Summary: Hi, thanks for being here. This is Krista with Episode #153 on the Wag Out Loud pawdcast. Have you heard that feeding your dog a raw food diet is unsafe? Or maybe that raw food has a much higher potential for bacteria contamination? Well, that is false. And a recent study debunks that myth and confirms the safety of raw pet food. Yay! Now this is a mouthful, but the title of this study is called The Low Number of Owner Reported Suspected Transmission of Foodborne Pathogens From Raw Meat Based Diets Fed to Dogs and/or Cats. It was written by independent researchers and published recently in the journal Frontiers in Veterinary Science. And the authors of this study found that not a single confirmed case of raw pet food transmitting disease-causing microbes to humans, was reported in the entire world. And this is great news and hopefully gets more pet owners to think differently about feeding a species appropriate diet to their pets. Welcome to the Wag Out Loud pawdcast, where we are obsessed with bringing you helpful tips on canine health care, nutrition, and overall wellbeing. If you'd like to support the show, check out the amazing online events, products and resources that I personally recommend on the Wag Out Loud website. I'm your host, Krista and I'm super excited to be bringing you yet another tail wagging episode. Jim Nelson and Rene Agredano created Tripawds in 2006 when their dog Jerry lost a leg to cancer. The Tripawds Foundation now hosts 1800+ three-legged dog and cat blogs with numerous pet amputation resources and assistance programs. They tell the whole story in their book, Be More Dog: Learning to Live in the Now. Welcome all dog lovers! Today we are having an inspirational chat with Jim Nelson and Rene Agredano, who created Tripawds, and they are going to cover Loving Life on Three Legs, how Tripawds is helping all amputee pets. So Jim and Renee have been on the calendar for quite some time. So I've been looking forward to this. If you both can please introduce yourselves and tell us why you started Tripawds. Sure, happy to do that. Thank you for having us here. I'm Rene and I am known as Jerry on the Tripawd website. Jerry was the whole reason we started Tripawds, but we'll talk about that in just a sec. I'm Jim and I am admin at the Tripawds blogs and forums, and we'll get into what Tripawds is like Rene was saying, but she acts as Jerry, because Jerry was our first dog. And you can explain how that turned into what we do. Yeah, so Jerry was our first dog. He was a German Shepherd mix who had all four legs when we adopted him as a puppy. And he was our Chief Fun Officer of our business, we like to joke and call him that because he was the one who broke up our day and got us outside. We've always worked on our own, and we were starting a business and Jerry came along and, and really showed us how to have fun during the day. This was way back. This was 1998 when we adopted him. That was a long time ago. He was an awesome dog. And we went hiking, we did beach trips, we did all kinds of fun things together. He was a very active dog. So when he started limping at eight years old, we thought it was kind of unusual. And we took him to the vet. And the vet said, Well, it's probably arthritis, he's getting old. Here's some NSAIDS. Go home, and this should take care of it. Well, it didn't. And about three visits later, we were really frustrated looking for a reason why our dog was still limping. And that's when the veterinarian technician took us aside one day as we were leaving the clinic, and she told us, Hey, I think you guys should get a second opinion. How about you just go to this other clinic up the road and do this very discreetly? And he told us, yeah, and she said, I think we should try try another place. So we did and that veterinarian said I don't know. So she sent us over to University of California Davis. And within about 15 minutes, we had a reason why Jerry was limping. Cancer And that’s when we discovered dogs get cancer. Up until then, we didn't even know what osteosarcoma in canine forelimbs meant. Then we learned dogs get cancer and long story short, Rene sat me down one day and well, we proceeded with the amputation but we were lost and alone not knowing how he would pee. You know, we had no idea if he could ever swim again or what hikes would be like so we turned to YouTube and saw a video of a Great Dane digging up a gopher with one front leg. And we thought, if that dog can do it, Jerry could do it. And on Thanksgiving Day 2006, the surgeon came in and led Jerry out of the hospital hopping along with a smile on his face. And Rene sat me down and said, Let's sell everything. Let's let's, you know, sell the house, buy an RV and travel with Jerry, since he only has six months to a year to live, they say. So we made a promise to him to hit the road. And after six months, we hit the road and he lived two years and loving life on three legs. Oh my gosh, you guys, that is an incredible story. And obviously Jerry’s situation was for a reason. He was here to help out so many more dogs. And you are sharing that message of Jerry.’s So you're living out the most amazing dream, I can't thank you enough for taking that step. And I just think it's so amazing how adaptive dogs are. If they become blind or deaf, or in this instance, you know, a limb is amputated. They just acclimate. It's just incredible. So I love what you guys are doing. What is Tripawds? Why did you put together this organization? The Start of Tripawds Exactly. That first couple of years on the road, we just started a little blog at Tripawds.com. And that's P A W in the middle… Tripawds, just to share videos and photos of Jerry loving life on three legs. But then we started getting tons of email from people with different types of dogs and different types of cancers. And we installed discussion forums, and then we added a live chat. And now, Tripawds is a network of 1800 plus three legged dog and cat blogs, live cat videos, we've got the Tripawd Talk Radio Podcast, sharing information from credible sources, because we don't want anyone to ever feel lost and alone like they did. So we created a community of support because the animals usually adapt pretty quickly. And the people freak out. Yes, that's how it usually is. What you were saying about animals being resilient. We didn't know that when we agreed to have Jerry’s leg amputated. And and we really thought he was going to be this sad, sad dog when we brought him home. And the first lesson we learned was that Jerry just wanted to get on with life. He wanted to continue doing what he always loved to do. And that was a lesson that that took a lot of learning over and over again. He just kept showing us look, I'm okay, I'm okay. And then other people learned from that. And then other people learned from them. I mean, it was just like this this wonderful chain of events. That happened once Jim put up those discussion forums and other people could we could all share stories and support one another so that we could see that there is a light at the end of the tunnel after amputation recovery. Right. And what did you to learn about Osteosarcoma, because