Mother Knows Death Presents External Exams with Nicole and Jimmy.
Hi everyone, Welcome to Mother Knows Death on Mother Knows Death Instagram and the Grocerroo. And we always talk about autopsies on people, but we never talk about autopsies that are done on animals. On this week's external Exam, we will be talking about animal pathology and forensics. An animal autopsy is also called a nekruptcy and they're performed by
trained veterinarians who specialize in anatomic pathology. Today we will be speaking with doctor Allison Watson, who is a veterinary anatomic pathologist and assistant professor at Colorado State University Veterinarian Diagnostic Laboratories. Welcome, doctor Watson. How are you.
I'm great, Thank you so much for.
Having me, Thanks so much, Thanks so much for being here. Like I have a million questions for you, So we're going to get started. Before we start talking about your really really cool and interesting job, let's first start talking how you got into the field of veterinary medicine.
I think I'm pretty similar to a lot of people that you asked that question. I from a really young age, I loved animals, so I feel like that was kind of the first career that I had in mind. And I also had an aunt that I'm really close with too, was a veterinary tech technician, so that kind of inspired me to go that route as well. I feel like most students that I ask, I'll say, oh, I've always wanted to be a vet from loving animals as kids.
That's really cool. So did you get to go to work with your with your aunt when you were younger and see what she did every day?
I did it a little bit. My family always had animals. We always had dogs and casts that we brought and we brought them to the clinic that she worked at. But I didn't start doing any real shadowing or anything until I was in high school and actually getting ready to graduate and go to college.
All right, So I know how the field of medicine works, for example, just going to medical school. First you have to go to college and you have to go to medical school. Then you have to do residency fellowships and things like that. Is it the same for the field of veterinary medicine or how does it work? Like after you graduate high school, what do you do?
It's pretty similar. We go and go and get a bachelor's degree first, usually in some science field, just because it fulfills all of the prerequisites. For most veterinary schools, they all tind of have a little bit variation in prerecs prerequisites, but like my bachelor's biology and zoology, so kind of a basic science bachelor's degree. I had a few students in my class that didn't end up getting
a full bachelor's degree. They got all the prerecs done and three years and then applied to med school and were able to go. But I think there's maybe at least three in my class with one hundred and forty people.
So after graduating with bachelor's degree, then you apply to veterinary school, so same thing like medical school, and then it's another four years four years of veterinary school, with the clinical year being kind of the last year year and a half where we're actually rotating through a large hospital and all the different specialties. And then where it's a little bit different from human doctors is that at
that time veterinarians can take the board exam. We take that in our last year, and then you can go out in practice in clinics. So most of the time the veterinarian that's going to see your pets, your dogs and cats or even horses. Is they're not specialized necessarily, so you can just go out and start practicing where most or all human doctors do residency training after. It's
not a requirement for veteran muans. But if you want to specialize, become a pathologist or any of the other specialties, then we apply again for internships usually so one year rotating internship through again similar to our clinical year where you rotate through all the different specialties in a large hospital and then go on to a three year residency program.
So pathology is just a little bit different than that where we don't have to do the internship part since we're not going to be practicing clinical medicine on living. We can just kind of go straight from veterinary school to residency. So that's what I did.
At what point did you decide that you were interested in pathology as opposed to taking care of and you do you call them patients? Still, we do.
We often call them cases, but I mean they are patients.
Yeah, of course, that's interesting.
Yeah, So I started at school wanting to be a zoo vet. So either work in a zoo or work in private practice with exotics, pet birds and pet pet reptiles. I really like birds and reptiles, so that's kind of what I started wanting to do when I was When you're working on applying to veterinary school, you have to get a lot of veterinary hours or volunteer animals with animals, so you know, volunteering at animal shelters are different at
rescue have places, and then vet clinics as well. So when I was working on that, I volunteered at the rapture So Bird of Prey rehab Center near where I went to college, and I was able to do e dropsies there. So that's kind of my first exposure to what an ecropsy was, and at that time, I still didn't know that that was a career that anyone did.
I thought it was just something that you did when animals die, and other veterinarians do this too, but I didn't realize that there were veterinarian pathologists until I started
vetering school. So our first year of school, we take kind of all their theology courses, so an adamy, physiology, virology, bacteriology, and then we also have our first pathology course, and that was kind of my first exposure to Wow, people do this as a career, and it really excited me in a way that clinical medicine didn't, which is kind of It was kind of a scary feeling when I started at school, like, oh, I've wanted this my whole life, but it's not really speaking to me as much as
I wanted it to to be a zoo vet. But as soon as I started delving into what pathology was and what pathologists do for their job, it's kind of light bulb going off my head, like this is a perfect marriage of science and medicine and for me. So I think by the time I was halfway through schools when I was one hundred percent going home, I'm going to be a pathologist and kind of go down that route.
