Dr. Conor Brady and Brent cover canine paw injuries and infections, from burnt pads on hot pavement to glass shards and yeast overgrowth. They explain first aid, wound closure options, and how nutritional deficiencies like zinc and omega-3 shortfalls affect paw health. Interdigital cysts often signal immune imbalance rather than infection alone.
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Hey, good evening. We're live pretty much on time as there's only two of us. How many beers have you had before tonight's episode?
I have to admit I have had a couple of beers today, guys, but I will hang in there. And Brad is in the driving seat as he tends to be. Well, it's just the two of us. We usually have an interesting topic that's on, but I thought I'd have a lot to say about feet, but it turns out I don't really. It's one of your special interests, isn't it?
I've heard a lot said about feet.
Don't be telling tales. I happen to mention, guys, what Brad is trying to tell tales about is that I was out with our group of, well, we pretend to be canine nutritionists, but it's really just a group of dopes that meet up 2 or 3 times a year. And one night I just happened to mention that I think I've got lovely feet. It was a casual just appreciation of— no, I shouldn't be saying this live. There is quite a lot of people listening actually tonight. So, but anyway, I just thought I thought my feet feet, or a good part of my body. I said, look at those feet, and that turned into Conor Brady having a foot fetish and all that kind of stuff. I said, guys, there is not a single picture on the internet of me with a foot fetish, so you can't prove anything. It's not a foot fetish. Anyway, they're nice beers that I'm having.
However, if you wonder why he's now got into fungal treatments in a big way, please send one sock to Dr. Conor Brady.
Box. Anyway, so that was the feeding thing. So we're talking about feed. So I thought we actually have done a show on feed before, but perhaps not, because there's an awful lot of cool things we can, we can, we can cover. But we are Raw Pet Medics. You will find us on patreon.com/rawpetmedics, where for the price of just a cup of tea, you can support us and get all this amazing content every month— every week, in fact. Every month we're here anyway. So whether you can, it's great, and if you can't, doesn't matter, we're going to be here anyway. Yeah, so, Brent, anything exciting happen over the last few days that you need to tell the world about?
Well, we've had a bit of a shocker of hot weather. I hope everybody's coped. It's this whole, you know, this huge rise in temperature from being really cold, and then suddenly, you know, some places in the world it's great, they get a gradual change, you know, and if it's over 2 weeks, you're acclimatized and it's all great. But for some of our dogs, especially, you know, I've got an older Labrador now, she's got some of the paralysis of the larynx, and therefore, you know, she feels the heat so much quicker. And, you know, in those exertions, you just got to be really careful, you know, slow them down. Short-nosed dogs, you know, the brachycephalics, as we call them, the ones with the long soft palates, similar problems with cooling down. Just take it easy when it's super hot. It'll be cold again in 24 hours, so, you know, they'll get over it. They don't need to walk every single hot day on Well, actually, that's really contemporary because we're going to be talking about what's going on with your dog's feet. And, you know, when the tarmac's that hot, you shouldn't be walking your dog on it. If you can't walk in bare feet, I'd say, you know, unless your dog has got really hard soles and managed to build up some resistance, I think you've got to be really careful. I've seen a number of pictures of burnt feet.
Yeah, I remember training the dogs over in Perth. You know, you come from Ireland and it's like the footpaths have never been warm, so I just don't know what that is. And then you get over to Perth and, you know, it's just this glowing ball of fire of a sun all for, you know, 9, 10 months of the year. It is cloudless sky, very hot desert. And so I was training the dogs one day. I remember this little black Labrador walking through the city center, and then I see her standing there and she's like, oh, oh, oh. And she's— and I thought, oh, what are you doing? I didn't even— it hadn't even been mentioned to me because most everybody knows, you know, that you don't walk them in the sunshine, you know, you don't walk them on sunny paths, you know. But Then again, visually impaired people need to get around from A to B, but so, you know, just tiny moments where you will cross, but some grounds can heat up more than others. So that was the first time, and I thought, what a dunce I am. I was looking at her going, what is she doing? And then I realized, oh no, the path is really hot because I've got my runners on. It's not like I can feel it. So that was my first experience of kind of, oh, the poor little thing, you know. Could you imagine how hot black bitumen tarmac is, you know? So I talked, and that's why they do the boots, you know.
You've always got the options to give them some sort of COVID for it.
Yeah, true. Yeah, they don't like wearing those booties either. But yeah, I never saw a burnt foot. I wouldn't even know what that really looks like, to be honest with you, on a dog, because, you know, the pads are kind of black on a black Labrador, so I wouldn't even know.
It's when they've got the blister around and then they slough off and they— yeah, it gets all— yeah, like sunburn, but really bad. And yeah, it's really sore.
Okay, cool. So we are talking about feet tonight, guys. Paw problems of all sorts. So if you have any problems— actually, a lot of people have posted already on the VetMedX Facebook page. Thanks very much. And you can, anywhere else we shared and on your podcast, but you can comment on YouTube, you can comment on Facebook, we'll see those comments coming up. So if you have any interesting feed-related issues, please do send pictures in of your dog's feet, of your own feet, they'll all be welcomed, at least by me. So yeah, what is your favorite paw issue? But actually, no, let's first start—
Can I just go and wash my brain out before we carry on?
Ah, it's a pastime. What do you do with— let's start with something else that's not actually— what do you do with a piece of glass across the pad and the pad splits? What do you do with that?
Yeah, so this is a really good thing. Injuries, you know, we've got to deal with injuries. Look, the first aid thing for you guys out there is please, if you don't have a little tea towel or a flannel or anything like that with you, or a little sock to put over take your socks off, okay, your own feet, and literally, you know, for the time that it takes to screw one up and pad it onto the paw and the other to wrap it around or tie it around or just slip it over the paw depending on the size of the dog and the size of your feet, then just to get them off the park and, you know, somewhere that you can clean it up or to the vets so that that injury can be dealt with. So especially if it's spurting with blood. If you can see obvious glass, mind your own fingers. I don't want you lacerating your own hands in an effort to get it out, but it is preferable to try and remove that glass if it's obviously causing pain so that you can then just put the compression over it and you're not pushing the glass further in. But if it's a load of separate little shards of glass, you know, don't feel you need to get every last one out before you get to the vets. Just you know, put some light pressure over. If you've got something, you know, if you've got an ice cream van nearby and they've got some ice, you can always ice it just to cut the blood flow down and take the pain away whilst you get them to the vets. That's a bit of first aid for the injury. Sometimes you can see them on X-ray, you can find the shards of glass and take them out. Often it's a case of taking a hypodermic needle and literally removing those pieces of glass. So some dogs are brilliant and they'll just sit there and let you do it, usually Labradors. Some dogs are absolutely nuts, okay, and won't let you go near their paw unless you've sedated them. And so, you know, we've got to take each case as it comes. And please, again, if your dog's, you know, very sensitive, then it may not appreciate you digging around for a piece of glass. So don't get bitten, you know. Just, you know, take a moment, maybe muzzle at the very least, but, you know, just while you get them to the vets. But they'll probably need sedation to—
Can you also say, would you have to— what sort of sedation to give the dog? You don't have to put the dog out to do it.
