41. Changes in Publishing Veterinary Studies with Dr. Lisa A. Fortier, Editor in Chief of the Journal of the American Veterinary Medical Association

Dr. Ann Hohenhaus interviews Lisa A. Fortier, DVM, PhD, DACVS, a distinguished clinician, researcher, educator, and equine surgeon. Dr. Fortier is currently the Editor in Chief of the Journal of the American Veterinary Medical Association (JAVMA) and the American Journal of Veterinary Research (AJVR). Tune in as they discuss:

• Why Dr. Fortier became a horse specialist
• The fake journal problem causing researchers to lose their work, data, and writing
• Dr. Fortier's goals for influencing veterinary medicine through her work as Editor in Chief
• The role of peer-reviewed tutorial videos in how veterinarians learn
• Improving customer service at journals to better serve authors and readers
• What are good sources of online pet health information?
• Balancing the amount of articles between species
• The impact of podcasts and social media in reaching people
• Being happy with what you're doing

Also on this month's show: 

• Viral trending animal story about the orangutan who healed his wound with medicinal plants
• Animal news, including the longevity of different cat breeds
• Pet Health Listener Q&A 

Do you have a pet question for Dr. Hohenhaus? Email askthevet@amcny.org to have your question answered on Ask the Vet's Listener Q&A.

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Transcript

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We want to remind our listeners that this program is for informational and educational purposes only, and not intended to substitute for professional veterinary medical advice, diagnosis and treatment. The Animal Medical Center does not recommend or endorse any products or services advertised by Sirius XM. Welcome to Ask the Vet with Dr. Ann Hohenhaus. This is the place to talk about your pets and get advice for the top veterinarian from the Animal Medical Center in NYC. Hear from the leading authorities on animals and ask your questions. Now here's your host, doctor and hello and house. Hello everyone and welcome to Ask the Vet, a podcast for people who love their pets and want the latest in pet health and animal news. I'm your host, I'm Dr. Ann Hohenhaus. I'm a senior veterinarian here at the Schwarzman Animal Medical Center, and I also serve as a director of pet health information for nearly 150 years, the Journal of the American Veterinary Medical Association, or JAVMA as those of us in the industry call it, has been a cornerstone of veterinary scholarship, offering peer reviewed critical insights, ground breaking research, and significant advancements in animal health. So today, as my special guest, I have Doctor Lisa Fortier, who serves as JAVMA’s editor in chief, and she took over that role in 2021. Under her visionary leadership, the journal is undergoing a remarkable transformation while continuing to uphold its esteemed legacy. And I really look forward to our conversation later in the show. While we're explore Doctor Fortier's innovative editorial strategy is her vision for the future of visionary publications and the impact these changes are having on veterinary medicine today. The Schwarzman Animal Medical Center is the only level one veterinary trauma center in New York City, and we've been doing that for 114 years of being the very best place for your pet. If you're looking advice on maintaining your pet's health. I'm here to help. Just send me your questions by email. My email is really easy it's askthevet@amcny.org and if you send an email with your question, I'll answer it on next month's after that program. If you don't have a pen and pencil, I'll give it again later on in the show. But just to remind you, it's askthevet@amcny.org. And now it's time for our trending animal of the month. It's time for the internet's most talked about animal. It appears that humans are not the only ones who recognize the medicinal properties of plants. In June 2022, researchers at the small project in Medan, Indonesia, observed Rakus an adult male orangutan, use a medicinal plant to treat an open wound. Rakus was seen chewing out for pruning leaves, which are known to humans for their medicinal properties, including pain relief, inflammation reduction, and antibacterial and antifungal qualities. Rakus gathered the chewed plant material and applied it directly to the open wound on his cheek, which healed a few days later. While animals have been observed self-medicating in the past, Rakus behavior is the first known instance of an animal treating an external wound with a medicinal plant. Now, it's unclear whether Rakus invented this treatment himself, or whether he learned the treatment from other orangutans living outside the park. Irregardless, it's thanks to the long term observations made by researchers that allowed us a glimpse of this rare behavior in one of our closest relatives, which may provide a glimpse into how the use of medicine first evolved in humans. Now, it's my great honor to welcome Doctor Lisa Fortier. She's a distinguished clinician, researcher, and educator with a career spanning more than three decades. Doctor Fortier holds the esteemed physician of the James Law Professor of Surgery at Cornell University's College of Veterinary Medicine, where she specializes in equine orthopedic surgery. Over the past 30 years, she's garnered an international reputation for her significant contributions to equine joint disease treatment, cartilage biology, and regenerative medicine. And she's perhaps best known for her pioneering use of biologics such as platelet rich plasma, bone marrow concentrate, and stem cells in horses and humans. In June 2021, Dr. Fortier, was named the editor in chief of the AVM journals, which includes both the American Journal of Medicine and also the American Journal of Veterinary Research. These are two of the most long running and respected publications in veterinary medicine today. So in our