All right, looking to fire up those calls for a big hour of Pet Chat, and you'll be able to connect with the likes of Dr. Kimberley Earl today. G'day, Kimberley. Good morning. Afternoon. It could be morning if somebody's listening to this tomorrow. Good day. Hello to you two. And Cheryl Shaw, always nice to see you, Cheryl. Thank you. A nice, simple, well, simple's the wrong word, a nice basic word. That's not a wrong word either. Okay. We've got purple and black. What's that all about? Okay, so this is the poppy that's for remembrance of their animals, and I thought being Anzac Day, it might be nice to talk about the remembrance of the animals that served in the world.
That'd be a great idea. And, of course, thanks for not barking at me for calling you both simple and basic. It's okay, Mark. Taking a look at remembering the animals in terms of Anzac Day. That's right. Well, Mark, you didn't know the purple poppy, and a lot of people aren't aware of the purple poppy. We all know the Flanders red poppy. But in 2006, a charity called Animal Aid was very aware that animals were being forgotten about in our war period, and they thought it was time that we started to, you know...
bring some remembrance back on the animals it served. And a lot of people don't realise that a lot of actual pets were taken away during the war. So in war times when there's not a lot of food around and everyone's on rations, a lot of pets were being surrendered to their shelters and things like that. But also the government started to call on people to surrender their animals to go to war. So things like our pet cats, often our cats were taken away from us because they needed them to be in the trenches and also on the ships to combat rats and mice. So a lot of people were unfortunately having to give up their pets. Now I know for me that would be horrendous to have my dog taken away from me. I just can't imagine how people...
were feeling during those times. But dogs did play a huge role as well. I mean, not only were they used for, you know, mine detection and laying mines, things like that, but they were also used to comfort a lot of the soldiers. And there's an actual name given for mercy dogs. And what a mercy dog is, when a soldier is dying, the dog is actually left to keep that soldier comforted during that time. And I just think that must be so sad for the dogs, because we know that dogs have emotions as well. And knowing that they're laying with somebody in their last moments, I just get so emotional about the whole thing of these pets in war. Horses did an amazing job as well. I mean, obviously, we've all seen the movies.
of horses in war and that's just, their lives were just so horrendous. They did an amazing job and so many horses were just euthanised towards the end of the whole war period. Donkeys, we all know Duffy, the donkey with John Simpson. carrying the soldiers out of Gallipoli. So, you know, when we think about what animals... The boss was asking me what the topic was today, and I said, and he said, hey, what's the most unusual animal that has, you know, that you know has been used? And that's actually a slug. Slugs were used to detect mustard gas because when a mustard is around, the gas of mustard, they become quite agitated and start to curl up and continue things like that. The other one that I think is really a nice story is the story of G.I. Joe the pigeon. You need to look that up and have a look at the famous G.I. Joe. He ended up living in a zoo after the war and had a nice life, but he was renowned for carrying the messages that are so important during wartimes. But so many animals...
animals lost their lives. I mean, it goes on and on, the stories. But a lot of the soldiers found animals when they were at war and kept animals. And if you go down to the Canberra War Museum, there's lots of pictures of, you know, of bears with their soldier and, you know, they found monkeys. All sorts of animals played a role. And when we think about that role, that role was companionship. That role was something to love and to, honestly, to help them through those hard times. So, you know, when we are out on Anzac Day, just do try and remember to think about the animals that also...
And it played a huge role in that war. Look, you've covered a whole lot of them there, Cheryl. And obviously, yes, we remember, we've been very conscious of the light horse and Simpsons donkey and all of that. But the dogs and the cats, the slugs, there you go, learn something new. I mean, not that they're much of a pet, but they would certainly come in handy looking for that mustard gas. All animals, great and small, you know, they served in war. But, you know, canaries, they were used too. They were used to detect gases and things like that. Just, yeah, you just don't think about some of the animals that were used.
And I think it's rather an interesting topic. Absolutely, unless we forget our animals as well. Good times, great music and pet chat right now at 2NURFM 103.7 with Cheryl Shaw and Dr. Kimberley Earle. And Kimberley, this time around, you'd like to talk about something that's possibly not the most sexy subject out there. It's not very sexy. It's not very sexy. The topic is worms. Worms. Yeah, we want to talk about intestinal worms. So we do spend a lot of time talking about parasites, in particular ticks, but we haven't talked about worms in a long time. And I think it's because...