Is there a holistic option? Look, there's things to calm your dog, you know, you can take valerian and things like that, absolutely. But they're only going to calm them, they're not really going to sedate them. There are reversible sedatives Okay, so a meditomidine, which is the name for things like sedator and domitor and things like that. These are reversible sedations, so they can be given a sedation that then they can have reversed, and they'll be up and around, you know, within 5 minutes having had the reversal agent. So there are problems with some of the other sedatives like acepromazine, which really aren't going to be effective, and they'll usually need an anesthetic once they've had that premedicant. So I tend to use metatomidine if they need sedating. First things first, get it looked at. If it's visible, clean it up. So that's thoroughly clean it. There's some great products out there from Botanica to Lucilin we've talked about in the past. I don't know if I've got any Lucilin here. Calendula washes. Okay, those sort of things. All of those can be really useful. If it's a clean cut, you may be offered 3 options to close that. That is to staple it, so that's metal clips that go in, not just your normal stapler that you use off to the desk, Conor, before you get any ideas. Okay, there are suturing, so actually using a non-absorbable suture that we can place using a needle. Obviously, that's going to have a little bit more impact stitching a foot back together. They're going to definitely need some sedation. But you can, if they're cleaned thoroughly and it's done in a timely fashion. So there is a golden period that if you can get them to the vets and that wound treated within the first hour or two, we can clean out that wound without the need for antibiotics, without the need for risk of closing in infection, etc. That will determine as well, you know, if there's lots of gravel and grit and soil and horrible stuff in there, then that golden period is going to be far shorter and it'll need a lot more cleaning. But if we can see them, it's a relatively clean wound. You've talked about glass across the pad and it's kept clean, and they get to the surgery, we may be able to clean that up and literally use the human super glue, you know, the skin glue. Yeah, you can glue those two bits back together again. And then give it some poor protection with a bit of a bandage. And usually they will heal just as well as any suturing.
Yeah, yeah. There's a natural product based on yarrow root. Have you seen that? It's like Elastoplast, is that spray goo that is like, it's almost like fake skin that you can put on a suture. My kid split her head and the doctor just couldn't stitch it back up in the hospital. He said, look, you know, if I don't get this stuck back together, she's gonna have a little scar. I said, well, what else can you do? And he goes, I've got like Elastoplast, you know, the goo that you spray on top. That didn't hold it for a second, you know. So there's obviously, there's times for a stitch and time for this. But this yarrow root, as one of the canine herbalists was telling me, is like a thick goo and it's antimicrobial. So you can put it on and it covers it and leaves this thick, and then you wrap the paw. I don't know any more than that, but I know it's definitely yarrow. It's in a couple of them.
Yeah, so yarrow is great for the immune system, great as an antibacterial, and will help But a lot of these herbal compresses are there to promote secondary intention healing, so they won't draw the edges of the skin together. Yeah, they literally will pack onto the wound and they will create a cover. Now, as long as they are moist, if they are left there and you do not replace the dressing, then actually all that you're doing is cutting out the oxygen in the long run to that wound, and you're allowing it to fester underneath that material. So you need to have a fresh compress keep going back onto that wound. So usually every 12 hours, some of these you'll get away with 24. Going beyond that, I always worry that, yes, it's out of sight, out of mind, people think that's great, but then you come back to it and when you remove that dressing and try and put the next one on, you've got a whole load of cleanup that you've got to do again. To try and get you—
how does staples and stitching, how do those two wrapped up in the paw, like how does that avoid that issue over 2-3 days? Because I'd imagine once you staple the paw and you bandage it up, you're not looking at that for a few days.
Because if you've cleaned it out, then when you suture those two edges together by whatever means, glue, suture, staples, you're actually closing in the clean area and you're allowing all of the tissues to heal across. So that will keep the muck out. However, if you have an open wound by secondary intention, the skin bacteria, let alone other bacteria that may have contaminated that from your own hands or from, you know, the environment, will get in into that material. And as the active agents that are maybe antibacterial reduce their efficacy, then those bacteria can start to build again within that tissue.
I was kind of thinking that the solid wad of this natural gloop would be like a barrier in itself, like a poultice, you know, what kind of thing.
It might keep the mud out, it will keep the mud out, but it won't necessarily keep the bacteria out because they will creep along the surface underneath that, particularly if it dries.
Yeah, yeah, it'll dry like a cracking desert. Yeah, okay, cool. Okay, so that's, uh, not that anybody can do this stuff at home, you know, but it's kind of interesting because, uh, Well, I've never seen a nasty paw injury, so, but I've heard of them, I've seen pictures of them, but I haven't actually seen one. None of my dogs ever have hit a piece of glass.
If I didn't have all the comments coming up on my phones, I'd be holding up photos of the latest paw injuries and sloughed pads and all the classic is, you know, your dog gets into the shallow water at the lake edge and there's broken beer bottles or whatever in there, or, you know, the sharp stones, you know, shale, whatever it is, and they're not used to it, or shells even. At the seaside sometimes, you know, the razor clams and things like that, and they'll get sliced on those, and they'll take either a cut into it or a slice off, so a grazing slice off the bottom of the pad.
Yeah. What about more like, what about more kind of common foot issues in humans like corns, bunions? Bunions maybe not, but what about corns and verruca type issues? Do dogs get that Yeah, definitely.