conversation today, we're going to talk about doctor 48 insights as editor in chief and explore her vision for the journals and their impact on veterinary medicine. So doctor 48, thank you so much for joining us today on Ask the Vet. Today is a first because I don't believe that we have had a horse veterinarian, let alone an equine surgeon on this show before. We kind of lean heavily towards the dog and cat arena. so this is this is really fun to have someone outside of our normal group on today. Yeah. And thank you for having me. It's really a great pleasure to represent the AVMA and Cornell and the equine industry. And I've been to your AMC a few times. It is really a remarkable institution. So well done. Well, it's really remarkable today because we've got our friends, the contractors and the construction people here. And so it's quite an experience for those people who haven't been at AMC lately, working in an active construction zone for the last, I don't know, two years, I think. but let's not talk about AMC. Let's talk about horses. So I am not a horse person at all, so I don't have any idea what would inspire you to become a horse specialist. So can you talk about how you got to equine orthopedic surgery? A great question, and I actually didn't even think I wanted to be a veterinarian. I went to undergraduate thinking I wanted to be a radio sports broadcaster. I loved listening to the radio and and a really good broadcaster could make you feel like you were there watching the baseball game. But when I was taking some of these broadcasting classes I was really drawn to, especially P Chem That might sound a little weird, but I loved I loved chemistry, so I thought, well, what am I going to do with this? And I grew up riding horses and with animals. So I thought, well, I go to vet school and while I was in veterinary school, I was fascinated with the multiple dimensions of our career. We really have a an amazing profession. and I really didn't know what I wanted to do. Anesthesia, emergency. It was all really cool to me, but then I smelled sorry, dog diarrhea. And I was like, okay, I can't do small animals. That's out. And I'm deathly afraid of mean cats in a cage and birds for some bizarre reason. So I thought, well, I'll go into large animal. And I loved even on the large animal side, I really loved anesthesia and medicine. And I said to Wayne McGrath, who's one of the most famous equine surgeons in the world. I said to him, like, I can't decide between medicine and surgery. And he said, you know, Lisa, there's always medicine with surgery. And that was that. So two things. First of all, I grew up riding around in the vet truck with my dad, listening to baseball on the radio. So there is nothing better in my mind than baseball on the radio. And I don't know what persuasion you are for baseball, but the Yankees longtime radio announcer has recently retired, and it's not quite the same without John Sterling and his crazy calls for various plays and home runs for the Yankees. It just really isn't the same on the radio anymore, I agree. And then the other thing is the pick'em. If I could have a do over in college, it would mostly be more music theory, more art history, but it would be pick'em. I want that challenge of Pick'em. I think it would be really fun. So then, oh, okay. It's easy to see then how you got to horses because dogs and cats weren't your thing. You liked horses. and unlike me, you weren't afraid of horses, so it was a good fit. But then how does that morph into being an editor in chief of not one, but actually two journals at the same time? Yeah. you know, open doors, right? People making offers and me thinking, oh, why not? the first one was when I was a resident, John Pasco, who also is an equine surgeon, and he was editor in chief to veterinary surgery for a long time. And he asked me if I wanted to be a reviewer and then taught me how to be a reviewer. You know, it's one thing to say I can, but really taught me how to devise a constructive review to help the authors make their manuscript better. And then he taught me how to be an associate editor. So I already had this joy of helping people make their manuscripts better and clearer for not just us as veterinarians, but our and patients, our end user, the actual patient themselves. And then I was very proudly the first woman and veterinarian, who was president of the International Cartilage Repair Society. That was primarily human orthopedic surgeons. And while I was president of the society, we launched our first paper journal. And that's important for the sustainability of many societies. So we launched the paper journal. And then decades later, they came back and asked me if I wanted to start their first open access journal. And that was really fun because I got to devise it from the bottom up. What type of manuscript? I form my own associate editor board, everything I got to create on my own. and then about the same time, this was just in the middle of Covid when I was doing that, the AVMA I think because of, oh, I know what happened. I'm remembering this now. So Elsevier, who was the one who we were starting this new open access journal for the society. They asked me to update my LinkedIn profile because there's so many fake journals out there. They were like, a lot of people need to know who you are as an editor, so update your LinkedIn profile. So I did, and I wrote that I'm editor in chief of this new journal. And then the AVMA found me and asked me to apply. And so I went to my dean. And I love being at Cornell. I'm still at Cornell. And it's I still have a fabulous career there. And I went to my dean and said, what do you think about this? And he said, absolutely, I think it's the right job for you. And then he proceeded, Lauren Warnock, who's a really fabulous man. He proceeded to call a few of the leaders at the Aviva and said, oh, you should really look seriously at her. If she and I thought, well, I wonder if he's trying to get rid of me