I don't know, we just, we sort of routinely handle them, deal with them, but people don't give them a lot of thought. It's sort of like, ugh, worms, whatever. But worms are actually really important because there are lots of worms that we see in dogs and cats that can actually be transmitted to people. In adult animals, they don't cause a lot of harm. In kittens and young, like really kittens and puppies, young animals, and really, really old ones, though they can. And we can actually see puppies die of hookworm infestations if they haven't been wormed appropriately, things like that. But I think the big thing is that, you know, the zoonotic transmission potential, zoonotic meaning a disease or a contagion that can go between animals and humans, is pretty important.
Our standard in Australia, our standard sort of protocols for worming is that we want to be worming our puppies and kittens from four weeks of age. So usually that's going to be before you get them. The breeders will do them from about four weeks of age. And they're going to be wormed, hopefully, every fortnight until they get to about 12 weeks of age and then monthly until they're six months of age. And thereafter, we tend to sort of say every three months is really important. But there would be situations where we need to be, I guess, more aggressive than that. So particularly if we see a young puppy or kitten, you know, we give them a worming tablet in consult or you go to the pet shop and you buy an all-in-one. And once you've given it 24 hours later, you see your puppy vomit up a bunch of worms or poo out a bunch of worms.
if anyone's eating, then it's actually really important that we re-dose that pet in about another seven days. We want to catch the life cycle. So if we see a big worm burden, we're going to want to repeat that worming dose. And you may not want to, or in fact, we don't want to necessarily double dose them with an all-in-one. So I mean, I think a lot of the issue is that it's not an issue, it's not a problem, but a lot of our worming doses are now in combination with our flea tick and heartworm treatments. And so we're not necessarily thinking about worms as a separate sort of entity. So if we did see a big worm burden, we would want to re-worm.
So what are we likely to see? In cats, the most common ones we see tend to be tapeworms. And these show themselves as little flattened sort of squished rice granules. And what you're actually seeing is the little tapeworm segments. And you'll often see them, if a cat has a tapeworm burden, you'll often see those little white segments sort of stuck around their bum after they've left the litter box. This is going to be particularly prominent if you're not up to date with your flea prevention because fleas actually transmit tapeworms, okay, in dogs and cats, but particularly in cats. They get around, don't they? That's how they get around. They get around everywhere. And also if your cat is out and about and they're hunting, if they're catching mice, they're catching birds, they're going to be likely to have a tapeworm burden.
In dogs, we do tend to see more in the ways of roundworm and hookworm. And hookworms in particular are really nasty. In young puppies, they attach to the inside lining of the intestine and they essentially suck blood from the puppies. And they literally can suck a puppy dry. We will see puppies usually from situations where the husbandry isn't very good or maybe the mother dog hasn't been wormed and puppies can come to us with this great big full belly. And if it's not picked up early, then they can actually die and succumb to the infection. They die of anemia. I mean, these puppies are literally, they're dying of blood loss from the worm infestation. We see in Australia, we see...
hookworms, whipworms, tapeworms, roundworms. Roundworms are a big one. And when we're talking about tapeworms, we'll see our regular sort of tapeworm that, you know, our flea transmitted tapeworm. But also if you're feeding a lot of raw meat, if you're off a property, you know, when you've got working dogs that are eating sheep carcasses, things like that, a kind of caucas tapeworm is a really important one that can be transmitted to people. So it's really important that we're staying up on top of our worming treatment. And even then, sometimes when, you know, people are sort of saying, oh, well, I've used my Nexcard Spectres or my Sempericos or Crudelios, there's all sorts of products. A lot of those products that are considered all
and ones, a lot of them actually aren't complete from a worming perspective. Many of them won't do tapeworm, and I don't think any of them really do a kind of caucus tapeworm. So if you're feeding raw meat, you actually need to be speaking to your vet about an appropriate tapewormer for your dog. But a lot of them will do, they might do roundworms and hookworms, but not whipworms. So what do you think that is, Kimberly? Because, I mean, you get the impression, hey, we're doing the whole lot, job done, and it's not.