Look, the corns, you know, can cause severe lameness. You know, if you've got a lameness in a younger dog, okay, especially sighthounds, so all of the greyhounds, whippets, you know, that side of things, and you've got a sudden— and that's the lurchers as well, so the crosses out of those sighthounds, you know, if you've got a dog that suddenly goes lame after no apparent injury and looks like they're literally stepping on hard stones, you know, and that's why they're a little bit tentative on an A foot. You may find that if you lift their pad up and look at the actual pads, sometimes you can see a circular hard knot lesion. We call those corns. Okay. And literally, just as with people, you have to almost cut them out. In order to remove that scarred hard tissue that's been sticking back into the sensitive skin. So usually it's a start of an inflammatory reaction, whether that be because of a pinprick that's happened and taken some bacteria in or virus or whatever, and it's created almost a wart on the foot, okay, but it's ingrowing. So it goes into the pad and it then is just like having a stone in your shoe constantly. And so these sometimes, you know, sometimes you can freeze them out, sometimes you can just soften the pad with coconut oil and things like that and get them to all soften up and then just keep effectively taking the surface off with a pumice stone and they'll go. But quite often we end up actually incising them out in a circular thing to draw them out and then allowing it to heal.
I like the sound of that, just rip it out. What's the difference between a corn and a verruca?
So verrucas are definitively, in humans, those fungal infections that seat in, don't they? They get in and they eat into the skin, and then you see them spore out around the foot and are quite infectious. In that sense, but corns tend not to transfer in the same way. So, you know, you— yeah, just because you've got a corn on one dog in the house doesn't mean that all of a sudden all of the other dogs in the house are going to get corns. And verrucas don't, because of the pad structure in dogs, don't tend to cause a problem in dogs. They're usually a human sweaty foot, wet.
I thought they'd like Just your perfect— yeah, that's the worst. No, no, that's not nice. I don't like that. I don't like sweaty athlete's foot. That's just not— that's what doesn't set me about that at all. But like, I would have thought a dog's paw, you know, it's a pad, it's the only place he sweats from. He walks around on wet ground all the time. I would have thought that would be perfect spots for— well, they are. I mean, when we get the nibbling and itchy toes and stuff, you know, yeast conditions of paws, they're common. So I would have thought that verruca would be more common. Interestingly, my kid got one a while ago, a verruca. I just think about it as an ingrown wart. That's all I could think of it. And I just saw it on the heel of her foot one day. So I thought, lovely, but she won't mind me messing around with the heel of her foot. So this is perfect. And I put a quick Google and I said, right, listen, what's the, what's the best, most natural way out of this? And there's a few different solutions. And one was to crush up a bit of garlic and put it on the on the actual verruca and put the plaster on and leave it on for a few hours. So I left it on, whatever, 3, 4 hours, took it off for bedtime. It's easier at nighttime because she's not moving around as much. I did that for 2 days and then tea tree oil. It said use it, anything antibacterial. So now it's a bit vulnerable. So pop a bit of tea, so 1 or 2 drops of tea tree oil, like straight on. And I actually put it on the plaster the first time, then I put it on the actual thing the second time. That was it. 2 days of 2 bouts of garlic. So for 2 or 3 hours, 2 bouts of an antibacterial, tea tree oil, really on the plaster, not heavy. And after, by day 4 or 5, the skin was coming off around the verruca. Like it was clearly negatively impacted. And I was like, oh my God, I'm doing it. I'm doing it. Like, you know, it's not often that non-vet practice stuff, when that can actually make a difference. The bloody thing is gone. It just started kind of coming off like in a, like almost like a lump around it.
So you put neat tea tree oil on so that actually what you're getting was a chemical peel from there.
Is that good? Would he kill the verruca? Anyway, he didn't like that at all. And she was going for a swim and came back and she's just got this dark pink patch on her heels. Like, it's gone! Yeah! So there you go.
So is your heel.
Yeah. Okay, don't do what Conor says, guys.
Ignore this, guys. Leave it to the medical professionals.
Yeah, yeah. It worked though. It bloody worked. Nobody told me not to do it. I blame you, Bren. I'm sure I probably asked you guys, what do I do? And you didn't answer me quick enough. So I was like, ah, let's put tea tree oil on. But, uh, so that worked. Okay, so it's not that we see too many verrucas on dogs' feet because I haven't heard of that much of it. Do you see many verrucas?
Is it a very common thing? No, the biggest thing is the yeast infections that we get, the Malassezia overgrowth, you know, the typical allergic feet. But actually, quite often it's contact sensitivity, and people get those two things confused. Um, so it can be as simple as cut grass that sets off the contact sensitivity. So the sap effectively causing an irritation, and then as soon as the foot is inflamed, the yeasts go into overgrowth, and it's actually the yeast then perpetuates the problem. So you get those horrible yeasty feet. I've seen people saying they love the smell of their dog's feet. I'm not quite so sure if they're that yeasty that you're—
Doritos. Everybody says that cheesy Doritos. I mean, everyone loves the smell of Doritos, but cheesy Doritos is not the right smell from your dog's feet.
I'm glad I don't eat those things.
Popcorn is the other description. I've got a lot of these comments on my Facebook page. I'll show you an image later on when we've gone through the top 4 or 5 issues. But yeah, the yeasty pads, I would have thought that, you know, you see dogs nibbling their feet all the time and it's a real classic symptom. And I would have said up until a few years ago that that's just a classic sign of allergies, you know. And whether you say it's a contact allergen, I would still say, yeah, but why is your dog reacting to grass? I mean, come on. Your dog should be able for that. Why would he be sensitive to that? So I often think that, I often see when I see dogs nibbling paws, you know, I used to always blame food. I blame the gut and say, okay, let's just see, how are you on lamb, dog? How are you on turkey? You know, fix the gut and do an exclusion diet, and often that issue will go away. So in my head, I kind of mentally parked it as a telltale symptom of allergies, in inverted commas, of food intolerances, an unhappy gut flora, which means unhappy skin flora. You know, whatever. So I didn't think any more about that, but then more and more I see yeast issues. And yeasty issues in pads are easily diagnosed, guys. If you're in doubt and your dog's nibbling his paws and you're on good food and you've done your exclusion diet, you can't do much more than that for the dog food-wise, you know. There's no magic food that's going to fix it. And people are looking for the right diet that'll sort it out, but at that stage it's something else. You can do these home tests, and there's a number of companies that do it. FecLab in the UK, and I'm sure there's a number of others, but for the price of— we sell the kits as well, but they're FecLab kits on, so we just buy them in from and put them on Dogs First. But if you're in the UK, you buy them from FecLab and they're £30, £40, and you can swab your dog's pad and you can send it back to them and they'll— the vet nurse will have a look under the microscope and there's a certain amount of yeast you're allowed to have in your pad because you're bumping into yeast all the time, very— it's a normal part of your skin and gut biome. But then there's like a traffic light effect, orange, that's quite a lot of yeast, and then red, oh, you've got a yeast a bloom of yeast, and that needs to be addressed 'cause it's maddeningly itchy. And so yeast loves warm, moist areas. So you're gonna get armpits, toes, vulva, ears. They're classic yeasty areas. By the time it starts popping up in your skin, you've probably ignored those symptoms for a while. So yeasty pads is a classic one. And so once you diagnose yeast, then you go about killing it. There's a load of yeasty products. I've got that Propithium product, which is great. It's effervescent tablets. You can bathe the feet regularly in it. It's really working. But there's a number of things you can try. Apple cider vinegar, if the pores aren't sore, you can try that because the yeast don't like that. A number, I mean, anti-yeast shampoos will do it, you know, dandruff.