like, why was he so aggressive? Were pursuing Dan and helping them, pursue me. So so that's how it ended up. And I absolutely have loved every minute of it. It's been a great transition. So I think I get, like, electronically stalked by these fake journals that you're talking about. And so how can a journal be fake? can you talk about that a little bit? It's shocking. And, I, I wrote an editorial sometime last year. I think it was about how, as an author, can you find out if it's a fake journal and there are some sites that you can go to? but people look for quick turnaround. Yeah. As you said, you get stalked and you're like, oh, that looks good. They're inviting me to write a manuscript to them. So it's a little flattering. And you get in there and you start submitting it and they have very low threshold for how how you have to format it. So it's a low barrier as an author to submit to these journals. And you have to pay to submit. It's not just pay to publish most reputable journals. If they do require money, like it's an open access, they don't actually charge you until it's published, not submitted, and then it disappears into the ether. But most of the time, the really unfortunate side is that you, as an author, have signed over the copyright to them, so you can't resubmit it. I tried to help a couple authors who who fell into this trap, and I couldn't because they had a copy of their copyright. I think I must get an email every single day from some journal. Dear doctor, and we think that you would like to submit an article to you. And then sometimes they're ridiculous journals that I don't even know enough to write up a sentence for. You know, like it'd be a horse journal soliciting me to write an article for which I have no credentials whatsoever. So it's it's and you're right, they're very flattering emails. They say, oh, we, we read your other works and we think you'd be perfect for our journal. So these these journals don't exist. They don't publish anything. And then these poor authors have lost their work, their data and their writing and it never gets published. Yeah. The only thing they could do from there is to put it on a preprint server. You know, at least the information is out there for other people to learn from. But it's it's it's, it's it's so it's so crazy how many people are out there stalking you, wanting you to submit things. So now that you're the editor in chief and you have a couple of years under your belt, what are your goals for influencing veteran medicine through your work as as editor in chief of AVMA journals? Great question. to try and keep up with how we learn as veterinarians. One of the biggest pushes we have right now, our technical tutorial videos. So rather than you writing in a manuscript how to do a procedure, these manuscripts are peer reviewed. So it's not like a video that you might find on YouTube. These are peer reviewed by your peers. They have a DOI so you can find them on PubMed, Google Scholar, all of those things. And then you narrate over top of it. So, you know, for me it might be how to put on a bandage cast on a horse, for example, something you might not have seen as a student or in your first several years of being a veterinarian or mid-career. Right. What if I decided to go back and do dogs and cats and orthopedics? I mean, I wouldn't because I'm not bored in that. But mid-career, somebody might decide to broaden their horizons and become more of a general veterinarian. So how do you do these things rather than reading in a textbook? How do you put on a bandage cast? Now you can see the video and the whole thing is described and narrated and referenced, and it has all the same disclaimers, authorship. so I really think that's the future of rather than I mean, there's the research articles that you really have to read through, but but learning by video, which is and and you can read it as well. It's, it's transcribed by artificial intelligence. So now you can hit on all the different ways that people learn visual audio by reading. So because we're all different learners and we we actually have taken this to the next level of a supplemental issue. We have a supplemental issue in the planning that is all technical tutorial videos, and it's on small animal rehabilitation. So I like that because actually, even as a late career veterinarian, I sometimes like to see how someone else does something because there there's never a single way to do something. And so watching someone else's video or I go to someone else's oncology lecture and people say, why are you here? You already know this. And actually I don't always know everything. Or they interpret something different than I do. So I think that being able to see it is good for veterinarians at all stages of their career, to tell you the truth. Well, great, maybe we'll maybe we'll get a bunch of submissions from your fabulous AMC then. Yeah, you. So, we're really busy right now, just like all veterinarians. And although I think that the economics people at and the JAVMA Journal published and said, oh, the numbers are trending back down to pre-pandemic levels, no one in New York City has read that because we are not trending back to pre-pandemic levels of veterinary visits right now. It's absolutely insane. so clearly, one of the things that you've done to transform JAVMA is to add these video publications, because then it makes it accessible to more people, accessible to different learners. what key changes besides the videos have you started in your tenure as the editor in chief? Yeah, thank you for that. That's a really great question. We I worked really hard on the culture of team. and just saying, okay, what is our mission and vision? We brought the whole division in and said, really what we want to do is become customer service oriented. And who are our customers? Our customers are the authors and the readers. And how can we help them? From I called the Alpha to the Omega from submission all the way through to