Celebrating the connection with our pets, this is Animal Radio, featuring your dream team, veterinarian, Dr. Debbie White and groomer, Joey Vellani. And here are your hosts, Hal Abrams and Judy Francis. If you're like Judy, you spend a lot of time online, social media, going through videos. You'll spend like an hour a day maybe just watching. I just get down a rabbit hole, you watch one and then another one pops up, oh, I got to see that. And it's like, oh, look at this one. And they're all animal or pet related. Is that mostly it? Yeah, I won't watch. I don't know if I'm not interested in the other ones. Yeah, sure. Sure. Yeah. So in your life, who would you say is the biggest social media influencer for you? What animal do you maybe even follow? You know what? I'm not a follower. In fact, no. And I like watching both cat and dog videos. So I don't really hone in on a certain animal and like follow that particular animal. I'm kind of like, I watch them all. Have you ever seen, I'm going to hold up a picture here. Have you ever seen this animal here? This is, this is Loki. I hadn't seen Loki. Again, I don't follow any certain animals if I happen to come across a video, but I don't, I don't, I, yeah. He's beautiful. Loki is, what kind of dog is Loki? He's like some kind of a Malamute wolf hybrid. Like a wolf. I'm not quite sure. He's a big dog. This particular picture that I'm holding up to the microphone is Loki and his guardian, Kelly. They're sitting in a hammock. You may have seen this picture. It's a picture that he just casually posted on his Instagram page. And then, uh, the people over at Bored Panda saw it, wanted to do an interview with him. Buzzfeed picked it up. Eventually he realized that his dog was becoming extremely popular online. And he decided after about a year after this picture went out to quit his job and focus on promoting his animal online to become a social media sensation. We're going to find out how he's doing on that and whether or not we should quit our jobs to become ladybugs. Yeah. Well, she has a Facebook page. It's not very popular. Maybe she needs to post more. Well, I just, you know, everybody go to her Facebook page and like her right now. So we're going to talk to this Kelly Lund coming up here. He's the guardian of Loki and we're going to find out what his secret is to becoming a viral sensation. Also on the show today. And in this hour, we're going to talk to Fiona Gilbert. Fiona, do you need to get that? I'm expecting a call from my pharmacist. Can we, can you just make sure? Cause I'm, I have to pick something up and I'm just waiting for them to call and say it's ready. So can you just check that? Thank you. Coming up this hour, Fiona Gilbert will be joining us. She has MS unfortunately, and she has a service dog to help her with her MS. What kind of dog is that there? It's a pit bull. It is a, it is a pit bull. Surprise, surprise. Well now how can that be? I mean a pit bull service dog? Is there such a thing as a pit bull service dog? Why not? Well, I guess not. Why not? I do know that Delta or American Airlines just banned service animals that happened to be pit bulls. I do know that in Denver it is illegal to have a pit bull. That's just wrong. That is wrong. I bet Fiona has a bone to pick with Delta Airlines. I'm guessing that. Or her dog does. Okay, we're going to find out about her service dog, her pit bull coming up here on Animal Radio. Lori, what are you working on for this hour? You were just a minute ago Hal talking about social media and Loki and everything. Well, I have for you a new list from Forbes. They did, I love this word influencers because I had never really heard of it before. I just thought, you're famous on social media. If you're famous on social media, you're an influencer. So Forbes had this edition where they had the top 10 people influencers, the top 10 chef influencers and on and on with everything. And they did a list on pets. So pets on social media. So I will tell you the most famous pets or influencers on social media. When Forbes is involved, there must be money involved. Of course. Okay. That list on the way. First year calls. Let's go to Wanda. Hi Wanda. Hi. How are you doing? Very good. I have the whole dream team here to answer your questions. What's going on with your pets? Okay. I have Dachshund miniature pincher mix. She's having skin problems. I switched vets like four times and they always said that it's yeast, airborne yeast. And they give her shots and she goes okay for two weeks. But then they give her prednisone. That makes her eat a lot. She still eating and she still have the yeast and she still have the smell. Okay. Yeah. I don't know what to do. So has she had any money in the beds? Okay. And have we used any medicine that specifically geared towards the yeast, either by a pill form or by a shampoo or a topical form? Well, they give me Mariset. Okay. And I have to bathe her every other day, but sometimes I can tell you the truth. I don't have time and it's cold and she gets very cold. I'll give her a bath every other day. Okay. And is that it or are they using any pills for that other than the prednisone? No. They give me Apoquel. Apoquel, she still eating and then the doctor say I will then give her Benadryl. Okay. So I'm going to kind of make some interpretations of what you've said and what I think may be the direction that your veterinarian is going here. So if your pet has yeast on the skin, the important thing to know about that is that yeast is generally not the primary problem. It's a secondary problem. So