Lusilin will also do yeast.
Yeah, yeah. So there's a number of ways you can tackle it.
I've got a question for you with regards to the effervescent tablets for the propythium. So I've had clients that have used it, but they, you know, They burn through the tablets because they mix up the solution and then they're throwing it away straight away and they're not necessarily dividing it up as a Yorkshireman truly would and making it only in a little paw-sized amount that goes in. They make up one tablet and then use it all in one go and that's gone and it's like, no.
Totally, I would not do that myself. I would do the same thing. I would be going for a small kind of paw-shaped glass and I'd be putting in a quarter So listen, the product is made by other people. It's under patents. You have to be careful how you market it. And I've got the distribution rights around the UK, but they still say, 'Dr. Conor, we didn't say break up the tablet.' And I'm like, 'Yeah, but I'm saying break up the tablet. It's fine.' They're used to dealing with horses and they say, 'Oh, one tablet into 2 liters of water.' And I'm thinking, 'That is unnecessary. I'm washing a paw here.' So I'm thinking a quarter of a tablet in a 500ml glass of water should be fine. So yes, listen, there is absolutely flexibility. When you dissolve that tablet, that tablet is just holding the yeast there. In place. You'll see propythium— pythium is just a little yeast that lives in the soil. It lives around all plants. It's a tiny little— but it's grainy. You can feel it in the water. You can see the little bits. In fact, that's a problem when you put it in the spray bottle and it blocks up the spray bottle. But the paw soaks is easy. So I would be putting in half a tablet to a 500ml bottle of water. That's what I'd be using, and that's a hefty amount of water. And I'd be dunking his paws in that 3 times a day, you know. So I'm not throwing that water out anywhere. I'm keeping it. And then after 24 hours, I'm chucking it away. To be honest, you'll probably use the same same soak in the morning, you know, those tablets are 5. I'm selling the tablets and I'm saying bloody 5 tablets for £24, you know what I mean? I'm not throwing them out too easy. So, uh, and I would hit the pause 2 or 3 times, but people want an instant solution with this. But you got to think about how Pithium works. It's a, it's micro, micro parasitical, so it's gonna, it takes time to find the fungus. And once it finds it, it starts eating it. And once it's eaten it, it sends out zoospores to find more fungi in the area. And then once it's all gone Pityum just falls off into the back into the soil where it belongs. But that process takes days. So people use Pityum for ear conditions. But like, if you've got a raging issue with an ear, you need a vet. You don't be waiting around for Pityum to wake up and start nibbling. You know, that takes a few days to sort it out. But anyway, back to the toes. That's what I would do to fix the toes. Although you can try over-the-counter remedies as well. But first, begin with a test. Find out what it is you're dealing with first, because if it's not yeast, then it's something else that you need. People waste their time buying products and they don't know what they're trying to kill. So a quick yeast swab will tell you the answer. Your vets can do it, you can do home test kits will do it. So the yeasty nibbly toes, but start with the gut first. But I often still think that, you know, if you're on high carb dry food and your dog's nibbling his paws, I'm thinking, okay, start with the gut first. You know, that gets rid of a lot of the white noise and then you're— and if it's still the issue, I'm moving on to yeast.
So I totally get where there's that pro-inflammatory issue going on in the gut, which then that inflammation of being the root of all evil then cause inflammation everywhere else. But there's also that element of the level of nutrition getting through, you know, getting the omega-3s through to the skin to give that barrier layer in the superficial corneum, which is the squames of skin at the very top, usually sit—
squames.
Yeah. So they usually sit within— so there's layers and layers. So they're the ones that as you rub, you know, eventually They puff off in house dust and everything else, but they sit in layers and layers, but they're sat usually within an oil layer. And if that oil layer thins, and this is what we see, you know, Westies was a classic research project where they saw that actually the allergic, the atopic Westies classically didn't produce enough omega-3s into that squamous layer to protect the skin. And create a barrier against the immune system reaching the outside. So it is really important that you get those layers right. And the vitamin E level is also really important. So actually, sometimes there's tweaks that need to be made. The vitamin B level we've talked about in the past for improving skin health and healing. All of these have really important roles, and it may be that your dog is missing some of these vital nutrients in the necessary requirements for that as an individual, and that's why they're super sensitive. And the dog that you've got right next door or in the same house isn't having the same problems because the level of nutrition is okay for their system and they're coping. But your problem dog isn't coping.
Yeah. So, you know, that reminds me of— that's a classic example. Remember the elbow calluses? Elbow calluses, that's some dogs get. I would say that seems to be largely a dry-fed dog phenomenon, but I say that online and then people say, this is a raw-fed dog, he's got elbow calluses. But not all dogs in the pen, guide dogs, would have these elbow calluses, only some of them. But I remember somebody said to me, like some natural type said to me back in the day, just rub a bit of seed oil on it, almond oil, because it's often a zinc deficiency. And so you can get these crusty paws, noses, and elbows from a zinc deficiency. It's common in dry-fed dogs because they get zinc oxide, which they can't absorb, so you get a zinc deficiency and a selenium deficiency and vitamin E, which all come from seed oils. And so you slather on this almond oil is what we use at the time. Oh, nut oil. Yeah, yeah.
Almonds are nuts.
Yeah, yeah, well, same thing. Small little hard things that nobody eats except for Seb Nick. I was gonna say.
The root of all evil, seed oils.
Yeah, that's okay. Topically. But so we would rub them on. I'm not messing. Like, you know, half the time it would work. I used to post on Facebook all the time going, hey, you've got elbow calluses, stick almond oil on it because you're putting in high dose of the best type of zinc topically. You've got ALA, omega-3 plant oil, and you've got a few other bits and pieces that are really beneficial and it really, really helps. So if it's a zinc deficiency, that would help. Would that be the same case when you see these paw balms that people make? They're always made on like a, like a shea butter or maybe a coconut oil. Do you reckon it's the same thing? It's adding in the nutrients straight to that barrier layer, which may be softening these.
