This Month at Vetrica

10 February 2005

Latest News

This page contains the latest news from Vetrica and Vetrica OnLine. It updates at least monthly, and will also keep you up to date with the latest news about animal care and welfare.

An archive of previous articles is also available.

Obesity is Cruelty

It's official. Overfeeding dogs can now be regarded as cruelty. The RSPCA reported recently that a man who owned a grossly obese dog was convicted of cruelty. While there were several other factors involved in addition to the dog's obesity, nevertheless, obesity was the major factor in the dog's suffering. Sadly, the dog was euthanased. The full story is available from the RSPCA's own website here.

This raises an important issue that we struggle with every day. So many of the pets presented to us for help could have their health and welfare vastly enhanced simply by losing weight. Obesity is often an animal's only abnormality, or a serious inciting or complicating factor to some other problem such as breathing difficulties or joint disease. Simply losing weight is often all that's required for arthritis treatment for example. Few people would argue that feeding too little food is cruel, when in fact there is good scientific data that a calorie restricted diet prolongs life in many species, (further information for this is available here). Yet feeding too much food is known to reduce life expectancy, and is probably second only to flea infestation as a cause of suffering in the animals brought to us at Vetrica.

Simply feeding less is not necessarily the solution, and in very overweight animals can be dangerous. Pet food manufacturers include some vitamin and mineral supplements based on a target calorie intake, and underfeeding a normal commercial diet can give rise to deficiencies.

If your pet is overweight you should aim for a slow reduction in weight. At Vetrica we offer free weight reduction clinics, giving you as much advice and support as you need. The key is to feed a food that is properly balanced for weight loss; weighing it accurately every day to ensure a consistent calorie intake; and regular weight checks (at least every 2 weeks) to ensure your pet is losing weight at a safe rate. If you would like further information on our obesity clinics, please call in at the surgery.

If you would like to read more about dog and cat obesity, Hill's Pet Nutrition has an excellent resource.

This Month's Interesting Case

Dental problems are some of the most common problems that we see at Vetrica, but this month we saw a relatively rare problem in dogs: dental decay. While dental decay is very common in people, the different diet and shape of dogs' teeth means we hardly ever see it. (By contrast gum disease is extremely common in dogs).

Dental decay occurs when bacteria produce acid from food material sticking to the teeth. The acid slowly dissolves first the tooth's enamel, then the underlying softer dentine. As most of us know, dental decay can be very painful. Compared with humans, dogs have sharp, angular teeth with few horizontal surfaces. However, the very back (molar) teeth do bear some resemblance to human teeth, and are vulnerable to the same sort of disease process.

This photograph shows a case of very advanced dental decay. Most of the crown of the tooth has completely dissolved away, leaving only stumps of the roots of the tooth (marked X).

Sam is a 6 year old Bearded Collie. Sam's owner's had noticed that he was having difficulty eating, occasionally dropping food, or crying while eating. Dental decay was clearly visible on looking into his mouth, so we quickly arranged an operation to treat him.

In early cases, it is possible to drill out the affected decayed tooth, and fill it in exactly the same way as in humans. However, in Sam's case, the disease was far too advanced, with most of the crown of the affected teeth having completely dissolved away. So in Sam's case, the affected teeth were extracted.

Cat's are also resistant to dental decay. However, they do have their own peculiar type of dental disease called Feline Odontoclastic Resorptive Lesions, or FORL for short. This is unlike anything that occurs in humans, and no-one is very sure what causes it in cats.

FORL results in the destruction of a tooth by natural body processes. The affected portions of tooth become covered in a fleshy mass of gum tissue, and are very painful, and very fragile. Many different treatments have been attempted for FORL, but the currently accepted treatment is extraction of the affected teeth.

The tooth marked X in this picture is affected by FORL. It has been extensively destroyed, and is covered in the typical fleshy outgrowth from the gum.

The picture here is of Tigger, a Siamese cat that we saw this month. As with Sam, his owner had noticed that he was having difficulty eating. Tigger had two teeth with FORL, the worst affected of which is shown here. You can see that a large area of the tooth has simply disappeared, and on touching, Tigger was not afraid to let us know it hurt!

Not every cat with FORL will appear to be "In pain". This is a very common disease, that frequently progresses slowly over many years. As such many of the affected cats are quite old, and it's easy to think that a reduction in appetite is due to age. We sometimes have to remove all of an older cat's teeth because of FORL. Even though some of these cats are very old, these patients often eat more heartily in the evening after the operation than they have done for many years.

Far too many older cats suffer unnecessarily because of this disease. Our modern anaesthetic techniques reduce the risk of the procedure to an absolute minimum, and the benefit to the cat's long-term well being is immense.

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