Boston Terrier fact of the week:
The first Boston Terrier to complete an Obedience Trial Championship was OTCH (Obedience Trial Champion) Brother Mac Duff owned by Ellen Dresselhuis.
Medical fact of the week:
Recently I had a conversation with my vet about the sudden and unexpected demise of an apparently healthy dog. Apparently healthy until shortly before her death. She was a smallish dog, roughly 20 pounds and a Boston Terrier. I had a copy of her lab work, done shortly before she died but after she'd gone into shock, and I showed the results to my vet to try to determine a possible cause of death. After a brief look at the lab work and a quick reference to her books she diagnosed Acute Pancreatitus. Too much fat in the dogs diet. At least that's one of the causes, the MAIN one. Pancreatitus can be overlooked often, especially in bigger dogs but in the little guys can be and is often fatal. It mostly affects overweight spayed bitches and those fed too many table scraps, but the one thing that can kill a dog that absolutely dropped me on the floor was......turkey and chicken (and even raw hamburger)!!!!!!! My vet told me turkey skin and fat can be absolutely LETHAL to a dog, especially a small dog! She went on to say the busiest day of the year in her office was the day after Thanksgiving! At home I researched Pancreatitus, hoping to find more on this. Here is what I found from the Complete Book of Dog Health: "Because dietary fat is a very potent stimulator of pancreatic enzymes , the disease can be associated with the regular ingestion of high-fat foods. The inflammation itself is an autodigestive process in which the pancreatic enzymes that are released actually digest the pancreas itself, thereby perpetuating the inflammation." The book goes on to say, "Acute form of pancreatitus can result in severe shock and death." And I thought all that post-Thanksgiving diarrhea my dogs get was due to too much good food!
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