Saturday,
August 29th started out like every other Saturday we went to feed our dogs and
we noticed that something was wrong with our seven year old toy poodle named
Hippy shake.
So we contacted our vet and she insisted that we get in to see her right away.
I think it's really important as a dog owner, to know what to look for.
If you think your dog might be sick.
So today we invited Dr. Paula Dupuy from Troy veterinary services to join us.
And she's going to talk about some of the important things you need to be aware
of. If you feel like there's something wrong with your dog.
And if you think your dog is sick,
these are some of the signs that could literally save their life.
I'm Ken Steepe and welcome back to McCann Dogs
here at McCann Dogs,
we've helped more than a hundred thousand dog owners overcome the same dog
training challenges that you have. So if this is your first time on the channel,
make sure you hit that subscribe button so that I can help you to have a well
behaved for like a family member.
If you've watched the channel for any length of time,
you may have heard me mention at some point that for the past 20 years,
I've also worked as a firefighter and a paramedic.
And some of the most challenging calls from my career have been with young
pediatric patients because they can't communicate their symptoms.
Now the same thing applies to dogs. They can't let you know what's wrong.
And that's really important for you to understand let's drop in on our
conversation with dr. Paula on this topic. Let's talk a little bit about that.
The fact that you aren't able to, Doug,
isn't able to tell you what is wrong with them and maybe the challenges that
presents for you.
Right? I mean, dogs do not have symptoms. A symptom is when you say, Oh,
my knee is sore. A dog would have a sign that might be, Oh,
it looks a little lame this morning.
And it's interesting because clients will say to me, well,
they don't seem to be in pain if they're favoring a limb.
That's because it hurts. That is a side.
So being able to listen in a sense and observe these signs in
our pets is very important because that's all they have and they will compensate
because they don't want to show these signs until they're bad enough that they
can't hide them anymore.
All right. What other things should we be listening for from our dogs? You know,
what other signs might they be giving us that they are.
Changes in their normal daily behaviors?
Inappetence withdrawal more sleeping,
hiding. Yeah. And even in some dogs being needy or being more cuddly.
Interesting. Yeah. So something that's just out of the ordinary. And I think we,
you know, we get to a point where we start to know our dogs very well.
And any change in behavior would be pretty obvious to us.
At what point do we think to ourselves, is there something really wrong?
You know, it's hard to define that. Exactly.
And most pet owners who are in touch with their pets have
that gut feeling. And if it's your gut feeling of the, we call it,
the ain't doing right. Not himself, not herself,
but you don't know what to describe to us.
That's fine because somehow you're listening to the animal and you have
realized something is not right. And that could be a behavior change.
It could be a look in their eyes. It could be a posture,
but go with your field and your instinct.
One specific thing I noticed that morning is tat Hippy Shake,
didn't finish her breakfast. And that's really strange for her.
I started to get that feeling, that something just wasn't right.
And that feeling is something that I want you to be more confident about.
There may be no one in the world who knows your dog as well as you do.
So if you start to feel like something's wrong,
you should probably trust that feeling.
And they're relying on you to make a decision, make a judgment about that.
We've talked a little bit about intuition.
We've talked a little bit about that feeling that you get,
that something might not be right,
but it's really hard to put your finger on what that might exactly be too for me
to, to describe it to one of our viewers. But you did mention a story that is,
that was really interesting where a client came in with a dog who
just wasn't right. And let's talk a little bit.
I think you're talking about a Jack, a little Jack Russell terrier.
And if you know that breed, they're very tough. Yes.
So their instinct is going to say, don't show weakness.
And for a couple of days,
the clients had noticed that although Jack was eating and drinking and going
about his normal daily activities,
here's a squinty eye and he just didn't want to open one of his eyes.
So after a couple of days of that, not changing,
they brought him in to see us and he's standing on the exam table and wagging
his tail and his little tail and squinting his eye.
