Dr. Phil Zeltzman’s Blog
A little Holiday surprise for my readers!
Please keep an eye on my Facebook page for a special “12 days of Christmas event,” starting tomorrow Monday December 25, 2017.
Please tell your friends to Like my page – being an animal lover is a requirement!
Thanks and Happy Holidays to you, your family and your pets.
Dr. Phil Zeltzman is a traveling veterinary surgeon in Pennsylvania & New Jersey. An award-winning author, he loves to share his adventures in practice along with information about vet medicine and surgery that can really help your pets. Dr. Zeltzman specializes in orthopedic, neurologic, cancer, and soft tissue surgeries for dogs, cats, and small exotics. By working with local family vets, he offers the best surgical care, safest anesthesia, and utmost pain management to all his patients. Sign up to get an email when he updates his blog, and follow him on Facebook, too!
Have you heard about the 5 freedoms for animals?
This may not be surgery-related, but I thought it was relevant to pet lovers.
Have you ever heard about the 5 freedoms for animals?
1. Freedom from hunger & thirst. Pets should have easy access to food and fresh water to maintain health and vigor.
2. Freedom from discomfort. This includes a safe environment to rest and feel sheltered.
3. Freedom from pain, injury and disease. This can be done through prevention, or when there is a medical condition, through prompt diagnosis and treatment.
4. Freedom to express normal behavior. This is accomplished by providing enough space, appropriate facilities, and in some cases, company of the animal’s own kind.
5. Freedom from fear & distress. Mental suffering is avoided by providing appropriate living conditions and proper treatment.
Interestingly, this applies to all animals: pets, zoo animals, and wild animals.
Even though this was not the original intention, I believe that the 5 freedoms are also helpful to determine the quality of life of a pet who may be at the end of his life…
Dr. Phil Zeltzman is a traveling veterinary surgeon in Pennsylvania & New Jersey. An award-winning author, he loves to share his adventures in practice along with information about vet medicine and surgery that can really help your pets. Dr. Zeltzman specializes in orthopedic, neurologic, cancer, and soft tissue surgeries for dogs, cats, and small exotics. By working with local family vets, he offers the best surgical care, safest anesthesia, and utmost pain management to all his patients. Sign up to get an email when he updates his blog, and follow him on Facebook, too!
When should you take your pet to the ER?
I just heard yet another horror story about a pet owner who waited too long to take her pet to the emergency clinic.
There are countless reasons to visit the ER with a cat or a dog, so what follows is certainly not a complete list. I organized the most common signs in 4 categories.
You should seek emergency help in the following situations.
General signs:
. Collapse or severe weakness
. Bleeding, external or internal
. Severe lethargy
. Trauma of any type, if it is violent enough to cause an injury or a pain reaction
. Any kind of gunshot
. Severe pain
. Jaundice (yellow gums and eyes)
. Discharge from the vulva
. Pus coming from just about anywhere
. Many things related to eyeballs: pain, bulging, squinting, scratches.
. Seizures or tremors/shaking
. Difficulty giving birth
GI & urinary signs:
. Severe or ongoing vomiting or diarrhea, with or without blood
. Retching, ie an unsuccessful attempt at vomiting
. Significant decrease in appetite for more than 24 hours, or complete loss
. Straining to urinate or defecate
. Eating a poison of any type
. Bloating or a distended belly
Respiratory signs:
. Difficulty breathing of any sort
. Severe or ongoing coughing
Orthopedic signs:
. Limping
. Broken bone
. Painful joint
. Dragging of or weakness in one leg or more
Ultimately, just about anything that worries you is a reason to go to your local emergency clinic. Think about it. What’s better, a false alarm, or arriving too late? If you’re not sure what to do, at least call please the staff at the emergency clinic to ask what they recommend.