I mean, a lot of it has to do with certain things. A lot of these chewables are palatable. And prosiquantil, which is just about the only thing that will kill tapeworms, and in particular, kind of caucus tapeworms, it's a horrible, horrible tasting product. They can't mask the taste of it. And so they don't want to put it in because then the dogs won't eat them. Yeah, yeah, the dogs won't eat them. And sometimes it's to do with, you know, the volume, the dose, the milligram per kilo dose that they need to put in is really imbalanced with the size of the, you know, the product would physically have to be too big to, you know, put a certain thing in. There's issues with potency. There's issues with, you know, I think a lot of it is for the dog products is often to do with palatability. And then what the company's...
willing to put in in terms of research and proving, you know, proving efficacy because some products are harder than others. So, you know, to be able to say this one is lasting, you know, for two months or three months or whatever. So, you know, it's one of those things that I think it's worthwhile having a discussion with your veterinarian about, am I on something that's going to cover everything? And like I said, for an adult dog who's otherwise well and healthy, worms are not usually going to cause a major health problem. But for young puppies, if you've got a new puppy, you might have a, you know, a six-year-old Labrador and you go and get yourself a brand new tiny little puppy. That puppy is really susceptible. So then everybody in the house needs to have a proper warmer and your vet will be able to provide you with just a stock standard.
you know, all-wormer that will cover everything. It might not be very flavourful. You might just have to do it the old-fashioned shove it down the throat way. But, you know, that's the sort of conversations we need to be having. You only want to give us the full answer next time. Sorry. So just once again, because the thing that struck me from the start was the amount of times particularly we need to... Yeah. It's really frequent, particularly when they're puppies. Really, really frequent. So fortnightly till 12 weeks, which is three months, then monthly till six months, and then really every quarter. Like, you know, if you're doing it every quarter as the season turns for the rest of your dog's life, that's going to be perfect. All right. Worms covered. Done. Done. Dusted. Cheryl Shaw is here along with Dr. Kimberly Earl. And while waiting for the next call to come through, ladies, let's...
Let's just let's just just. Completely go off script here for a minute. We're going to move it up early. Okay. Our dog and cat of the week. Dog cat of the week, yes. Look, why don't you start, Gimli, with Chase? Chase. All right, we've got Chase. It says, Chase is a staffy cross. He's a big softie, a loyal shadow, and a snuggle king. He's amazing with kids. It says he'd be good with kids of any age. Thrives around them and loves being part of the fun. He's playful and goofy and will keep you laughing with all of his zoomies. He walks beautifully on a leash and loves to go for a daily walk. If you're sitting down, you expect him to be right there beside you. And he's super food motivated, which is great for training, but you won't be able to leave your snacks unattended. It says he's a lovely little protector of the home, but he settles down.
he's been reassured so that's good he'll probably give somebody a little bark and then you know announce that People are come to the door. He'd love to be in a home that has another dog friend, similar size and energy levels, but he would also be OK on his own as long as he's the centre of attention. And they do say that he will expect to be or they would expect that he needs to be an inside dog, you know, right in the middle of the family. So he's well house trained, dog friendly, would thrive with a doggy sibling, suitable for children of all ages. And as per usual, needs a decent sized yard. He looks like he's a bit of a medium sized, you know, sort of staffy cross dog. He's a nice sort of tan and white colour. D-sex vaccinated, all that sort of thing. It hasn't been tested with cats and pocket pets.
Yep, well. That's a bit of a question mark. A bit of a question mark there, but anyway. But it looks like a really lovely dog, so. What are you thinking, Cheryl? I know you've had your iron in there for a little bit. Yes, he looks like he's going to fit into most families. Nice. Well, look, don't get sold on that drink of water, Cheryl, because he's going to make you talk about Gibson. No, I'm not doing Gibson. You're not doing Gibson? Cheryl doesn't do cats. She's not a cat person. Well, look, I'll let you do it, Kimberly. Now, I'll preface this by saying.
Gibson does look like a lovely cat, and we're about to bring up his profile in a minute. But the way the picture's taken almost makes him look like an AI creation. He looks a little off balance, but I do think it's the angle that they've taken the photo from. It's them. It's not him. Trust me. Anyway, let's have a look at Gibson. So he is a two-year-old. Now, it says he's a Silkwick Rex and crossbreed. I don't know. No, that's not. That's Gibson. That's Gibson. Yeah, aren't we doing Gibson? Hang on. We're doing Gibson. Yeah, we are doing Gibson. We're doing Gibson. See, Cheryl, pay attention to the program. But I don't know what a Silkwick Rex is. I don't know what a Rex is. That's him. Trust me. He's a tabby cat is the next line. Oh.