there's usually something else that's making that skin barrier unhealthy where the yeast can really grow and proliferate. So if they're using things like prednisone and Apoquel, it sounds like they're suspicious that she has an underlying allergy. So those medicines are geared towards the allergy. But the sad thing is if we use that and don't address infection and treat it with the medications for those conditions, we're really not going to get anywhere. So we're going to think that, you know, the medicine isn't working for allergies when we're really just not treating a bacterial infection or say a yeast infection that could be present. So what my consideration, and I'd ask you to talk to your veterinarian if this seems fair and like a direction that they would agree with, is that if we have yeast in the skin and it's chronic, especially if it creates some of the different symptoms I see with yeast, and I should mention those, yeast in the skin will often cause a really stinky foot odor. It smells like old man foot. I have to wash my bed and everything every day. Yeah. So it's a real strong smell. The dogs will often have kind of a greasy feel to them in those areas. And in some cases when it's present for chronic long -term periods of time, we'll actually get a thickening of the skin and it'll become kind of darkly pigmented and what almost I describe as elephantinized. So it kind of becomes like elephant skin. She had that in her tail, but then I gave her and gave and went away. Okay. So yeah, so that definitely, if those kinds of things are going on, then yeast is very suspicious. We usually confirm that by taking a sample from the skin and looking and you know, yeast show up pretty easy on an impression smear. So the thing I would ask you to talk to your veterinarian about is, can we use something systemic for her, for this yeast? And that might mean a couple different possible medicines, but they basically all fall under the category of an antifungal medicine, such as ketoconazole or itraconazole, or even one called terbenafene. Any of those are used with yeast infections, whether it be in the ears or say in the skin. So that would be something, and it does take a long period of time. We might get some improvement after maybe a week or two, but many times this is something that we have to treat for many weeks to months. So that would be something where, you know, I would definitely talk to them about that. The other thing is, you know, definitely the maliceb that you're using is certainly an appropriate one if we're suspicious of yeast, but there can be even some other things that we can use topically as well, as far as different types of mousses or sprays that we can use that contain either say chlorhexidine, which is a type of an antiseptic, or miconazole, which is an anti -yeast topical. So those can be things that we can add into the regimen. But I think the good thing in your situation is there is some things that I can suggest for you to try, and the big thing is sticking with it, because it really does take, I had just like a bald, kind of darkly skinned, very little hair. It only had hair on the tip of its tail and around its head, and it took four months of yeast therapy that we treated, and it finally got most of its hair back. It never did get all of it back, because it was so scarred, but it can really be very rewarding. You just kind of have to trek through it. So yeah, with her, she's black. When people see her and they tell me, why are you taking it? Because her top hair of her body is black, shiny, so pretty. It's just under the legs, on her stomach, at her four paws, and under the tail. You know, they don't have it, she doesn't have it anyplace else. And I bathe her, I bathe her, she's my baby. Yeah, well, and yeast is horribly itchy. Any human knows that. So it's a miserable thing. So definitely, and even some other kind of anti -itch remedies, you know, that we can use. I am using a lot of the canine atopic dermatitis immunoglobulin called CADI, and that helps a lot just to kind of stop the itch, to give pets relief while we're dealing with all the other things. Yes, I don't want to bite. I know that the steroids, they're going to hurt her a long time. And I say, what I'm giving to her is she's not going to be improving. That's why I hear you every morning. And I say on Sundays, and I say, I'm going to call because maybe I can go to the vet with some knowledge and say, hey, give me the yeast infection medication, take her away from the prednisone. Absolutely. And that makes it harder. The prednisone definitely makes it harder for her to fight these infections. So if we use it sparingly, just to kind of help relieve it, and then yeah, get her off that. I agree totally. So she needs to go to the vet and ask for something systematic. Is that right? Systemic. Systemic. A systemic and a yeast medicine. Yes, a yeast medicine. I will do that. Hopefully we can get her some good help and I wish you guys the best. Let us know how things turn out and hopefully we'll get her feeling and looking better and smelling better too. Thanks Wanda. Well, this portion of Animal Radio is underwritten by Fear Free Happy Homes. Don't forget you can get your fix of Animal Radio anytime you want with the Animal Radio app for iPhone and Android. Download it now. It's made possible by Fear Free Happy Homes. Helping your pets live their happiest, healthiest, fullest lives at home, at the vet, and everywhere in between. Visit them at fearfreehappyhomes .com. And thanks, Fear Free, for underwriting Animal Radio.