ahicks51

It's normally just part of WBCs, so- do you have a total WBC count? WBC Greyhound: 3.5 - 6.5 Other dog: 6.0 - 17.0 Other greyhound CBC changes are less well known. The greyhound's normally low WBC has caused more than one healthy greyhound to undergo a bone marrow biopsy in search of "cancer" or some other cause of the "low WBC."

I'm not sure if I ever related this story before, but it's a good 'un. Years ago, back in the Days of Wage, as an explosives chemist, we'd have dry ice left over from one of the syntheses that we'd be doing. Out of puerile curiosity, I dropped the better part of a 5 pound block of dry ice onto a harvester ant mound. We had no other use for it, and rather than let it go to waste, I thought I'd run that experiment on the desert's little nasties. These guys are like the big black ants we had back in Pennsylvania, but much tougher. You could step on them, and they'd just ask you not to do that again and go back to work. And they attacked the dry ice with great vigor- climbing over the bodies of their frozen comrades so they, too, would become little antsicles. I don't know if it was the carbon dioxide mimicking a predator rummaging through an ant mound or what, but they went bezerk. And, of course, they all perished. For MONTHS, the ant hill did nothing. Maybe 7-8 months later, it sprung back into action, but another fortuitous synthesis provided the opportunity for another experiment, and that one seemed to put the kibosh on the ant hill permanently. After the whole "raspberry ant" thing came up, I emailed a couple of entomologists in Texas who were working on the problem. The collective response was "meh." So- if anyone out there has an ant hill with either raspberry ants or fire ants that tries this, please PM me and let me know how it goes.

Or maybe if you feed carnivores a diet high in carbohydrates, they develop cancer at a younger age than they would if fed a diet low in grains and carbohydrates. Insulin is a structural mimic of insulin-like growth factor (IGF), which spurs tumor growth. Of course, this is a big wad of conjecture, but there are some interesting epidemiological data, primarily in humans. Interesting anecdote: cats are obligate carnivores. Zoos don't feed their big cats anything but meat. One of my friends breeds cheetahs professionally in South Africa, and used to work at a zoo with a substantial collection of big cats. I asked her how many of their cats died or were put down due to cancer. The answer was rather interesting: zero. Purely anecdotal, but the field needs a great deal more research along these lines.

I'm sure someone will post stats from OSU, but it's much higher in NGA greyhounds. I don't know whether the statistics in that report are from all greyhounds they see, NGA greyhounds, or AKC- but as there is a stigma associated with breeders who have osteosarcoma running in their lines, there is reason to defer self-reporting. Not so much with NGA.

Get the bait stations that use fipronil or avermectin B1 as their active ingredient. Both compounds are used to manage endo- and ectoparasites in dogs, so even if they eat the whole dang trap, it's not going to hurt them because 1) of the compounds involved and 2) because of the quantities involved.

I got this from a buddy of mine whose cats get 'punctured: Our vet in Mesa, Dr. Betsy King is a holistic practitioner and does acupuncture. I would imagine she works on dogs as well as cats. She's very attuned to animals and very focused on the animals she's treating. We like her a lot. She works out of Power Road Animal Hospital. Here's her bio: http://www.powerroadanimalhospital.com/Doc...tors%20Bios.htm

It may not be a vet school so much as a veterinary oncologist that you need- although a vet school may be just as good with something as new as Palladia. Be prepared for sticker shock. The advantage would be that you'd be managing it in a small breed dog; but given the vagaries of pricing of veterinary meds, you may be best off getting the larger size pills and cutting them- provided that sort of thing can be done with Palladia. Best of luck- the tyrosine kinase inhibitors have finally come to veterinary care!

Have you seen an allergiest? Do you know if it's environmental versus food?

Cool.

They had a trainer dipping greys in Malathion in Florida a couple of years back. It probably still goes on in Tucson at the track there. Yes, the stuff is good at knocking down pests 'round the ol' kennel, but not as a dunk, please. Gah. Imidacloprid is a wonderful compound. It works on one of the nerve conduction systems found in insects- not in mammals (unless I'm missing a BIG chunk of physiology). We used to use it to control whitefly in an experimental greenhouse; the formulation known as Marathon is systemic, so it can NOT be used on vegetables for consumption. So, we'd "bait" several plants that were never to be used for consumption with the stuff, and because whitefly are transient, they'd get killed when they visited the poisoned plants. We could then use the fruits of the non-poisoned plants for experimental purposes. Arizona: The Whitefly State.

Yeah- they have to make up some $$ in the licensing for veterinary use; it costs a fair bit more than to pass it by the EPA for pesticidal use, under the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide, and Rodenticide Act (FIFRA). Then there's purification; the stuff for veterinary use has to be a lot "cleaner" than the stuff used on your shrubs. Then there's supposedly "inactive" ingredients; the compounds you add to your shrub may not be consistent with adding to your pet. And so on. Most of it is what the market will bear. That's where all products start: how much are existing products, and how much can we sell this compound for in the veterinary realm? Send the formulators into a room as a steel cage deathmatch, and the guy who comes out with the recipe that makes all parties happy wins. Everyone else, of course, is summarily executed.

