treatment options, according to the cancer specialists at this meeting Mom went to.  For those of you who don't know, lymphoma is a kind of cancer that gets into your lymph nodes and makes them really big and uncomfortable, and makes you really sick, too.  There are a lot of chemotherapy treatments that kill off these bad cells.  The problem is, the chemo kills good cells, too, and some dogs get so sick that they die from their chemo.  But there are ways now to make the chemo safer, and there are even ways to "harvest" the good cells in your bone marrow by just giving you a shot that shoots those cells out into your blood, so they can be collected and saved to give back to you after your chemo treatment.  This can help you get healthy again after the chemo kills off the bad cells.  This is cutting edge stuff, my friends, and we are so lucky that we live in the Chicago area where we have a lot of good doggie and kitty oncologists who know about this stuff! 

Now, this next thing I learned is the coolest ever.  Did you know, all my Rubenesque friends, that there is a pill that can help you lose those excess pounds?  I know......weight loss is hard.  Mostly because our owners are so undisciplined.  When your owner offers you more food than is good for you, what is a sensible dog or cat to do, besides eat it?  Or if they give you the right amount, we all know that all we have to do is look pleadingly at them and most owners will cave right in and give us more.  (I will tell you my favorite trick: you lick the empty bowl, then look at your owner, then look in the bowl again as if you are surprised and shocked that there already isn't more food there, then lick the empty bowl again, and repeat as needed, throwing in a soft whimper or two as needed.)  If you know how to fake hypoglycemia, too, this is a really good trick (especially if your owner is a vet or a veterinary Nurse).  But no more - now there is a pill that actually makes it so you don't even want to beg for food.  This pill goes by the fancy name of a Microsomal Triglyceride Transfer Protein Inhibitor.  I don't know why scientists have to make everything so complicated!  What that means is, the pill grabs the fat in the food and stuffs it inside the intestine cells and keeps it there so no signals get to the brain that your body is too low in fat.  So you really do lose weight because you are not as hungry.  None of that cruddy "greasy discharge" stuff that you hear about in some of the weight loss pills and foods for people.  In some pretty good clinical studies I saw, 97.8% of the dogs in the study lost weight, regardless of the kind of food they were eating.  And hardly anyone got sick, although a few dogs did vomit a time or two and then stopped vomiting without any medical treatment.  You can't use this medication if you have liver disease, or are taking steroids; and it can't be used in cats or people.  The only problem I saw with this new pill is that when you stop taking it, you will start wanting more food and your people will have to develop some self-control about overfeeding you.  However, the whole time you are on the medicine you will be showing them how much food you actually need, as opposed to the amount you would stuff down if offered more.  So if you have a halfway smart owner, they should be able to figure this one out! 

Now for my finale - here is some shocking news:  The whole big focus of this Internal Medicine meeting (ACVIM) was "evidence-based medicine."  That means, you have to be able to show proof that what you are saying works instead of just hoping that it does.  I was shocked - SHOCKED - my friends, to find out that so many things that vets like my Mom are told is "science" have little to no proof behind them!  I mean common stuff, too - like how much and what kind of medicine is right to give a dog who is seizuring, or whether steroids help in cancer, or the best way to treat trauma and shock patients - like if you've been hit by a car.  Even the dose of most of the antibiotics we use - it turns out that most of that is what scientists want to think works instead of what they actually know works.  Turns out, according to one prominent speaker at this meeting, that the only system of medicine that has consistently required proof plus ongoing documentation that what they say works, really works, is Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM)!  I tell you, it did me proud to know that my Mom knows her TCM pretty good and even teaches other vets about it. (That is why she is gone a lot, because she lectures to other vets at their meetings.) So, I can say I certainly have a pretty full brain right now.  In fact, it was a good thing I vomited up those cicadas or I don't think I would have been able to remember all of this stuff.  Maybe you can share some of this with your owner and see if they can use it to help you be healthier. Next month, we'll stick with a lighter topic.  But then after that, I'll have all the stuff to rootle through from the next two meetings Mom is lecturing at - so I'll have more "fun facts" for you in November and December! 

Till then, stay well and healthy, my friends-

LIZZIE