Fluffy grey coat. Oh, it says fluffy grey coat. And he has a fluffy grey coat. Yeah. There you go. I don't know. The photos aren't lining up very well. That's okay. Anyway, he's a two-year-old male cat. He's a tabby. A grey tabby. His back is slightly darker than his chest, and he has strikingly good looks with lots of confidence, and he's a very loving cat. He likes a lot of attention. He likes to be a lap cat, and so you can imagine that you'll have a nice sort of warm friend in the evenings. Oh, it says Selkirk Rex. There we go. He's a cat breed with curly hair, and Gibson has this, giving him very unique fur. It's interesting that he's ended up in care. His fur feels slightly oily, so be prepared for that. Has fragile little whiskers that tend to break off. That's a Rex trait.
as well says if you're looking for a unique looking cat who will return all the love you can give then Gibson is the one he would suit most household he is child friendly suitable as an only cat and he also gets along with other cats and dogs so I like the sound of this Gibson. He looks really cool. Yeah. I got confused by the typo at the beginning where it said Selkirk Rex. I've only heard of them as Rex. But they have this really fine, sort of really fine short coat. They do still shed, but they've got this sort of really fine coat. And they often have, their whiskers kind of look, they're often like sort of curly. Like they kind of look like they've been singed by a fire, but that's just like the way they normally are. But they're really lovely cats. As a general rule, Rex cats are really lovely cats. So last week, the cat that was up for adoption was also the same breed. Was it? Yes. Right. Okay. So that was Dom. Dom. Okay. A ginger.
Okay. Yes, it is exactly the same. I wonder what's happened. Somebody has maybe had to rehome their cats or something. Maybe Dom and...
Either that or they've just put a – it's the same cat. They've just put a filter on the photo. No, it looks like a different cat. It's a different cat. Anyway, that's interesting, yeah. I mean, it's not common for us to see sort of purebred cats coming into care like that. But there's obviously a situation or some sort of a family story. Somebody's situation has changed, and now they're looking for their cats to be rehomed. All right. You can meet Chase and Gibson for our Pet of the Week, and you can find that on our Pet Chat page and our website at 2NURFM.com.au. Ladies, we want to circle back a little bit to worm. We covered dogs, covered cats. But are there other animals that go through the deworming process, some yes or no? Absolutely. And, you know, with our domestic animals, they all –
Just about all, just about all, can have their own sort of population of intestinal worms that we need to sort of manage. So birds, we do a lot of deworming birds, particularly aviary birds. I mean, our wild birds are almost always full of birds, but even in aviary situations, we will sometimes get worm burdens that can be really high, particularly if we have a lot of birds in a small enclosed space and if those birds have access to the ground. So if they can get onto the ground and they're picking through the ground, they tend to be picking through a lot of feces and they'll pick up worms that way. Chickens, it's really important that we're worming chickens on a fairly regular basis. That can be a little bit problematic because a lot of the products that are licensed for use in chickens don't taste very good.
and things like that. But it's worthwhile, you know, trying, persisting with that. Our pet rabbits and guinea pigs, actually, we don't worm them. It's really interesting. They're taking some of my money on that one. So they get a lot of parasites. They certainly can get fleas. They get a lot of mites. They can get ticks as well. But in terms of intestinal worms, they don't really get them. They can get coccidia. Every sort of species of animal can have their own sort of coccidial infection, but those are protozoa infections. They don't actually create a worm. But our rabbits and guinea pigs are sort of alone in that, that we don't really have to worm them. But yeah, I mean, intestinal parasites are one of the things that we have to manage.
you know for most of our pets usually we don't see a lot of clinical disease here but if you were you know or if I was a vet who was working up in you know in country and you know going seeing regional rural dogs, Aboriginal dogs, those animals often have, you know, significant worm burdens and things. And they live with them, but yeah, not always. Yeah, different areas pose different challenges, aren't they? Absolutely, yeah. And Kimberley, with our birds, you've got to withhold their water before they get their medication? Yeah, because with birds, particularly with our ornamental birds, but also with our chickens, most of the worming medications are administered through the water. And so we kind of need them, because the medications change the flavour of the water, we need to incentivise them to sort of drink. And so the recommendation is usually to withhold the water for 12 to 18 hours beforehand, then put the medicated water in and only offer that, usually for about 48 hours.