Phil Zeltzman, DVM, DACVS, CVJ, Fear Free Certified
Dr. Phil Zeltzman is a traveling veterinary surgeon in Pennsylvania & New Jersey. An award-winning author, he loves to share his adventures in practice along with information about vet medicine and surgery that can really help your pets. Dr. Zeltzman specializes in orthopedic, neurologic, cancer, and soft tissue surgeries for dogs, cats, and small exotics. By working with local family vets, he offers the best surgical care, safest anesthesia, and utmost pain management to all his patients. Sign up to get an email when he updates his blog, and follow him on Facebook, too!
Why you shouldn’t be afraid of a leg amputation
Lucy, a sweet 6 year old Golden, started limping in her left back leg. Her family vet’s X-rays showed that something, most likely bone cancer, was eating her thigh bone (femur) away (see red arrows).
There weren’t a whole lot of options: the best course of action was to sacrifice the leg. Before that, we ensured that her blood work was normal and that chest X-rays did not show any spreading of the (presumed) cancer to the lungs.
A few days later, I traveled to the practice to perform the amputation. Everything went well in surgery.
The very next day, Lucy started to walk around on 3 legs. She was comfortable and started to eat nicely.
A week later, the biopsy confirmed the suspicion of bone cancer (osteosarcoma). The next step was to discuss chemotherapy, which is recommended in the case of bone cancer.
With amputation alone for confirmed osteosarcoma, the average survival is 3 to 6 months. With amputation and chemotherapy, we hope for an average survival of at least one year. When we recommend treatment, our goal is more about quality of life than quantity of life (aka survival time).
Amputation is typically needed because of severe trauma or cancer – most often bone cancer. No pet owner ever opens a bottle of champagne when their pet needs a leg amputation. Yet it’s very important to understand and believe that virtually 100% of dogs and all cats do great on 3 legs. My most surprising patient, Gator, was able to swim in the pool with 3 legs (and a life jacket).
To this day, I have never met a client who has told me that they regretted their decision to amputate their pet. As long as we are on the same page, and we all decide as the pet’s advocate, we typically get good results, regardless of the amount of time left.
In other words, we would rather have 3, 6 or 12 months of quality life, than 3 years of misery.
Dr. Phil Zeltzman is a traveling veterinary surgeon in Pennsylvania & New Jersey. An award-winning author, he loves to share his adventures in practice along with information about vet medicine and surgery that can really help your pets. Dr. Zeltzman specializes in orthopedic, neurologic, cancer, and soft tissue surgeries for dogs, cats, and small exotics. By working with local family vets, he offers the best surgical care, safest anesthesia, and utmost pain management to all his patients. Sign up to get an email when he updates his blog, and follow him on Facebook, too!
When loving pet owners hurt their pet – badly
WARNING !!! This blog post is not for the faint of heart!!!
Of course you’ve heard of a pet who got hit by a car.
How about about a pet hit by his or her owner?
Do you find this shocking?
Do you think that this could never ever happen to you?
You’d be surprised how often this happens. It actually happens all the time! I fix these patients up regularly. They occasionally have what we call soft tissue injuries: to the lungs, the intestine or the skin.
Most of the time, they have orthopedic injuries, i.e. broken bones, often in the pelvis.
Sadly, some pets never make it…
How does it happen?
Occasionally, it happens when “pet meets car,” for example when a dog runs to greet his owner.
Most of the time, it happens because the pet (cat or dog), sleeps under the car. And as you can imagine, the owner who is about to back up never suspects that their pet is sleeping under their car.
So this is a reminder to never assume.
Always make sure you know where your pets are before you drive away.
Dr. Phil Zeltzman is a traveling veterinary surgeon in Pennsylvania & New Jersey. An award-winning author, he loves to share his adventures in practice along with information about vet medicine and surgery that can really help your pets. Dr. Zeltzman specializes in orthopedic, neurologic, cancer, and soft tissue surgeries for dogs, cats, and small exotics. By working with local family vets, he offers the best surgical care, safest anesthesia, and utmost pain management to all his patients. Sign up to get an email when he updates his blog, and follow him on Facebook, too!