publication. for example, I just got a plea from a resident today that had submitted their manuscript to somewhere else, hadn't heard anything back in ten weeks, reached out to that journal, and the journal said, sorry, we haven't even found an editor for you yet. She needs that accepted within six weeks. So I got my team together. I'm like, can we find a reviewer who will turn this around in two days for this individual? And I think, I think we'll get it done so this person can qualify to take surgery boards. so we really just have this how can we help you attitude. and then of course, that is goes with timeliness of publication too. So one of the other things you didn't we sat down was said our goal is to get from submission to publication within 100 days without compromising that review process and to educate our reviewers. You know, like John Pasco taught me it a constructive review. It's not we it's so many first time authors. You train them to resident students. They don't need some destructive. That's not encouraging our next generation. So really trying to change the culture to be much more healthy. So I'm trying really hard when when the journal allows it, and I'm doing a review to try and get my residents to help me with the review, because it does two things. One, it raises up the next generation of reviewers, but also, as you already alluded to, residents in training need publish papers that allow them to complete their certification requirements, and you will write a better paper if you know what the review process is. But if you are a first time author, you can't know what the review process is because you never did it before. So I'm trying to loop my residents in early to what the review process looks like, so they know what is likely to come back to them, and they can write a paper that takes into account things that reviewers look for when they're reviewing papers. And so that's I just started doing that this year. I don't know if it's going to make a difference or not, but I'm hoping it's going to make a difference in in better papers and better reviewers in the next generation. Yeah. Thank you for helping in the process. So with more of these articles or I guess journals, more journals moving to open access, would you talk about open access a couple times now? for our listeners who are less scientifically oriented, open access means you don't need to have a subscription to that journal to access the content. So 2 or 3 years ago, if you wanted to access an article in the AVMA journals, you had to have a subscription, and then you had to either go to your pile of journals and get out that article or download it from the website. Now, many, many, many of the articles in JAVMA are open access and AJVR is 100% open access. So with all this information, do you have any advice for pet owners about using this information to help them take the best care of their pets? They can? It's a great question. I mean, I would definitely say to try to avoid Doctor Google and try to find a manuscript that is scientifically written and the abstract should be clear enough for most people to read it. I think podcasts like this are super helpful, because we can often riff a little bit more and say, ooh, watch out for this sort of thing again. You know, like the videos that I was talking about, maybe YouTube isn't the best place to find, many of these videos because they haven't been reviewed by your peers. And peer review process isn't perfect. but it certainly is better than it used to be. Well, and I think in in using any online information, you have to look at the source. So the even the journals are well respected. Source AMC is a well-respected source, and we have lots of pet videos that are not cute pet videos. They're like, how to give your cat a pill? How to give your cat subcutaneous fluids on our website. And so I think that that both Doctor Fortier and I are saying consider where the source of the information is if you're going to if you're a pet owner and you're going to go online, you know, doctor and Fun pet website is probably not the place you want information, but some place like the Animal Medical Center, even those are are good sources of information. AVMA has a lot of video and pet owner focused information as well. Yes. Yeah, that's a good point. So both of your journals cover all animals, right? A huge diversity of species. How do you balance that? It's fascinating. And you know, as you said earlier, I'm an equine orthopedic surgeon and I did do some cows and goats and sheep. But mostly, I mean, let's say large animal orthopedics, but we do fish and birds and I make jokes, with some of my human doctors that, you know, real as you've seen the t shirts, real doctors treat more than one species. I mean, it's incredible. You talked about the, Was it an orangutan earlier? Yeah. you know, like, we get manuscripts on on orangutans, too. And llamas aren't the same as alpacas. It is fascinating. So we just have to have a really astute associate editor group who find those reviewers. And when I get a manuscript into JAVMA I ask myself, that's our clinical journal. And you've said, you know, we have the other journal, which is more research. When I when I get a manuscript into JAVMA and most people want to submit to JAVMA because it has over 105,000 people reach no, no journal, has it reach bigger than that 105,000 people get print JAVMA. That's how many members we have. And it's a member benefit. So I ask myself, could this change clinical practice or even a mindset for clinical practice? It doesn't have to necessarily be a new treatment, a new diagnosis, but maybe it's a different way to think about how to leverage your veterinary technician. Something like that. So it doesn't have to be, like I said, a new pill that that's how I look at JAVMA and AJVR. And you talked about some open access or online articles. Most of our members are compounding animal veterinarians. So for we get very few cat manuscripts, the cats are much