Great product I use a lot at the moment is by— it's MP, it's a French company. Um, I don't know whether you've seen— they do a great nose and pore balm, um, and they are absolutely brilliant. Uh, one of my nurses had a, uh, a little Frenchie with a really, really crusty nose. You know, it's almost like pillars of squames building up on the nose and crusting. And she used this, she used lots of lanolin, she'd used lots of other natural remedies to try and reduce that. Wasn't really effective for that. We'd even use Bag Balm, which is a lanolin-based udder cream, you know, those sort of things. To help with this, coconut oils, all of that hadn't helped a bit. But the MP product, which has some of those nutrients in, she's used, and literally within a week it had gone from these tall pillars of crusts to a smooth, normal nose. That's awesome. So she was really taken with that, and we've used it for paws and noses for many dogs since because of that. You know, it's one of those, isn't it, when you see it personally it sticks as a—
oh, it's okay. That's it. It's hard to move away from a product that is like— and it might be the first one you try, but it's like, oh my God, that really works. But it's not like you've tried 10 paw balms. But hey, listen, let's give Ken's— or I keep calling him— why am I calling Nick Ken tonight?
Have you just been to see the Barbie movie? What's going on?
Yeah. Oh, I do need to see that. Have you seen that? Have you seen the Barbie? I think I'd like to watch it. So DermaDog, Nick's lovely wife Ellie runs DermaDog. And so you can check out dermadog.com. They've got a lovely paw balm there as well. So it's based on geranium and mango and manuka. Bloody hell, I'd spread that on toast. And a friend of mine actually runs Holistic Hound in Ireland, and Jo, who most people know, and she's came on here obviously, she's got the Snout and Paw Balm. And Snout and Paw Balm is what I have in the house. I've never actually needed to use it because his feet are always in great condition. I mean, he's got this little wet nose, he's got these soft feet. Yeah, the dog doesn't give me any complaints. I mean, 13 years, bar his back operation, you know, major drama. I think that was it for life. That was just— yeah, because I had my knee done at the same time and my wife was pregnant and I had to carry this dog out and squeeze the wee and poo out of him. It was pure drama. Oh my God. So, uh, but like nothing— so I have these products in my house, but it's, it's not like I'm an expert. I couldn't tell you what a good paw balm is. But that's what's interesting you say about the barrier function. That's interesting that like so many things are an actual mechanical issue like food intolerances. It's a mechanical issue in the gut membrane. And so when the word allergies is thrown around, it's not— it's such a throwaway word that doesn't do justice to what the issue is. Like it's not an allergy, it's not a genetic mishap that your dog's paws are wrecked to the point beyond like, you know, that just you're now vulnerable to to contact allergens. I want to know why my dog is reacting to the grass. I mean, grass, give me a break. Why is pollen popping up in your, in your, in your allergen test? You know, when we fix the gut, which is very simple with diet and fix that gut membrane and you test that dog again, environmental allergens, you know, allergens and pollen, that's all gone. It's not on the test anymore. So that's how you know it's not an allergy, which is a genetic reaction. You know, it's like an IgE boom. So that's interesting here. Bren, what is the story with interdigital cysts? I had a client here who is listening tonight and her poor dog is suffering badly. She's been through a number of vets. Her dog has interdigital cysts. We've tried absolutely everything. I threw a few ideas at it and said, okay, listen, let's see how the gut is and make sure it's not a gut-skin-flora thing. And maybe the skin flora is in the shit in the paws, but nothing is working. What is an interdigital cyst? Where do they come from? How do you fix them?
So first things that I'd want to know, breed, because there is a predisposition and certain breeds will have different conditions to do with the paws. Okay, so, but I would think before I go anywhere, then the first thing, you know, so if it was a classic Labrador, then I would be saying, so these cysts are literally, they sit usually in this area, they cause swelling between the knuckles of the foot. They don't necessarily affect all feet, but usually the front feet are the most pronounced as having a problem. And 9 times out of 10, your vet will first ask, have they been in the long grass? Is there a grass seed? They will make an assumption that some foreign body has gone in, and they'll probably put them on antibiotics, put them on anti-inflammatories, try and even cut them open and dig around and try and take material out. Okay, now don't get me wrong, occasionally if there's a single one and not multiple, and yeah, there is a definitive tract, then of course we're going to look closely. And if we see a grass seed, we will pull them out. I have done that. I have seen grass seeds. I have seen them go all the way through and actually end up coming out the other side because they've got that ratchet motion of, yeah, you know, the, the little, um, cogs going into the thing that drives that seed forward. But they are certainly not necessarily the only thing that will cause an interdigital cyst. So of course, check for foreign material, bathe them, poultice them with, you know, you can use Epsom salts and things like that to draw material out, um, soften the skin up, all of those side of things.
Yeah. So if it was a single cyst, yeah, it was a single cyst, all that would make sense. But when you've got multiple cysts, this is a 2-year-old black lab, in answer to your question. 2-year-old black lab, Sonia.
Yeah. So the next, the next thing that I always look at, as you've just said, absolutely, I would stick with that. I would look at the diet stuff, but I would look at allergy and nutrition and just check on what's going on with that. Now, That probably clears up a lot of my cases. I wouldn't say 100% by any means, but, you know, I would say 80% of cases that are not a foreign body would generally clear if we're reducing inflammation and looking. Now, there are some things with blood labs that you've got to watch. Is there a history when they were young that they may have had demodex, so an infection around the hair follicles from a cigar-shaped mite that sits there. So if their immune system was compromised through vaccination, through just not having great nutrition in the start of life, actually genetics, especially with Labradors, some of them are immunocompromised. I don't know if you've ever heard of head gland disease where they get this really severe acne that almost creates just a head of infection in the skin in young puppies, and it literally is a horrendous mess of pus and goo. But that's just one of the Labrador traits where if their immune system malfunctions, they get it wrong. And this is where all of those minerals that you were talking about earlier with the zinc, selenium, etc., are so important for the immune system. The vitamin E, the omega-3s. Getting that right can make a big difference. So dietary-wise, looking at allergy as a possibility, and that could be an environmental allergy, it doesn't need to be food. Food is one of the smaller elements of true allergy. Then that can cause, in my experience, interdigital cysts. However, as I was saying about Demodex and sometimes the hair follicles, and definitely we see this in the bulldog breeds and the bull terrier breeds, is that hair follicles are growing in the wrong direction. So they end up growing inwards and causing a nidus, not necessarily of infection primarily, but actually the white cells start to attack the hair because it's in the wrong place growing inwards, and that's what causes the pus. So it can even be sterile pus until it's opened. Once it then opens to the surface, bacteria can get in from the earth, from the ground. You know, they, they start to thrive in that environment. So you're back to poulticing, keeping them clean, using your leucillins, using Luka, you know, as a probiotic. You know, some of these can be controlled I have still had good effects controlling diet and root cause of inflammation and getting the nutrition right as far as the supplements. So helping with the immune system, that could be things like the using dimethylglycine, considering some of the colostrums that you can get out there. You know, the mushroom mixes that can help with the immune system. All of those can be really helpful for interdigital cysts. But I would again say there is no one-fits-all solution.