And I knew because if I went to examine it, he, he backed away,
but he wouldn't let you wouldn't let me examine it. And he wouldn't open it.
And we had a busy day. So I said, I'm going to keep him.
We'll probably have to sedate him. And we will.
So we're just going to put him in a cage right now while we get organized to do
that. And so they left the dog with me and I was, I was going about some things.
I was looking over at him. And as he relaxed thinking,
I wasn't coming out his eyes,
he opened it in the cage and I could see what I thought was a black thing in his
eye. I thought, wow, there actually is something in his eye. We anyway,
to make that story short,
we anesthetize the dog and we removed from Jack's eyeballed somewhere.
I have the video,
but a centimeter and a half locust form that had penetrated the front of his
eye, gone through his lens and into the back part of his eye.
It was sticking out of the cornea by a couple of millimeters.
It had been that way for two days. And the client was observant. Seeing of the,
I was shocked at the dog, had showed no other clinical signs.
And here's what makes this even more difficult.
Your dog's natural response is to hide these things from you.
Let's talk to Dr. Paula.
Instinctively dogs,
hide their signs and how they feel so that they won't be picked on by
other dogs or predated. You know,
weakness is not something that helps survival. Yeah.
And you talked a little bit about a situation was pancreatitis you know,
a dog that had pancreatitis. And, and tell me a little bit more about that.
So pancreatitis is an inflammation that can happen in the gastrointestinal tract
of a dog that is actually life threatening.
And it presents very similarly to a dog that just ate something.
And it's a little off for a day or two with vomiting and not eating yet.
On the other hand, if pancreas,
if that is pancreatitis and it is left for three or four days,
then the dog can get into a life threatening crisis, which is.
I think it's so important that you are aware of your dog's daily behaviors,
you know, and you're, you're acutely aware of any changes,
whether it's you know,
the amount of times that they have to go out to go body the
I guess, composition of their stool, or, you know,
the consistency of their stool, whether they're eating and drinking.
That's a great, that's a really important indicator for diet.
It's one of the few things that we can definitively say, Oh, you know, he,
he only ate half his meal. That's a big change for a dog.
We call those their ins and their outs, right?
And that's what you really need to pay attention to is what's going in and
what's going out because we don't have a lot of other things other than their
behavior to look, go by.
Now, word of warning. If you're seeing some of these signs,
if you think your dog is sick,
it is really important for you to follow up with veterinary care.
A lot of people are reluctant to do that.
So they'll do a Google search or the watch a YouTube video.
The fact of the matter is that's not enough information for you to diagnose
what's wrong with your dog.
And ultimately if you don't act now and do something about it,
it could cost you a lot more.
It's certainly true.
And people are looking for something that makes sense to them,
that they can dismiss and not have to go to the veterinarian.
Usually looking for something that might not be as big a problem as it is,
could actually be happening because we all really don't want to be dealing with,
you know, a big issue.
So we look for something that might be explained in a way people want to explain
everything away.
You as a dog owner are the one who really knows your dog the best.
And so you have to believe in the,
what you're feeling about the dog and listen to the signs.
I often have people come to me.
And when I knowing there's something not right with your dog,
I do a physical examination. And I find nothing,
which just means to me that I have to dig deeper because if the client still
says something is not right, usually you are right about that.
So my take home really is to listen to those signs that your pet is telling you.
Now, luckily for us,
this story has a happy ending because we didn't wait to see if we would get
better, that we act quickly.
You can see how wild she is back to her normal self.
After a few days of fluid therapy and some medication administration.
I'm a huge thank you to dr.
Paula and the entire team at Troy veterinary services.
I've dropped a link to their Instagram and their Facebook in the description
below. So make sure you check those out.
A big part of the vet visit for your dog is being handled. Now,
if you want to teach your dog to be comfortable with handling,
make sure you click that card right there.
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make sure you hit that subscribe button and we publish new videos every week to
help you to have a well behaved four legged family member on that note,
I'm Ken this is Hippy shake, happy training.