harder to do research on than dogs. And, they're not the same population in your hospitals either. So most of the manuscripts that I pick will be companion animal. But then I try very hard to say, okay, I would like a is there a ruminant, is there a equine manuscript, is there a, lab animal? I mean, our our profession is so broad, but then so there's about 10 to 12 manuscripts that appear in print. JAVMA and in the same issue, we have some that stay online only. So those might be more like a fish eye disease or something like that. So but lots of veterinarians see fish and salamanders and it just goes on and on. And it is every day. I used to say every day is a school day, but every manuscript I learned something new. And sometimes I don't know, I, you know, I'll get a manuscript and I'll have to ask one of my associate editors, do people do this in small animals? so it's it's a daily challenge for me, for sure. I remember being asked to review, rhinoceros manuscript because the rhinos had a hemolytic anemia, and I know something about hemolytic anemia in dogs. And so they were like, we we could really use your help. I'm looking at this. And I was like, Holy smokes. but but it was a really interesting manuscript about rhinos, I think with could have been hippos rhinos here, but they were zoo animals. So every day, there's always something that you can do. Veterinarians, you know, are are really collaborative people because there's so much of what we do that actually has no precedent. Or you've got a rhino with a problem, or you've got a fish that needs something, and then you know what the fish has, but you need a different person to help you figure out how to treat the fish because you know the disease, which you don't know the treatment. So I don't think the average pet owner understands how much we collaborate across the profession to try and figure out some of these things, like what to do with a fish that's got a problem with an eye. So you talked a little bit about how some of the articles stay only online, and some of them are in my paper magazine that comes every month. so do you think I hope and I hope not, because I love paper journals. do you think JAVMA will ultimately go online only? What a great question. you know, it's every I've only been saving me for three years, but every year I'm amazed that. Member survey and readership survey. Not all readers are members, right? It goes out to librarians. And as you said, you can have a subscription even if you're not an avid member. It the numbers are astonishing. It's around 90% of people that still like to read print JAVMA They they love the cover. But for the listeners who don't know, we feature cover art. and it's I've started to really prioritize art that is from within our profession. So veterinarians, veterinary technicians, veterinary students, so and it's beautiful to leave in your, in your waiting room. But most people still like to some through there. And it's a great way for everybody to find out. As you said, the other resources at the AVMA insurance and malpractice and those sorts of things that are available as well. But I don't see it going away in my tenure. Yeah, I find it much easier to pick up a paper journal and flip through it and have a scope of what's going on, where if I if I want to look up new treatments for lymphoma in the dog, I'm going to go to a search engine and search that, and then I'm going to get all the journals that have that. But just to jog my memory about what's out there or what I might want to read, I the print journal really helps me do that. Maybe if I'd been raised differently. you know, I grew up with stacks of journals in my office. You did too, I'm sure I do know. And you'd be like, oh, my gosh, I got six inches of journals I haven't read yet. but I love the paper journals. my favorite. I just put one of my backpack to read this weekend. So the youth, the articles that stay online only get pulled into the issue we put into the paper the table of contents and then provide a QR code so you you still get to scan. As you said, it's a it's a nice way to scan the environment. And so there should be around 20, 24 or 25 manuscripts per issue, some that are in the whole manuscript as in the print issue, and others you can scan the QR code. Yeah. And I just rip the cable contents out, circle the ones I want to download. Now when I have time to download them, I, I download the articles so that being in the table of contents of the paper journal helps me. Excellent tabs on on what's going on. so you've really not focused only just on the journals and their articles, but you have a podcast. You also have improved the social media presence, of your journals on both. I think X and Facebook might be maybe Instagram too. You'll have to tell us where you are out there. how did you come up with that and what's the impact of those initiatives? Oh great question. I mean, obviously there's younger readers are all going to go through X, but we're on Instagram, LinkedIn and Facebook, for both journals. And we just couldn't we had one person who was posting on the news and we would post something once in a while, and then we I mean, social media is just the way to get more attention for your work and the news and like regular news. So we identify manuscripts that we think might have we call the general hook like general audience might be interested in as well and try to get that out there. you know, the, the, the end goal is to reach more people to get this information, the veterinarians to ultimately treats the pets better. And I know that sounds cliche, but that that's really what we're we're trying to do and try to remember that I try to instill that pride in our division, most of whom are not veterinarians, to say, do you know the impact that you're having by publishing this work quickly and getting it out there? So for the social media side, we hired, Sarah Wright, who's a veterinarian, I think, to do this social media. Right. It has to be a