What do you do when your patient has two long term health conditions? Dennis Cabry from Pennsylvania explains how he uses Vetrax to help his dog Roscoe.
Dennis works for works for Hill’s Pet Nutrition, a partner of AGL Technology, the manufacturer of Vetrax. For some time his 11-year old yellow Labrador, Roscoe has had arthritis; unfortunately, he also suffers from ‘seasonal atopy. That can mean his medical needs are sometimes complex. Here’s what Dennis has to say about this common but challenging situation:
“We had managed Roscoe’s health successfully for a number of years, using a therapeutic pet food to support his joints and medication for the seasonal atopy. We were invited to trial the Vetrax device as part of the initial test program.
Roscoe started wearing the Vetrax sensor in August 2016 and didn’t even notice it. We soon familiarized ourselves with the app which recorded the data and found it very easy to use. So easy, that we could see straightaway that his shaking and scratching were actually increasing noticeably.
To try to deal with this problem, on the advice of our veterinarian, we moved him from the therapeutic pet food for joint disease to a therapeutic food for dermatological issues as part of his overall treatment. To our relief, we could soon see his shaking and scratching start to decrease. In fact, within a couple of weeks, the time he spent shaking reduced from 150 seconds to 15 seconds – a 90 percent decrease. Sadly, it was not all good news because, at the same time, the data showed that his activity level was reducing. This was because his arthritis was bothering him more. We again discussed the situation with our veterinarian and put him back on the therapeutic pet food for joint disease.
A few days later, the data confirmed that, while he was becoming more active, Roscoe’s shaking was once again on the increase. After discussion with our veterinarian, the solution we agreed was to keep him on the therapeutic pet food for joint disease and to treat the seasonal atopy topically. Fortunately, this treatment approach has worked really well and his condition and wellbeing are greatly improved. We are continuing to use Vetrax to monitor him so that we can be alert to any changes and to opportunities to implement further treatment, either long term or symptomatically, if it is needed.
Being able to track the effects of different treatment approaches on his behavior accurately and quickly 24/7 has been invaluable to us and to our veterinarian in trying to work out the most effective way to manage Roscoe’s multiple conditions. Roscoe can’t tell us himself how he is feeling but Vetrax has certainly been the next best thing.”