Just as a longshot- have you tried him on a brand-new bag of food? Preferably a different brand, or a bag not from the same lot (different store, etc.) than the one from which you're currently feeding? Two possibilities I'm looking at here: 1) Food adulterated at the plant, or in transit, during manufacturing or shipping 2) Food contaminated in the home by chemicals Just a longshot. But if you just opened a new bag of food just before the symptoms started, act swiftly.

There has been some interest in trying Gleevec in osteosarcoma; as Palladia works by the same mechanism (it's a tyrosine kinase inhibitor), it may be of use in prolonging life with osteo in dogs, although that's theoretical. The molecules aren't even similar in structure. It's not like they took Gleevec and stuck a different moiety on it. It's a very different structure, so saying they might have analogous results isn't accurate. But in the end, they both inhibit the same enzyme, so- maybe.

"Side" as in just one side?

I don't think Dr. Stack (a greyhound-savvy vet in Yuma, AZ) would mind if I reprint this here. It came across the greyhound mailing list a year and a half ago.

All the public dog conspiracies were taken.

Blot some up with a nice, white paper towel. Any tint of yellow indicates urine (urochrome, coming from breakdown of B vitamins). Minerva does the licking thing. I come home, take off their muzzles, hop in the shower- by the time I get out, there's a huge wet spot on the cushion she was sitting on. It's invariably from her licking.

Separated at birth?

True, that can work ... is there any "benefit" to that, like there is with bee stings and possible help with arthritis? You can win bar bets. You can win arguments. He leaned in close- real close and said, nearly in a whsiper, "Pal- I get bit by rattlesnakes. For fun." He leaned back and crossed his arms. "Now you just go ahead and do what you were going to do."

It's not for humans, no; the easiest way to get "vaccinated" for rattlesnake bite is to become a handler, and get bitten often. As for dogs- I seem to recall the vaccine needs to be re-upped every 6 months. Avoidance classes last much longer. It depends upon your threat level, and how far you want to go with it. It also depends upon the type of snake you have locally; the vaccine works on hemotoxic venoms, but not neurotoxic- which is why it doesn't work on the northern populations of Mojave greens.

Either way, it'd be cheap and easy to get some cheapo fencing from Home Depot and put it around, same deal as you said. If worried suckers will come up from a stump, it's easy enough to put clear plastic sheeting over it, weigh down the corners with bricks, and just cook anything green that might come up. July's coming!

Any organic molecule with more than its fair share of chlorines gives me the willies. Low acute toxicity, low chance of it being a carcinogen, mutagen, teratogen... Looks fairly safe. http://extoxnet.orst.edu/pips/triclopy.htm "Rapidly eliminated via urine," entirely unchanged. Not a problem for fish, birds, or bees. But the half-life in soils is pretty long- 1 to 3 months, meaning it'll be there for 8 months to 2 years. "Dioxin impurities do not appear in triclopyr," unlike its cousin 2,4,5-T which was banned. The MSDS doesn't mention a synergist typically added to the stuff (2,4-D, a growth regulator herbicide that should be avoided with dogs), so that's good. I wouldn't be happy with 'em. Stump grinding is a better way to get rid of that sort of thing, but I can't find fault with their choice, provided the ecological data is correct. And that's the sticking point for many compounds: if I pay a lab to tell me 2,4-D is safe or not with dogs, and I make the stuff for a living, guess what they're gonna find? Can't trust a lot of stuff anymore. Peer review has gone to crap.

Have you taken a quick peek around the ol' mouth to see if there's anything that might be bothering him? Not wanting his own food, but continuing to ask for treats/people food is interesting, though.

That gets complex, but it deals with Th1/Th2 immunity (Th for "helper T cell"). Th1 immune response deals with inflammation and all kinds of ugliness that results in a backlash against the body. Th2 immune response is encouraged by the worms. The cytokines (which ultimately produce the inflammation) involved in these reactions are mutually contradictory- they cancel each other out. As a result, the Th2 immune response once the worms are in place will counter the Th1 immune response that is being caused by... whatever the heck is causing the autoimmune response. Plus, they work to decrease environmental allergy response. Probably something to do with IgE.

It may be tougher to clear an animal with hundreds or thousands of hooks, but if there were only 10-15, it should be considerably easier. I have no proof, but I suspect dogs affected with a limited number of hookworms would have no D. Once you get up into numbers that would be characteristic of infestation (again, hundreds or thousands)- yeah. D, and lots of it. Anyway- that's the crux of the problem (preventing heavier infestations by cleaning up), which is why I provided that caveat in the poll.