Yeah.
And you've got to look at the definitive why is that dog reacting. I've had some great little Schnauzers that have resolved by just resolving the inflammation and allergy. And not having to worry about it. So I think, yeah, I think, you know, different breeds predisposed to more different ones.
2 years old is very young for this to be happening, and it's like, something's up here.
It's the immune system malfunction for a young dog like that. Immune system malfunction. And double-check history. Has there been Demodex in a problem in the past? Yeah, and you can actually do hair plucks on the hairs between the skin, look at them under the microscope. I mean, it won't be long before Pheflago is doing that as well for people. Um, yeah, anything that's under the microscope they love to do. Uh, so, you know, literally you can see these cigar shapes all over the place if they've got too many.
Um, yeah, uh, I imagine it's just like a really sticky lump of chewing gum and then you just pull them all out because you just got a reef of little— have you seen them? I mean, you have seen them, I'm talking more to the here. Have you seen Demodex? It's like, it's so gross. It's a long cigar-shaped thing. It goes down into your hair follicle, just leaves it. It's so disgusting. How did that thing— I mean, it's all over us all the time. And people, you know, I, I often use this example as for parasites. And, and, you know, when people worry about Demodex, and it's like, listen, that's all over us all the time. It's everywhere, you know. And it's not a big deal. A healthy skin flora will keep that in check, as will you know, a yeast infection and all sorts of things. The healthy skin flora is in charge. But when you see a Demodex infection, that is not normally in a well-pampered dog wandering around your house. It's normally a dog in a rescue and she's up against the wall and she's completely shut down, you know, and she's been fed crap.
Can I just say Demodex are normal. You have them in your eyebrows, okay?
Yeah.
Your child will have them in their eyebrows and their hair, okay? It's about numbers. And if your immune system isn't keeping the numbers in check, okay, and you get too many and the inflammation is escaping, that's when— that's a signal not that the Demodex is overgrowing, but the immune system is failing. Okay.
And that's how does an immune system control— how does an immune system control something as large as a mite on your skin?
So that's a really interesting thing, isn't it? It's just about— it seems to be that the eosinophils, so the certain types of cells which actually are really useful against parasites, actually increase in numbers and density in reaction to the type of antigens that those mites are giving off. And they just make it an impossible environment for those mites to feed successfully and thrive in that environment.
Oh, I always thought it was the skin flora. I often thought it was like your commensal microbes. That were making the environment inhospitable to her. You know, that's— I thought like they would keep it in check because of the compounds they released to keep everything in check. But if your gut flora goes to hell because you're crazy stressed and you've been attacked and you've been separated from your family, you're living in a pound, you aren't sleeping, you know, gut flora goes to hell, skin flora goes to hell, skin flora goes to hell, Demodex goes, oh, look at this arid landscape of Brady's head, and it just comes down. And next thing you know, you've, you've got major—
it's usually overgrowing with something wrong. And actually, I think as soon as that inflammation is taken away from the eosinophils and moved maybe towards the neutrophils and the normal inflammation and infection that deals with yeast and bacteria, the mites can cope with that because it's not putting them off so much. So they will, they will enjoy that environment.
Yeah, oh damn, I've told that story a thousand times now. I'm gonna have to I kind of have to eat poo.
Not all, not all.
Not everyone remembers those details.
Everybody has a view on it.
Are you sure it's the immune system, Ben? I'm not quick to question you.
Well, I would say as soon as you—
As a younger buck.
Well, if you— yeah, thanks for that. Okay.
Yeah.
If you improve the immune system and you use all of the supplements that we would associate with that, you get often reduction in those numbers. So that's not necessarily just skin flora, but I mean, anything that will improve the immune system will reduce those numbers. Now, I've seen horrendous products in my lifetime because I've been around for so long. You know, organophosphates given as, you know, bathing those feet. And, you know, they even initially brought out something called Aludex, which you could bathe on, and nurses were given the task of bathing these dogs in this product. And then they suddenly realized how toxic it was to humans as well. And all of a sudden, every single PPE thing came out that you had to wear goggles, you had to wear a full face mask, you had to wear gloves, you had to wear a full apron. And everything had to be disposed of safely in hazardous waste in order to deal with that. And then all of a sudden the water companies caught on and you weren't allowed to wash this stuff down the drain. So when you bath dogs, you had to collect the stuff and dispose of it in hazardous waste. And then people started dispensing this stuff for people to use at home because out of sight, out of mind. The customers, as long as they were okay and didn't have any young children, they could start washing their dog with this. I mean, you look back on it and you think, how on earth was anybody allowed to produce that product? But yeah, we still have them sprinkling the same sort of stuff on salmon that we eat to kill the lice, you know, in the lochs of Scotland.
Yeah, anyway, let me share this tab. Can you make this image appear?
But the end of that story to do with the Aludex is that it massively affected the immune system. So as soon as you stopped the washes, what happened? Demodex just came flooding back. It would just be absolute massacre all over again. It's really hard to manage it. Yeah. Yeah, like you were.
Here's a couple of paw images of sufferers here that sent in pictures. Check out that paw there. There's a classic.
Just going to hide our camera so that you guys can see. So we're still talking.
Okay. Classic kind of classic sore red paw there, you know, and my initial reaction straightaway to Jenny was who's a raw feeder was that, you know, seasonal allergies was the thing that pops up more during the summer. You know, very inflamed animals suffer seasonal allergies more, studies show. So if you've got some sort of metabolic disease and diabetes, obesity, if you're heavily stressed coming into summer, you'll suffer your seasonal allergies worse. So the fact that your dog is suffering seasonal allergies in the summer when most dogs don't isn't really a diagnosis. That just tells me that your dog's got something up, that he's suffering the seasonal allergies. Let's have a look. But that's what her paws look like. Bren, what's your first— where does your mind go straight away?
