The Marty & Laura Show

Pro Tips for Doggy Dieting Marty and Laura take on the “weighty” conversation around doggy dieting. Research proves conclusively that dogs kept at a healthy weight live two years longer. How pet owners reduce or manage weight for their pets can be challenging and often requires some personal introspection as well. Our best pro tips for doggy dieting: · Move more, eat less … There’s no such th...

Marty and Laura tackle the high cost of vet care, everything from WHY the cost is so high to pro tips on ways you can help keep costs manageable. Laura said, "I ran across (an article) in a magazine called Money Wise, and it says that half of America's 87,000,000 pet owners have decided against vet treatment. And it it continues that for many Americans, the cost of caring for their pets has become...

Foxtails and Algae and Snakes and Alligators, Oh My! Summer vacation with dog as co-pilot , as Marty and Laura discussed last month, is well under way. Today they bring important information to help keep your pet safe in the late summer at various locations around the country. Whether it's foxtails, blue green algae, poisonous snakes or alligators, your pet can encounter a variety of environmental...

A Day in the Life: Answers to Your WTF Questions at the Vet Marty and I talk a lot. Like we talk pretty much, maybe not daily, but we talk every week. And I interact with people on a daily basis who work in veterinary clinics. I think it's really hard, sometimes, for us as clients to appreciate what's going on in the veterinary clinic. 'The receptionist just snarked at me. I've been sitting here f...

Bombproofing Your Pet for the Big Booms Marty and Laura tackle the big booms of summer, fireworks and thunderstorms, and how we can bombproof our pets ahead of time. LR: You made a comment to me last week when we were together that I thought was so great. We were talking about our phobias, your fear of heights. My claustrophobia. And you're like, 'we don't know why we have these phobias. Dogs don'...

Blastomycosis and Other Fungal Infections Marty and Laura discuss the dangers of blastomycosis and other fungal infections for our pets as well as their humans. "Blasto tends to be the upper Midwest," Marty said. "It's frequently found in areas where wood chipping has taken place, so places that trees have been cut down or chipped or garden centers and you know, things along those lines. "There ar...

Osteoarthritis Diagnosis and Treatment Marty and Laura tackle the topic of osteoarthritis in our pets, diagnosis, treatment and the differences between cats and dogs with this disease. "The only time we'll see a pet cry in pain is if they have either serious trauma or they slipped a disc in their neck and those dogs vocalize," Marty said. "But they won't vocalize because they've torn a cruciate. T...

Oral Hygiene from Teeth to Gums to Beards Marty and Laura discuss oral hygiene including teeth, gums and beards. Keeping your pet's teeth clean means brushing them. There are no magic cures. Oral health impacts the pet's overall physical health directly, Marty said. She recommends visiting the Veterinary Oral Health Council's website to learn about approved and accepted products that can help redu...

Geriatric Cats and Why They Lose Weight Marty and Laura tackle the topic of skinny old cats, why they lose weight and how to prevent these geriatric diseases. Cats are NOT, as Laura theorized, “fluffy house plants.” “Lots of people know when they have a kitten that they need veterinary care,” Marty said. “They need vaccinations, they need deworming, they to be spayed or neutered, all the stuff. An...

Summer Vacation with Dog as Co-Pilot Marty and Laura drop useful tips and share hilarious stories about summer vacation with dogs. Top tips from the Pros: RV, hotel, campground or visiting friends and family, and on the road along the way, pick up after your dog! Abandoned dog droppings can spread "germs and worms," are smelly and disrespectful to other travelers. Marty's Pro Tip Keep your used gr...

Spring Tune Up for Your Dog Marty and Laura get you and your buddy off the couch and ready for the spring weather. "The most important thing is to not overdo it because the tendency is it's finally spring, it's finally nice out. I'm going to go garden all day, I'm going to go on a long hike, I'm going to cut the grass, I'm going to clean the garage, I'm going to do all this stuff that turns out to...

Encephalitis, Meningitis and More Marty and Laura tackle a really tough topic today, talking about encephalitis and meningitis and other assorted brain and spinal cord inflammation. “These are scary because the dogs get very sick and it's a very difficult diagnosis to make,” Marty said. “It usually requires some advanced imaging, some advanced testing. It's not an easy diagnosis to nail down and i...