veterinarian. And she comes up with all kinds of great ideas. she's out of vet school, I think three years. So one of the oldest standing articles in JAVMA is what is your diagnosis? It's based on imaging. And she'll put in a what is your diagnosis into Facebook. And people will actually guess what the diagnosis is. And she responds back to them, oh, you're close, but don't forget to go back and read. You know, this part of the history or something like that. Our reach, our readership has more than doubled. So not just the paper, but the online content is I think it's it's actually I think it's four fold increased, since Sarah has started with social media, and she's done so well when she go she was just at the council. Scientific editors really high profile like the AVMA and others are asking her, can you come in and talk to us about what you've done with social media? So it's really fun. People love x rays on social media. Our emergency service or emergency surgical service takes a lot of foreign bodies out of animals, and some of them are just so outrageous. On x ray. I have a dog it looks like has a junkyard in its stomach, and I don't have the photos of what got pulled out, but apparently there some sort of special metal diaper clips. I, I had to look them up on Amazon and why a dog would eat diaper clips. I was like, oh, I hope there's not like a diaper attached to the clips, because that of course you wouldn't see on the X-ray. But AMC’s clients love looking at X-rays where we say, well, what did this dog eat? we had a fishhook, which you don't think of New York City as being a big fishing neighborhood, but the dog somehow got a fishhook and internal medicine had to do a special technique to get the fishhook dislodged from the dog's esophagus, which everything went fine, and the hooks out and the dog is home. But there are some really great things that way to, that that you can try on social media and educate people, like, keep fishhooks away from your dog, and entertain them at the same time. So we're getting a message here from Katie, our producer, who says we should wrap it up. So I want to ask you what your closing statement should be. What do you want to say that we didn't talk about? you know, I think you and I are at, like you said, late stage veterinarians and been through a couple different versions of a career. And I, I think my parting words to people would be, be happy with what you're doing, enjoy what you're doing, enjoy going to work, enjoy the people. you spend a lot of time at work. So really, it'll be fulfilling if you enjoy it. And and I think something that, that Lisa said early in this conversation was, I said, how did you get from equine orthopedics to journal editing and you said, well, someone asked me and I just said, yes. And I think that's a that she didn't phrase it as is. Right. But that is really profound advice. Sometimes you just have to say yes because it turns out so good. and it's so much fun. So I want to thank Doctor Lisa Fortier from the AVMA Journals for joining me today, and I will look forward to reading Future Issues and looking at the great cover art on those journals. Thank you. I know keeping your pet healthy is very important to you. And with that said, I hope you'll reach out to me if you have a question about your pet's health and I'll respond to your question on next month's Ask the Vet podcast, just email me at AsktheVet@amcny.org. We have a short break coming up, but please stay tuned because there's lots of interesting animal news stories when we return, we're back with Dr. Ann Hohenhaus on Ask the Vet. Hi everyone. Welcome back to Ask the Vet. You've tuned in just in time for the animal news. It's time for animal headlines. The biggest animal news from across the world. It's an old adage the cats have nine lives, but a new study reveals that certain cat breeds live longer than others. Researchers from the Royal Veterinary College in London and the National Chung Hsing University analyzed data from nearly 8000 cats and found that Sphynx cats have the shortest life expectancy. It's probably because they're cold, because they don't have any hair. Those little wrinkly sphinx cats who are just adorable. Their life expectancy of the Sphinx cat average is 6.8 years, and the long lived cats are Burmese cats. Those beautiful sable colored chocolate eyed cats have an average lifespan of 14.4 years. Now, I have to say I was really surprised about that information because if I was a betting kind of person, I would have bet that the Siamese cat was the longest lived cat, because that's what my clinical experience tells me. And my sister had a crazy Siamese cat, hated me, loved her, and that cat lived for I think 21 years. Never was sick a day in its life until finally its little cat kidneys gave out when it was 21. Researchers in the study also discovered that a female cats live longer than male cats, and mixed bred cats tend to outlive purebred cats, and they reach these findings by looking at feline death certificate data between 2019 and 2021. So while these findings are interesting, remember that keeping your cat at a healthy body weight, providing regular exercise, ensuring mental stimulation, and providing good veterinary care are really the keys to your cat. Having a long and happy life. Today's second story tries to answer the question which animals are sent in it? And there's a growing evidence of animal cognition. The question now is which animals aren't sent in it? Animal centeredness or consciousness refers to an animal's ability to sense and map their environment, to feel and to have self-awareness. And in April, nearly 40 researchers signed the New York Declaration on Animal Consciousness, stating strong evidence for consciousness in mammals and birds. And some support for it in all vertebrates and many invertebrates, including octopuses, lobsters, and insects. One intriguing study on the cleaner fish, the wrasse showed that they could recognize themselves in a mirror