Other things to think about. So we've talked about some great things, and I would try all of the things that we've talked about Definitely contact sensitivities, you know, this time of year, slightly earlier in the year, so May time, just watch out for some of those weeds in the walkways. So we've, we put a post on about the giant hogweed, okay, and the fact of how caustic the sap is from that and how it, if it's left on your dog even through the fur, it can cause blistering and raised stuff. So that's something separate, you know, watch out for caustic chemicals. If you've got a new build going on and there's cement dust and plaster dust and things like that, that they can cause irritation. But I'd also say for those dogs that it almost seems to vary depending on the time of the month and whether there's other dogs around and what's going on. For females, if it varies with their season, you know, that hormonal influence on suppression of their immune system and then effectively the highlighting of inflammation can be a factor that you've got to, to come back to. So including if they're neutered, for those that have neutered dogs as well, where there's no— if there's an excess of LH, you can get these flares of inflammation Luteinizing hormone.
Localized in the feet?
Well, it's going to cause inflammation, and then it's about where are the histamine-releasing cells. So if you've got an allergy, so let's say you suffer from hay fever. Now, some people will suffer with hay fever by getting really inflamed sinuses, and they'll feel headaches and flush to the face and all of that side of things. Some people will get really runny eyes and really itchy eyes. Others will get runny noses and sneezing. Others will get asthma and actually wheezing chest. That's not because they're different diseases. That's because they're the same diseases, but the inflammation is being brought out in where the histamine is highest. And in those cases, those localized areas will be where the histamine is the max. So you can have allergic dogs which will have terrible ears and nothing else. You can have allergic dogs which will have terrible paws and nothing else. You can have allergic dogs which will have terrible chins and nothing else. You can have allergic dogs that have every area of skin affected, you know, and that's just because they've got massive amounts of—
yeah, often, often the inflammation will come out to the weakest point. It's like water finding a level. It's like whatever your kink is, that's what's going to bother you, if it's your ears or your eyes. So yeah, people often think that, you know, you've got a gut flora dysbiosis, so, um, your problem in the gut, and they go, but his poos are fine. It's like, it doesn't always happen like that, you know. The symptoms you see on the skin can be because of a gut flora issue, but his poos might be okay. So in that, in relation to that image specifically, my, my mind goes straight to yeast. I go, have you 'Pre-yeast.' And the initial answer is always, 'But my vet doesn't think it's yeast.' It's like, well, thinking and actually knowing— once you— this isn't our first year, this is our second or third year going through this. So it's like, at this point, you need to rule things out completely. So just wondering if it's yeast or not for the sake of £30, £40, or if the vet will do it for nothing because you've already paid for the consult, you know, that'd be great if they would just have a look under the microscope and tell me it's not yeast or Demodex or something, you know. You've got to rule them out. So you, you know, you've got to name the fear before you can tackle it. Yeah, so not knowing is not going to help you. I'm just assuming. So where do you go with that, Brent? With that raw-fed dog, we don't think it's yeast. What's next for that paw?
So, you know, look at some of the balms. They, they are worth it, you know, the Honey Derm. So the MP products are all honey-based, uh, many of them. So you can use something to soothe that foot But, you know, definitely if you've looked at the nutrition, you've looked at, you know, because even with saying raw fed, not all raw is equal. I would absolutely relook at which raw are you feeding, you know, and if you're feeding just a general, you know, I don't want to name a brand, but one that, you know, if you go and collect it, it's in an ambient bag and they're handing it across the counter. I would be just querying, you know, some of that. If it's something that is at least 50% cheaper than its nearest competitor, you've got to question, you know, well, ask, have you got the nutritionals on that? Do you know what you're truly giving out here, or have you just put it in a formulator and you're hoping? You know, what is the form of your the meat that you're giving me, is it, you know, from a battery farm? Is it leftovers? Is it truly, you know, something that we have some knowledge of where it's come from? Or is it just out of an abattoir because they were selling it cheap to you? And those— so that is also then comes into my inquisition into what they're feeding, because so often I do find there are companies that don't stick to keeping allergens out of certain areas when they're making certain foods. So you will get cross-contamination, you will get other things.
It's hard to— you can't really assume that it's just plain turkey you're feeding when it's such a sensitive system. One little molecule of chicken because they didn't clean down the machines properly, you know, they're hard machines to clean out.
Or even what they've fed the chickens on, you know, if it's maybe, yeah, you know, if it's brain, brain, and that side of things. I've had feeding, you know, the old digestive biscuit from the parents being snuck to the dog, you know, and you've been working away for months to cut out allergy and then that's what's sparking them off.
Or they give her, or they can be given a probiotic with a bit of beef tallow in it or pork liver. And, you know, it can come in with the supplements. It's so insidious sometimes. But I think if that raw feeder, if this was happening every, every summer, you know, every 3 or 4 months and her head is wrecked with it and she's tried every natural protocol, I'm kind of stumped. I'm like, yeah, what do you tell this person now? I would definitely—
yeah, seasonal allergies.
But I don't—
yeah, you've got to look at seasonal and then the secondary consequences to that, and that's when your balms come in.
Yeah, balms and a nice sort of— yeah, some sort of nice antihistamine poultice, like a Zeonite kind of poultice, one of those little kind of fellas. Uh, yeah, look, uh, there's one more, Paul, because, uh, Bren, I actually have to toddle on here later.
Oh yeah.
Okay.
Oh wow, I haven't realized.
I know it's 5 to One more paw, and we don't have time, we'll skip Patreon for tonight. We'll just do it all on Facebook. One more paw. Check out this girl or boy. Constant paw issues since a young dog. Redness and irritation between toes and pads, cysts, hyperkeratosis, keratinosis, and it's great, it's getting worse. Constantly on and off antibiotics, comes infected, doesn't want to walk, back into the antibiotic cycle. So there you go. There's a top issue, you know, if you were to look at those paws, and you hear the antibiotics constantly being used, you know, that is napalm for the good guys. And so depending on what's causing that, again, I want that swabbed. I want to know that's not yeast related, yeast causing a hot, fetid kind of environment, and then baddies can set in. But, you know, the dog taking antibiotics all the time to curb infections, I mean, that's going to increase whatever the issue that is. Are you looking at that thinking that's just an interdigital cyst, Bren?
It's got to be one of the differentials. I mean, what breed was that again, did you say? Did they say?
No, no, no.
