The Marty & Laura Show

Marty and Laura debate dog parks and doggy day care, weighing the risk versus the reward of each. Dog parks and doggy daycare are convenient solutions to busy schedules. But they do have downsides.

We're here to help walk you through some of the considerations. "Some (doggy daycares) are run really well," Marty noted, "so I don't wanna say that they're all negatively associated. But there are some that have really done well and some that are really not done well.

"I think the most important aspect of a daycare experience for the dog is that it's regular, it's scheduled, and you know the playgroup that your dog is going to be in, rather than having it just be, you know, some random situation that just lets everybody out together where there can be a real brouhaha and create some significant injuries, illnesses and other issues."

Marty and Laura tackle separation anxiety, a tough topic for folks trying to manage returning to office life while keeping their pooch entertained. A lot of “pandemic dogs” that have never had 30 seconds of being by themselves, find a new way of life more challenging.

“So there are some things that you can do to help prepare them for being left alone,” Marty said, “whether it's to go to work or something more significant. And some of them are pharmaceutical and some are non-pharmaceutical. It’s okay to use pharmaceuticals if you need them because it can shorten the learning curve.

So I don't want people to feel guilty or bad or any of those things if they feel like a pharmaceutical assistant to shorten the dog's learning curve is appropriate. “A lot of dogs figure out pretty fast if they're going with you that day or you're leaving them for that day or they're going to daycare what's going to happen based on the pair of shoes that you put on, believe it or not, or which bag you pick up, or whether you've got this jacket or that jacket on. “It’s called back chaining when they figure those things out is they first see you leave, and then they see you put on the shoes that you wear when you leave, and then they see you put the jacket and the shoes on before you leave, and then they see you pick up the keys. And so they start to back chain.

So very quickly, you can see that they're developing anxiety as you're prepping to leave them or take them along.” For a deep dive on this topic, check out this archived episode from Pure Dog Talk.

Marty and Laura walk through best practices for giving our pets the best chance for a long life. Our hosts share their experiences with losing dogs in old and young ages, while providing detailed recommendations to help our pets live long, productive lives.

“So preventive care is going to be probably the most important,” Marty said. “And that means routine blood work. That means routine dental cleanings, that means the right nutrition. “There's some really important things that we can do for (our pets) that are pretty simple and pretty straightforward.

They're not always easy, but they're pretty straightforward. “I think going in for a routine blood work, people are like, ‘ohh, I don't need any, he's fine.’ No, you're going to be surprised at what kind of things we can find and preemptively get ahead of whether it's kidneys, whether it's liver function issues, whether it's heartworm disease or some of the tick borne diseases, other disorders that we can see.

So if you're veterinarian says, ‘I think we should do blood work this year and it's usually an annual thing then you should go up and down with your head and say yes, yes, I think we should do that.” Marty continues with food recommendations, why dogs should be crated in a car, weight management and more. Working through final decisions about our pets is incredibly emotional. “My favorite current book is Promises to My Pet,” Marty said. “It was written by a social worker who wanted to help people go through the process to let their pet go.

And basically they go in and you can take pictures from your dog when it was young and you could put all kinds of things in there. But essentially what you're doing is you're promising your dog or your cat that you are not extending their life beyond what you think would be reasonable.”

But it kind of gives us a feel for what we think of puppy, teenager, adult, elder. Marty and Laura walk through those life stages and some of the things that we can do to ease or utilize those times that we have with our dogs. Everyone says it's too short, and they're right.

So we talk about some ways to look at it differently and to understand it better. "Teenagers need to learn boundaries," Marty said. "Teenage dogs, teenage children, teenage ponies, they all need to learn boundaries. It's just a thing, and it's our job. It's our responsibility because we love our family pets, children, cats, dogs, horses; it's our job to teach them those boundaries." "Now, if you've got an adult dog that's earned its place and it's got its life lessons, you can now do some great things with your dog.

You can go do stuff and do events. I mean, like, this is the great part of dog life, this two to five, two to six time frame, and it's a blast; they're so much fun. So this is when you get out of the basic obedience class and you start doing fun things like agility or rally or scent work, or you start taking the dog to the national parks and the local lakes and all the fun things that you get to do. "But, of course, you have to remember that not everybody loves dogs. 58% of the people own dogs.

Another 42% probably don't want anything to do with them, so you can't just let your dog run up to everybody and slobber all over them because not everybody appreciates that. You can't let your big dopey dog run up to every other dog either. And just because your dog is friendly, it doesn't mean that the other dog is." Next week we'll talk in depth about our senior dogs and the joys and sorrows of that life stage.