and they tried to remove a mark from their skin when they look at themselves in that mirror. A test that dogs fail. This has legal implications for how we classify eye animals. And while legal changes are slow, some states have begun recognizing animals as sentient in it, and more may follow. And as the summer travel season approaches, here's a good suggestion for those wanting to travel with their dog in luxury. There's a new airline called Bark Air, which completed its inaugural flight on May 23rd from north from New York to Los Angeles, offering a premium white paw experience for both humans and dogs. The flight amenities are top flight, including doggy spa treatments, pheromone infused blankets, special cupcakes, and chicken broth instead of champagne. Now there are only ten tickets per trip, so tickets are tough to get, and it's an exclusive experience. Good news is, though, there are no size, weight, or breed restrictions, but the human traveling with the dog must be over 18 and the dog must remain leashed during the trip. Of course, luxury comes at a price. One way from New York to LA cost $6,000 for one dog and one human, and a New York to London ticket costs $8,000. So the lower cost Bark Air is hoping to secure a long term commitment with the charter company, or possibly outfit their own plane. So if you have money that's burning a hole in your pocket and a dog who loves to travel, this is a great alternative to throwing your pup under the seat or sending your best friend to travel in cargo. And now it's time for questions from our listeners. Our first question is from Francine. Francine, as I had my 7 pound Yorkie tested for allergies, but the veterinary dermatologist stated there is no test for food allergies. I think my pup has food allergies and want to know if there is a way she can be tested to see what food she may or may not be allergic to. She is on an elimination diet, but I would like to change her to fresh foods and pet parents claim the fresh foods that are frozen and delivered to your door seem to help with their pup's allergies. Is this a known fact? So since we just had the editor in chief of the AVMA journals on our show, I decided to do a quick search of the clinical journal, the Journal of the American Veterinary Medical Association on food allergies in dogs, and I found an open access article that means anyone can click on this article and read it if they want. And the title of the article is Food Allergy in Dogs and Cats Current Perspectives on Etiology, Diagnosis, and Management. And so I took a quick look at the article. And this article is authored by a board certified veterinary dermatologist. So Doctor Fortier and I talked a little bit about how to know if online information is good or fake. So this is in a respected journal, the AVMA Journal. The article was written by a board certified veterinary dermatologist. So that tells you that this person has the credentials to write an article like this. And according to the article, Francine's veterinarian has recommended the correct test for food allergies an elimination trial. And they're tedious and painful because you have to take away the dog's regular food, create a temporary diet, and then gradually add other ingredients to see what sets off the dogs allergies. So I would advise Francine to stick with the plan. And once the veterinarian has identified which foods are the trigger for her 7 pound Yorkie, then she might be able to find one of these fresh food diets that will meet the dogs dietary restrictions due to allergies. But in the meantime, strict adherence to this diet trial is critical to get the information so that Francine knows if her dog is or is not allergic to food. So good luck, Francine. And this was the perfect question to answer on a day when we had Doctor Lisa Fortier on the show. Our next question comes from Karen S. Karen asks, is it better to pull the hairs from the inside of my Maltese’s ears or leave them be? She has already had two ear infections, one from bacteria, another from yeast. Could removing the hairs be a way to decrease air infections? Also, please tell me how often to clean her ears and what to clean them with. So Karen, I have the same question you do. Maybe pulling the hair out helps, and maybe pulling the hair out makes the ear really irritated and sore because of ripping all that hair out of the dogs years. I don't have a good answer on that particular point. What I would say is that most ear infections in dogs are related to allergies. So if your dog has had two ear infections, I would ask my veterinarian if they think that maybe your dog is suffering from allergies. And if management of the allergies might not make the ear infections better. Since I haven't seen your Maltese, I can't really tell you what's best to clean your dog's ears with. But I find that if your dog just has a little bit of brown waxy discharge in the ear, taking a cotton ball and putting a drop of baby oil on that cotton ball, and then rubbing that on the inside of the ear is is one way just to clean those ears very gently. And there are other products for cleaning ears and dogs, but some of those products have different purposes. And I think that your veterinarian would be the best person to recommend a prescription ear cleaner for the Maltese’s ear. So I think a trip to the veterinarian for a discussion about ear cleaners and potential allergies is something that I think, would benefit your Maltese. So good luck to you Karen, and we hope the ears get better very soon. And our last question for today comes from Valerie in Canada. Valerie's question is, I have a nine year old corgi who was diagnosed with stage five B type lymphoma in early April. He has just had his third round of chemotherapy and his condition is relatively stable. I would like to ask if CHOP won't work for him in the future. Are there any other treatment options? I can bring my dog to the United States for the treatment. Thank you. I look forward to your reply. So