The Vetpodcast - Talking About Animal Health The Vetpodcast

When undertaking a scientific study on the efficacy of CBD in pain relief in dogs an issue that didn’t occur to me was the problem of getting the CBD across state borders in The USA without being tagged as a drug dealer. The answer – move the study to Canada.We again catch up with Dr Kelly Diehl, Senior Director of Science & Communications for The Morris Animal Foundation to find out about some of their latest studies including:·         The efficacy of CBD in pain relief in dogs·         A hiding place for cats·         Who cares for the carer? What is the effect on the wellbeing of being an emotional support dog on the dog?·         An upcoming study on haemangiosarcomaFor more information on these studies and mamny more visit The Morris Animal Foundations website:https://www.morrisanimalfoundation.org/or listen to their Podcast "Fresh Scoop"https://www.morrisanimalfoundation.org/articles?animal_type=All&topic=496

Having spent my working life in veterinary practice, a lot of it as a practice owner, I am well used to comments about how much veterinary services cost, some in jest, some in shock and occasionally some in anger. Is this fare criticism though? Let’s take a closer look.Often the comments are in jest. I have been introduced a few times as “this is Bryan Gregor, my vet, the richest man in Timaru”.  I don’t think so. There is this perception that veterinarians have a license to print money. Another comment I sometimes hear is “it costs me less to see my doctor”. I will put this comment to bed straight away. At least in New Zealand, human medical expenses receive a government subsidy. The doctors fee, blood tests, xrays and medicines all have a large proportion of the expense covered by the government. Although this may not occur in every country, I am led to believe that it is common enough, so as the saying goes, you are not comparing apples with apples when you put the cost of veterinary treatment beside human treatment, and to reinforce this further, an ovariohysterectomy or spey of a female dog may put you back something like $350 dollars in New Zealand. Compare that with the human hysterectomy surgery which is pretty much the same surgery. I have seen a cost of $13 000 -$15 000 mentioned. So, lets pare back the veterinary fee and see where it goes. The kind of figures bandied around are approximately as follows. In New Zealand 15% of the fee is GST which is the equivalent of the VAT in England. About 20% pays the veterinary nurses, receptionists, and other support staff. About 20% pays for drugs and other items used in treatments, 20%ish pays for clinic overheads like the lease, insurance and management leaving about 20% as the vets income. To follow this through, if the vet didn’t actually charge for their time, the veterinary fee would only decrease by 20% so a $500 charge would only drop to $400. I do agree that sometimes vet bills may appear more expensive than they used to so lets look at what may have happened. When I qualified as a veterinarian, and bear in mind that this is almost 40 years ago, veterinary medicine was relatively rudimentary. Our companion animal pharmacy only really consisted of a few antibiotics, cortisone, eye and ear drops and an old anti-inflammatory called phenylbutazone. I am probably oversimplifying this but you get the point. Although blood tests were available from the commercial lab, it would take up to a week to get the results by the time the samples were put on the bus that only left the small town I first worked in twice a week. The tests were run at the lab and the results mailed out so it took upward of a week. The animal would be better or dead by the time we got the results so normally we didn’t bother. Anaesthetics were fairly crude, often just using intravenous barbiturates. Qualified veterinary nurses or techs were not a thing, and anesthetic monitoring was the exception rather than the rule.You get the picture.So these days the scope of what is available as far as veterinary treatment goes has advanced by light years. Drugs are unrecognizably advanced, but unfortunately, they come at a cost. The drug companies are always going to want to recoup their R & D spend.It has now become the expectation that clinics will have their own in house blood analysers, ultrasound machines, x-ray – both general and dental and more practices are now investing in CT scanners. These devices have gone from being a nice to have to a must have. I probably don’t need to say but a lot of them are quite expensive with clinics often having hundreds of thousand of dollars of gear. Unfortunately, they have to be paid for.Added to the client expectation, government and professional expectation is that practices utilize these ancillary tests. A simple example of this could be an unfortunate aneasthetic death. If a complaint is made and investigated by the regulatory aut(continued)

Unfortunately, the veterinary profession can really take a toll on the mental health and wellbeing of those in it. In this episode of The Vetpodcast I have a frank discussion with Canadian veterinarian Dr Marie Holowaychuk who is a passionate advocate for veterinary team wellbeing. Marie is CEO and founder of Reviving Veterinary Medicine  and host of the  Reviving Vet Med podcast. If you are an animal health professional, you probably owe it to yourself to listen to this discussion.If you require guidance or help with your mental wellbeing, many veterinary associations provide free counselling services including The NZVA Wellbeing Hub, The Canadian Veterinary Medicine Association Veterinary Health and Wellness Resources  and The Australian Veterinary Associations Thrive wellness Initiative.  

Following the disastrous floods that have hit the north of New Zealand following cyclone Gabrielle last week, I think it is opportune to revisit a podcast I recorded a year or so ago with Sue Kinsella and Alison Vaughan from RNZSPCA. If you have the responsibility of looking after animals, you should listen to this!

“Without urgent action, we are heading for a post-antibiotic era, in which common infections and minor injuries can once again kill”  A quote directly from The World Health Organization.This isn’t hyperbole, this is potentially our future (as if there aren’t enough other things to be concerned about!). And then we have the British Health Secretary giving her left over antibiotics to family and friends. Really!!!In this episode of The Vetpodcast we discuss antimicrobial resistance.

One of the givens in this world is that things never stay the same, we are always learning and we are always improving. This is as true for the veterinary profession as it is anywhere else. The information changes are based on must come from somewhere though. Many of us will be aware of the change in recommendations as to the timing of desexing dogs. When I trained it was almost written in stone that it was by 6 months. It would now appear that the timing isn’t quite that simple. Early spey and neutering has been associated with an increase in non-traumatic orthopaedic injuries. Where did this information from?One of the major studies the updated recommendations are based on is The Golden Retriever Lifetime Study run by The Morris Animal Foundation (https://www.morrisanimalfoundation.org/) The Golden Retriever Lifetime Study is one of the largest, most comprehensive prospective canine health studies in the United States. The Study’s purpose is to identify the nutritional, environmental, lifestyle and genetic risk factors for cancer and other diseases in dogs. Each year, with the help of veterinarians and dog owners, the Foundation collects health, environmental and behavioural data on 3,000+ enrolled golden retrievers and has just celebrated its 10th anniversary.Today we have a chat to Dr Kelly Diehl, Senior Director of Science and Communication for The Morris Animal Foundation about:·         An overview of The Morris Animal Foundation·         What is The Golden Retriever Lifetime Study·         Why Golden Retrievers?·         Some of the results to date·         The relevance to other breeds of dogs, species (even humans)·         Future areas of interest