It's really, really important that when we're doing that, that we're not doing it during really hot weather because anything, and I've absolutely seen it, where, you know, people thinking... trying to do the right thing, but they've decided that this is the weekend, we're going to worm the birds. Then you get a big heat wave. They withhold the water beforehand and then the birds are so, they either, one of two things will happen. They're either so thirsty after having the water withheld that they overdose on the medication and they get sick and die from that, or they just completely refuse to drink the medicated water and then they die of dehydration. So I've actually seen that a number of times in my life, so my career. So yeah, so with birds, with chickens, we only want to do it in sort of temperate weather conditions. There's a lot of that, isn't there? All right, 49216216 to get with our Pet Chat team today. G'day, Kerry, it's Shortland. Your kitty cat's 15 years old, doing a lot of mowing.
What's happening? He's got a thyroid problem. He's on thyroid norm twice a day. Yep. When it first started to happen, he was meowing constantly. Yeah. And then obviously the vet said, yeah, he's got thyroid issues, so he's on this medication, and that calmed it down basically straight away. Great. And the meowing stopped, but he does get checked regularly, like his bloods are all still normal, so he's still to stay on the same dose. Great. But he's still occasionally, or like most nights, he'll still meow in the night, and it's like, I'm hungry meow. Yeah. Yeah.
Has he got dementia or is he hungry or what's the story? It could be a little of both. So we definitely do know that dementia type symptoms, cognitive decline happens in cats as well as dogs. It's a little bit less well-defined in cats, so it's a little bit harder to classify. Nighttime restlessness, 100% we see in dogs for certain. And I think it's highly likely that it happens in cats as well. The thyroid thing, so it's good that the thyroid levels are routinely being checked because they can, over time, the amount of functional thyroid tissue can still be increasing. The amount of hormone production can be increasing. So we can sometimes see a cat who was stable.
who then starts to fall out of that sort of stable range. And it sometimes is happening really slowly, really gradually. But the thyroid, the overactive thyroid, is essentially a functional tumor of the thyroid gland. And so if that tumor is getting a little bit bigger and they're producing a little bit more hormone, they can sometimes start to creep up. And it's interesting that one of the first clinical symptoms that we often see is a cat who starts to become really vocal and restless and begs for food and things like that. So it's probably a little bit of both. There probably is just some restlessness that's still happening around that. A lot of these cats spend a lot of their day sleeping and then nighttime comes and they're like, okay, I'm feeling not too bad. Let's go.
to hunt um so you know you can do things like leaving a small amount of food out at night some dry food maybe and depending on what the mobility of your cat is like some people will do um you know foraging games and things with them where they put um a little bits of you know little bits of food around the house dry food obviously um that's not going to work for everybody depending on your house and your cat um or giving them like a little feeding toy that they can play with in the evening just to try to um burn off some of that excessive energy because it's always the old cats. And for whatever reason, you know, they tend to sleep through the day and then nighttime comes and they're like, oh, hey, hang on, I've got some energy to play with. So, but I think dementia is also a possibility as well. And we certainly will see that nighttime restlessness. They just, you know, they can't seem to settle through the evening hours and it probably happens in cats as well. Is there medication for dementia? Not, nothing that's really, we do have things that we can try that we use in dogs.
they're really variable as to whether we get a decent response or any response whatsoever. You can try some of the calming supplements. There's products that use like alpha-casazapine. You talk to your vet about it, Zilkin and things like that, that we can use just to help, you know, settle them and keep them calm. And that can be quite helpful. Alpha-casazapine is like a milk protein that's found in, you know, when newborn babies have fed off the breast and they've just got going to that real calmed milk coma. We find that alpha-casazapine can cause that with cats and dogs as well. So not so much the milk coma, but they just become really calm and restful. If you think that there's like an anxiety component to it,
And we do sometimes use medications that gabapentin try to sort of settle the anxiety about it. And I think also, you know, I think the role of arthritis and discomfort in some of these old cats is probably underplayed a little bit. And so making sure that your vet has also, you know, addressed that sort of aspect of your senior pet is really important as well. You know, ask them if there's something we can do to help with this cat's likely osteoarthritis. It's probably happening as well. Best of luck with everything going on there, Kerry. Thank you so much for that. As we come back to wrap up Pet Chat in a couple of moments at 2NEWRFM. Look, we covered quite a lot of ground this afternoon, did we not? We did. Yes.
Thanks. We got there. We got the dog of the cat of the week. We've covered dementia in cats. We've covered worming. What didn't we cover? Lots. We didn't cover lots, but we covered a lot too. All right. As always, thank you very much, ladies. We'll see what happens next week on Petch Out. This is Dr. Kimberley Earle and Cheryl Shaw.