Do Stuff with Your Dog, Safely! Marty and Laura are talking puppercise today with a great run down of the fun stuff to do with your dog and how to do it safely. They even throw in a little philosophy. Like, what is “hiking?” Are we climbing cliffs or strolling on a volksmarch. Hosts discuss. Back on track, our intrepid hosts cover communicating with our dogs. How to hear what they’re trying to tel...

Managing Grief Over Pet Passing Marty and Laura are joined by Lindsay Stanton , grief coach and author to discuss managing grief after losing a pet. "At the end of the day, grief and trauma run down very parallel paths," Stanton noted. "And depending on the type of grief that you're experiencing, it can be extremely traumatic. And depending on the way the person or pet passed, it can be extremely...

Types, Causes and Treatment of Seizures Marty and Laura take on the tough topic of seizures in our pets. They break down the types of seizures, what may cause them and treatment options based on the cause. Sparked by a listener request to cover the topic when a client dog had a hypoglycemic seizure in a groom shop, this episode is for everyone who owns a dog. All dogs and cats can experience a sei...

Pros and Cons of Dog Parks and Doggy Day Care Marty and Laura debate dog parks and doggy day care, weighing the risk versus the reward of each. Dog parks and doggy daycare are convenient solutions to busy schedules. But they do have downsides. We're here to help walk you through some of the considerations. "Some (doggy daycares) are run really well," Marty noted, "so I don't wanna say that they're...

Home Alone Marty and Laura tackle separation anxiety, a tough topic for folks trying to manage returning to office life while keeping their pooch entertained. A lot of “pandemic dogs” that have never had 30 seconds of being by themselves, find a new way of life more challenging. “So there are some things that you can do to help prepare them for being left alone,” Marty said, “whether it's to go to...

How do We Give Our Dogs the Best Chance at a Long Life Marty and Laura walk through best practices for giving our pets the best chance for a long life. Our hosts share their experiences with losing dogs in old and young ages, while providing detailed recommendations to help our pets live long, productive lives. “So preventive care is going to be probably the most important,” Marty said. “And that...

The whole one year of human life is 7 years of dog life; some of that isn't right. But it kind of gives us a feel for what we think of puppy, teenager, adult, elder. Marty and Laura walk through those life stages and some of the things that we can do to ease or utilize those times that we have with our dogs. Everyone says it's too short, and they're right. So we talk about some ways to look at it...

Aquarium authority (and audio engineer extraordinaire) Lance Woodruff joins Laura while Marty is on a globe-trotting tour of meetings. Lance walks us through Laura's "box of fish" and everything above and beyond in the colorful and spectacular world of home aquariums. Filtration, salt or freshwater, fish friends (and frenemies!), tank size, and decorations—we cover the basics of Aquarium 101. The...

Marty takes Laura and listeners through the entire pantheon of cat life!  “Cats are not small dogs and dogs are not big cats,” Marty says. “So cats are a species unto themselves, and they have their own special wants, needs, desires, techniques, food, everything. It's a little different with the cat. “This is why a spay or neuter in a cat at six or eight months is very appropriate. Now, I don...

Marty and Laura take a deep dive into what does and does NOT constitute an emergency for your pet. "Your dog scratching at his ears, not an emergency. You can wait. Cat can't urinate. That is an emergency," Marty says. With the nationwide difficulty finding and accessing emergency services for our pets, a little bit of knowledge can save you an enormous amount of time, grief and frustration. From...

Marty takes us to school on understanding blocked cats. “Cats have a very serious medical condition when they cannot urinate. And you can only imagine how A, painful, and B, dangerous, that is, for cats, and it's almost always male cats. I can tell you, I can count on one hand the number of female cats I've seen obstructed, but male cats, pretty commonly. It accounts for about 3 % of all veterinar...

Marty and Laura tackle some tough topics around when and whether to spay or neuter our pets. Research has shown that early spay/neuter in dogs causes an increased incidence of several cancers as well as cruciate ligament tears and increased odds of both problematic and nuisance behaviors. “They don't routinely spay and neuter dogs in the European countries and they don't have a pet overpopulation...

Marty and Laura get waaaaaay into the creepy, the crawly, and the one-celled organisms… All of your pets’ potential parasites in one itchy episode. Learn about a “tick quest,” “tick nests” that could be under your bed, the potential role of ticks as vectors for diseases up to and including cancer, and more parasitology than you even knew was out there. Catch up on the life cycle of fleas, the scou...