I I'm not 100% clear on what Valerie's asking, but here's what I think she said. I think her dog is currently getting CHOP. That is a four chemotherapy drug protocol and we call it chop because each letter represents one of the four drugs. And it sounds like her corgi is responding to treatment. So I hope that that's true and that things are going well. But Valerie's right. Most dogs with lymphoma relapse at some point, even if they've received chemotherapy with four drugs like CHOP. So sometimes chop will work a second time, especially if your dog has completed chop, had some time off of chemotherapy and then relapses. In those dogs I would absolutely restart chop. If a dog relapses while they're getting CHOP then we generally think that treatment protocol is not a good one for the dog. And then we have quite a long list of other drugs that we could consider using those drugs would be Tanovia, mitozantrone, nitrogen mustard, CCNU. And really your dog's oncologist is the best person to determine which of that laundry list of drugs is appropriate for Valerie's corgi. One thing that listeners need to keep in mind is that the drugs available in the United States may not be the drugs available in Canada, or vice versa. So some of those drugs that I put on my list may not be available to Valerie in Canada, and perhaps she already knows that, because she does mention she'd come to the U.S. for treatment. So, Valerie, I hope that your corgi stays in remission a long time and that you don't need to make a decision about a different kind of treatment. And that's all our questions that we have for today. We're going to take a quick break. And when we come back next we're going to have news from the Animal Medical Center. We're back with Dr. Ann Hohenjaus on Ask the Vet. Hi and welcome back to Ask the Vet. It's now time for important information from AMC's Usdan Institute of Animal Health Education. So first of all, summer is upon us. Memorial day was last weekend, and lots of people are planning to take their dog to the beach. But one thing that is a very dangerous occurrence and dogs that go to the beach is sand impaction. And you know, you take your dog to the beach and it goes crazy, goes crazy barking at the waves and swallowing saltwater and sand. Or it goes not digging on the beach because it finds a crab or something that it wants to dig up. And as it's digging, it's barking and swallowing sand. And when the dog eats too much sand, it gets all wadded up in their intestine and causes a blockage. And the dog feels terrible. And we've already had one dog that ate a bunch of gravel this year. We don't really know why. One of my patients was pooping sand after a weekend at the beach. So this can this happens on a daily basis to dogs that go to the beach. You can see sand impaction happening anywhere from a few hours to a few days after a trip to the beach. And usually dogs vomit, stop eating and are very lethargic and just laying around. So if you notice any of these signs after you've had your dog at the beach, be sure to go to your veterinarian because an x ray is going to answer the question in about two minutes. Treatment of your dog depends on how much sand is impacted and how sick your dog is. The dogs we see here at the Animal Medical Center are really sick, and they usually get hospitalized for intravenous fluids and medications to help their upset stomach. And then we take x rays to monitor the sands movement out the other end. Although it seems like maybe surgical removal of the sand would be a good idea. those grains of sand are really gross and dirty. And so taking them out runs a terrible risk of abdominal infection from even one grain of sand that gets left behind. So we tend not to encourage surgery to remove the sand, but use laxatives and other medications to move things forward. When you go to the beach, be sure that you rinse off your toys. Don't play fetch games on the sand where your dog has an opportunity to grab the ball and a mouthful of sand. And all this precautions will help to keep your dog safe at the beach. This summer. Now we have another great upcoming talk at the Houston Institute. And this talk is going to be about mast cell tumors, which are the most common type of malignant skin tumor found in dogs and the second most common skin tumor in cats. Most of the time we see these in older animals, but absolutely, pets of any age can be affected with mast cell tumors. On Thursday, June 20th at 6 p.m. Eastern Daylight Time, AMC board certified surgical oncologist Doctor Jonathan Ferrari will discuss mast cell tumors in dogs and cats. As usual are used, and events are free, but they're online and so you have to register in order for us to send you the zoom link. You can find the registration on AMC's website at amcny.org/events for free access to timely and relevant pet health articles, upcoming pet health events, video tutorials, and other pet parent resources. Check out AMC's Usdan Institute for Animal Health Education. If you just go to our homepage at amcny.org and click on Pet Owner Education, our website comes up. I want to once again thank Doctor Lisa Fortier for joining me here today on Ask the Vet. Don't forget if you have a question about your pets well-being or looking for health advice, you can email me at AskTheVet@amcny.org and I'll answer your questions on next month's Ask the Vet program. The Ask the Vet podcast can be accessed on the SIRIUS app and across all major platforms, and also on AMC's website. All of this thanks to AMC's long standing partnership with Sirius XM. Don't forget to check us out on social media. It's facebook.com/theanimalmedicalcenter, Twitter and Instagram is @AMCNY. I would appreciate it if you could take a moment to give the Ask the Vet podcast a review and like and subscribe so you always receive every new episode. As soon as it drops, and I'll look forward to seeing everyone next month for another Ask the Vet podcast. Thanks everyone and have a wonderful June!