Lance walks us through Laura's "box of fish" and everything above and beyond in the colorful and spectacular world of home aquariums. Filtration, salt or freshwater, fish friends (and frenemies!), tank size, and decorations—we cover the basics of Aquarium 101.

The Eclipse filter – everything in one top for the aquarium: https://www.marineland.com/products/aquariums/bio-wheel-aquarium-kit.aspx

More beginner information on Marineland filters: https://www.marineland.com/information.aspx

Species database: https://aquainfo.org/

Legendary plant tank guy (his stuff is stunning): https://www.aquariumarchitecture.com/archive/legendary-aquarist-takashi-amano/

Reef Tank Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eHxbMa2RVTQ

“Cats are not small dogs and dogs are not big cats,” Marty says. “So cats are a species unto themselves, and they have their own special wants, needs, desires, techniques, food, everything. It's a little different with the cat. “This is why a spay or neuter in a cat at six or eight months is very appropriate. Now, I don't like to see them spayed or neutered when they're itty-bitty babies.

I still think that there's some risk that goes with that. You know, those four, five, six-week-old kittens should not be spayed or neutered, and there are places that do that. “A lot of the shelters, as soon as the cats weigh two pounds — and that frequently means two months of age, eight weeks — they'll start to talk about spaying and neutering, and there are some orthopedic problems that happen, especially in the boys' fat. So I care about that, but basically, you don't want to do that so young.

Closer to six months is still a better choice, but not after, you know, don't wait until they're eight, nine, or ten months old, because by then you've already got some behavioral issues that are going to be difficult to manage.”

"Your dog scratching at his ears, not an emergency. You can wait. Cat can't urinate. That is an emergency," Marty says. With the nationwide difficulty finding and accessing emergency services for our pets, a little bit of knowledge can save you an enormous amount of time, grief and frustration.

From bloat to dog fight to bloody stools, we take you through the details of what can and can't be managed at home. Check out Marty and Laura's K9 First Aid 911 series.

“Cats have a very serious medical condition when they cannot urinate. And you can only imagine how A, painful, and B, dangerous, that is, for cats, and it's almost always male cats. I can tell you, I can count on one hand the number of female cats I've seen obstructed, but male cats, pretty commonly.

It accounts for about 3 % of all veterinary hospital admissions, so it is a common disorder. “If you have a cat that's urinating inappropriately, male or female, blood in the urine, not in the litter box, straining to urinate. It can look like constipation also. Clients think this is a bladder infection, but cats don't get bladder infections the way that other species do. “People think that their cat missed the litter box. Cats don't miss.

If you watch them in the litter box, they dig a little hole and then they turn around and they look and then they dig a little bit more and then they look a little more and then they dig a little bit more. And then when they finally urinate or have a stool, it is nailing it right where they dug the hole. So cats don't miss“If they're not using the litter box, you absolutely, positively are getting the advanced notice from your cat that ‘I'm gonna be in trouble and you need to get this fixed fast before something goes wrong.’” The Marty & Laura Show is produced by Pure Dog Talk Inc., with sound design and editing by Premium Audio Services.

Research has shown that early spay/neuter in dogs causes an increased incidence of several cancers as well as cruciate ligament tears and increased odds of both problematic and nuisance behaviors. “They don't routinely spay and neuter dogs in the European countries and they don't have a pet overpopulation problem. They don't have a mixed breed overpopulation problem.

So when I've traveled in Europe and you go places on the train or go to a restaurant or a cafe or whatever, and there's dogs there. They're intact dogs, and they know how to behave themselves because they have been trained to go out in public and behave. "So it's a whole different experience, and they don't have oodles and oodles of puppies pouring out of shelters and rescues because they have inappropriately bred dogs. So I think we really need to take a hard look at ourselves as Americans to say, where have we gone awry?

And what have we done wrong here? And what do we need to do to regain that? Because there's some really important information about the improvement in health and longevity by keeping our dogs intact.”

Below are links to a few of the studies and research Marty mentioned.

https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Suggested-Guidelines-by-Breed-for-Age-of-Neutering-Suggested-guidelines-for-age-of_tbl1_342751264

https://cdn.ymaws.com/www.therio.org/resource/resmgr/docs/spay-neuter_basis.pdf

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/36656681/

The Marty & Laura Show is produced by Pure Dog Talk Inc., with sound design and editing by Premium Audio Services.

Learn about a “tick quest,” “tick nests” that could be under your bed, the potential role of ticks as vectors for diseases up to and including cancer, and more parasitology than you even knew was out there. Catch up on the life cycle of fleas, the scourge of heartworm and mosquitoes, even “Kissing Bugs.” Then venture into the “bowels” of veterinary medicine with updates on one-celled organisms and actual worms that attack our pets. We’ve got you covered, top to bottom and inside out! Lol