it is more prevalent than a lot of people realize. Yeah, that came as a really big shock. So this was, you know, like we said, this is way back in 2006. And veterinary oncology was just becoming a thing. But you know, we just we didn't even know that dogs got cancer, we thought we did everything right with him. And we kept blaming ourselves, maybe it was his diet, maybe it was his environment, we had no idea what caused the cancer. And as more people started coming over to the Tripawds website, we started learning, man, this is this is a lot more prevalent than we even realized. And other types of limb cancers, too, that can cause amputation, like mast cell cancer, or soft tissue tumors that aren't cancer, but they can invade the vascular system in the limb and require an amputation. So you know, one of the first lessons we learned was deal with the pain first, chemotherapy and and all that stuff to treat the actual cancer. That's your second decision you can make later but first, help your your animal get out of pain. And unfortunately, amputation for a lot of those cancers is the the fastest way to go to help your animals feel better. We learned with especially with bone cancers, that amputation it won't cure the cancer, it won't get rid of the cancer, but it will get rid of the pain because a bone tumor is just going to continue growing and really degrade that bone causing a pathological fracture and it’s a way to help improve the quality of life after surgery. That makes sense. Well, let's get into this. Let's assume that we have a dog that needs an amputation. I mean, after the surgery, of course, there's a lot to think about. So if you both wouldn't mind, I'm just going to bring up a topic and if you can just expand on that. That would be great. Sure. Happy to do that. Well, let's talk about once the surgery is complete, pain management, what options are there? How long are you probably treating for pain? What does that look like? Pain Management Oh, wow, you know, I would say that the the number one factor that can make or break an amputation recovery is pain management. And it actually should begin before the surgery happens. So we really encourage people to have a conversation with their vet, and ask what kind of pain control is my dog or my cat gonna get? And what does that look like? How often do I need to give them medication? What are the possible side effects? How do I know if I'm giving too much or too little? It's really it's a separate conversation with the vet before surgery. Because a lot of vets have found that if you start giving gabapentin, which is a nerve pain reducer, we start giving that before surgery, when those nerves are severed during the procedure. Afterward, they aren't as angry. So you get your dog started on that or your cat started on that before surgery. And then afterwards, it makes recovery just a little bit easier. There's really no standard of pain management that like, like a recipe for every animal because each animal is different. And cats have different needs than dogs. But in general, they should come home with an NSAID, Gabapentin, and oftentimes, a lot of animals are now coming home with a drug that was given during the procedure. It's called Nocita and it's a three day injectable pain reliever which makes those first three days a lot easier. Okay. And are you familiar with any maybe more natural supplements that people have found useful maybe in conjunction with actual medications, you know, whether that's CBD, THC, any other anti inflammatory maybe? Natural Treatments Um, as far as that goes, you know, that's really something to discuss with your veterinarian. There's a lot of really good quality cannabis based products out there. But because amputation is just such a major surgery, it's really not the time to solely rely on any kind of non pharmaceutical pain relievers. You can certainly talk to your veterinarian about incorporating them. But honestly, you know, we have found that the things that help the most are the ones that come from a pharmaceutical prescription. And also, laser therapy is definitely something that helps. Acupuncture, that can help during the recovery process as well. And as far as CBD goes, that's a real hot topic these days. But Rene is speaking as a certified veterinary cannabis guide. That's a thing now. It's a certification process. And she knows what to look for and how to read a certificate of analysis. But there are natural things like hot cold therapy, especially right after treatment, a hot cold compress applied the right way, the cool is going to reduce inflammation while the warm is going to increase circulation. And if you do that periodically and end on cold all the time, you can help reduce the amount of swelling and bruising and that sort of thing. Oh yeah. And then there's also an EMP therapy. So the Assisi Loop and pulsed electromagnetic frequency. That's also a natural remedy that people can try. It's hit or miss. I've heard some people say their their pet responded really well. And I've heard some people say they didn't notice anything. There is another product called a feral block blanket, which is a product for human amputees that we have found works really well in cats and dogs. And it's just a sheet of fabric with a mesh, a metal mesh embedded into the layer, very lightweight. And what it does is it blocks electromagnetic frequencies, from your pets environment, in order to promote wound healing and reduce any kind of nerve pain that's aggravated by this EMF flooding around your home. There are also two very important all natural modalities per se, when it comes to you know, helping the animal through recovery. And one is moderation of activity. You know, unfortunately, there are vets out there that still say, you know, here's your pain meds, go let him be a dog. But that's to an extent if we moderate their activity and keep them confined and play brain games to stimulate them and keep them engaged, that can really go a long way to a quick speedy recovery. And the other one is our human emotions. The dogs are going to adapt and overcome and persevere. Whereas the people who freak out the most have been the worst recoveries we've seen. The people with the dog having the worst time tend to be the people who are you know, picking them up and going everywhere and hand feeding them because the dogs get used to that behavior and then that goes on and on. But regardless, when it comes to actual pain and nerve pain, we stick with the tried and true pharmaceuticals and we recommend people speak with certified pain management experts or go to an AHA accredited clinic that's the American Animal Hospital Association, because they have certain guidelines that are very current. Like for instance, many vets tend to disagree on how effective Tramadol is when it comes to actual pain management unless it's used as part of a multi modal approach. Okay, well, Jim and Rene, I am going to stop you right here. This is a great chance to take a quick commercial break. We will be right back. A special thanks to the team at Tickless USA for being our monthly sponsor. 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