Okay, so no, you know, just by the fluffy coat and everything else, you know, you've got to think about what's going on with that. I Honestly, interdigital cysts, well, looks like there's a pyoderma been going on in that foot, so you may have secondary infection, but so much can be done with topical treatment and not abusing antibiotics. I see so many of these cases where they've had long-term antibiotics, which is just a nightmare for us and the general health and one health population, but actually they could have just been treating with topical treatments that don't require antibiotics. So you can use Lusilans, you can use all of those and then put a probiotic on afterwards so that you're not leaving a desert to be populated by the nasties again. But pulsing, if there's anything deep in there that you're seeing follicles that are infected, you know, pulsing to draw that pus out is really useful.
Yeah, and like Epsom salts, are you thinking? Are you thinking a clay? What are you thinking?
Epsom salts, definitely. Clays— I've had some good results with clay packs going on these. So you can just use the edible green clays just in case your dog decides to lick it off, and you're not worried. Do you wrap it up? Yeah, I generally do. But 9 times out of 10, dogs will try and take those bandages off.
Yeah.
So you've got to think about if they get the bandage off, what are they going to be exposed to underneath?
Yeah.
And I don't really like the big hoods, especially when you've got skin inflammation, because all that you end up with when you put a hood on them is really grotty ears. So, um, yeah, I tend to try and avoid that if I can. So, you know, if you've got a clay pack and you want to keep it in place Of course, you can put a dressing over it, a sock over it even, just to keep it in place.
Yeah, Duddy would take that off in a heartbeat. He wouldn't tolerate that. He will drive himself insane. I tried to put booties on him one time, massive mistake. And, you know, but if a dog's not used to booties, it's a very strange thing. I can only, you know, you can't blame them. But yeah, some dogs won't tolerate that sock and they'll just get to nibbling. But if you supervise them, you might get an hour or two out of the sock. I'm sure that might be enough to get the job done.
There's some great tips in the comments, guys, over on Facebook with regards to mixing green clays with charcoal, creating packs that you can put onto the feet and things like that. So yeah, have a look through. It's a great community out there. I do appreciate all of you that are helping out and, and putting comments on of what you're using. We really do appreciate it. I think everybody finds those really useful. Thank you.
Cool. Bren, I actually found a study here, the role of the skin microbiota and intestinal microbiome in rosacea. Rosacea. R-O-S-A-C-E-A. Is that much as a reticulation? Yeah, rosacea. And, uh, but they go on and do a whole few paragraphs on Demodex and the role of the skin flora there. And I, I'm, I'm hopefully— this could possibly be, Bren, the very first time I've ever been right. So I am going to now research like an absolute madman, and I'm going to try and see if I can find any evidence that, that's— it is skin flora related. Um, so yeah, there's, there's me. Hi everybody, we're back.
We haven't frozen. So, um, I reckon it's Nick. Yeah, every time Nick's on, something goes wrong.
Nick and his shitty Wi-Fi. No heating, no Wi-Fi. He's one of those preppers. He's just living in the woods.
Yeah, yeah, he's trying to keep his costs down.
Yeah, he is. Yeah. Right, Ben, I gotta skedaddle. Thank you very much, that was enlightening. Yeah, great.
Next week we've got a vet talking about ticks.
Yeah, Victoria Unt from Switzerland, who is a big natural vet over there, and she has some cool slides to show us about tick treatments and how long before they kill the tick, but actually how long it takes before the tick starts to feed, and then it kind of calls into question the need for the the tick treatments. And so she's got some killer slides, and this is one very learned vet, and so we're going to learn lots next week. So that should be cool. I'm looking forward to that.
Great, I'm looking forward to that too. And just a little shout out for those people that love Rita Hogan as a herbalist, canine herbalist, and she's bringing a book out beginning of next year. She's going to come and talk to us at the beginning of September. So if you have an interest in canine herbalism and you want to know a little bit more about what that means for your pet, please join us on the 3rd of September and just put a diary note in so that you don't miss that one. That'll be great.
Yeah, yeah, it's a reader's class. Here's a question from the Dog Breeder Channel. Hello to you both from Paula at the Natural Breeding Breeder Connection. We love you, Paula, great guest. Can we slather on topical lidocaine on the foot to remove the glass ourselves?
So you can get hold of various topicals. Now, certainly in different countries, you won't be able to get it over in the UK very readily, but some people will use, you know, the things that we use for children so that they don't feel the needle going in, and you can effectively get that topical lidocaine on there. We use them in practice, so we will sometimes even freeze the area so that they don't feel it as we're going through if we want to keep them conscious, if owners really don't want to go down that route. But it can be those topical lidocaines. You've got to apply them in a fairly thick cream and then wrap them in cling film so that they effectively diffuse into the skin and pad. So it's all about how well they'll go in. Some of the liquid versions sting like crazy. So, you know, putting that into a cut isn't necessarily always the easiest thing to do.
Surely, like, I often think about lidocaine, like if I was a boxer or I was in some sort of fight that was coming up, you know, you just slather your face with lidocaine and you'd be good to go. You know, you just wouldn't feel anything.
Only works on the surface, Conor. In fact, I'll tell you what, should we do this? Try it. I'll let you slap a load of lidocaine gel on your jaw.
Oh, it still hurts, Brent. It still hurts, Brent.
And me and Nick will line up and we'll punch you and see whether it works. Okay.
Yeah.
That'll be one of our things whilst we're in America.
Very good. Yeah.
Actually, we'll find a cowboy to give you an uppercut and see what happens.
Yeah. And kick in the ass. Just put that on your butt and then take a kick. But okay.
Yeah.
Cool. Lidocaine. Anything ending in -caine, you know it's going to be effective. Novocaine. Novocaine. What's novocaine? Just before I go, just because it's in my head. I'm thinking of cocaine, novocaine, lidocaine. What's novocaine?
Yeah, so they're just different chemicals that they add to the beginning of the— so the lidocaines, there's mepivacaines, there's other things. They just change how long that agent lasts in that area that you inject them. So they can stay around the nerve numbing it for longer if they've got a molecule on the front of it.
Cool, makes sense. Look, lovely. All right, Brandon, that's great. We will talk to you next week and learn a bit more about ticks. And thanks everyone for joining us. As again, we're on patreon.com/rawpetmedics, uh, and we appreciate everyone on there. Sorry we didn't get to do our extra bit on the side tonight, but, uh, uh, that's just great.
We gave everybody a bit, bit more information. I think that was great. Wonderful. Absolutely great to see you all. Look forward to seeing you next week. Take care, guys.
Take it easy. Bye-bye, guys.