I love that story. It sounds very similar to mine, Like I started school to be a nurse and was like, I, this is definitely not for me, and then I found pathology and was like, Okay, this is definitely I could do. I could help people still, and I could work in healthcare but not have to deal with the live people. So getting to that question, is there any ever a point that you see live patients anymore or are you only seeing parts of them or when they die?
Yeah, and pretty much don't see any live patients. Our lab is connected to the Veterinary Teaching Hospital that has all of the all the specialties housed in it, so if I needed to, I could go over there and look at the patient. I do so. A particular interest of mine is dramatic pathology, so pathology of the skin. So I do meet with with our clinical dermatologists pretty frequently and at least see photos up there living patients, but I don't usually meet them in person.
That's awesome. Yeah, of course you want to see all that stuff because you're you're a pathologist, so it makes sense, do you so? In human medicine, we have positions like mine, which is a PA, and we're the ones that dissect all the organs that come down from surgeries, and we're also the ones that perform the eviscerations for the autopsies. Is there a similar position for someone like that in your field or is that something that you just handle completely yourself.
It definitely depends on what lab you work in. At our lab, so we have three full time necropsy technicians that can't help us if we want, so I've mentioned and introduce me assistant professor. So we teach vetter nearing students, so they're required to learn how to don cropsy as part of their training. So we're teaching veterinaring students on our cropsy floor. So we often have them doing doing
the actual exam to learn. But if we're really busy or it's late in the afternoon or something, then my technicians can help or I'll have them do the full exam. Uh. And then as far as surgical specimens, we do have a whole separate team of technicians that do all of that, the gross exam on those specimens and trimming into cassettes, and then I go up to our histology lab.
That's interesting, So do you do you have a separate histology lab for the vet medicine or do you just send them over to a medical one and they just caught them.
Yeah, we have our own right in house, just down the hall from my office. So we have a we have I think we have like five or six full time techs in there, and we do our own aminum history, chemistry and special stating as well.
All in I'm really interested in this actually, because so if you want to do if you want to be a veterinarian, histotech, if you just want to do animal specimens, do you have to have the same or do you even know this? You have to have the same certifications as one that would work in a hospital.
You don't. They can, But as far as I know, I don't think our technicians do. But I have known a few at another place I worked and where I did residency that did that certification. But we for some of our technicians, we just require a bachelor's degree in a science field, but then others we don't, and then we do all of the on the job treating.
That's that's good to know because I always say this on every single interview almost that I know all of these people that have a bachelor's degree in science and they don't know what they can do with it, right, And this is just another example of a cool kind of job that you could get working in a lab with that kind of degree. So thanks for sharing that.
That's really interesting. So can you give us an example of some of the type of specimens and necruptcies that you do at work on a day to day basis. You don't have to give us your craziest case or anything like that, but just more of an example of the types of things that come across your desk every day.
Sure, and this can vary greatly depending on the time of year. But I was actually just one knee cropsy service yesterday, so I'll just give you an example of what we saw yesterday. We had two cats, two three dogs, and a rooster all in the same day. So but you know, other days we might get a fours a cow. We do get exotics or zeus species, so we might get a pet perry, a couple of chickens. We usually see anywhere from five to ten cases per day in
knee crompsy. So I looked this up because I can't remember exactly, but I think we see around seventy five percent dogs and cats in our lab, and then out horses and then sheep and goats, some cows, and then all the rest. So by far we're seeing mostly dogs and cats at our lab, but that can definitely vary on the part of the country that you're in, or if you're in a more rural area where see a lot more livestock, pigs and that type of animal. So
that's nee propsy. Our surgical biopsy service is really busy at Colorado State. So we get around you know, ninety to one and twenty cases a day. It is.
That's a lot of surgical cases, actually it is, yep.
So and that's just not all from our hospital, so we get a lot from the rest of the state and other states. We get cases sent to us from Japan even so we just have a pretty busy labs. We have four to five pathologists on surgical scheduled every day to take cases, and then we have one pathologist with residents on our nee cropsy service.
This is really mind blowing to me. Honestly, you're busier than a hospital some hospitals that I've worked at, actually, which is insane. It makes sense. So you're seeing specimens. Let's say, for example, you take your dog to the vet and they have a tumor and they say they want to take a biopsy of it so you can figure out if it's benign or malignant. Like that would
be something that you would get yep. And what would drive an that cropsy for an animal because for example, like one of my best friend's dogs just died about a month ago, and she she was. She's a pa actually too, so she's very curious as to what happened because she came home and the belly, the baby or the baby, the dogs, her baby, the belly was distended.
And then they said that she might have had a spleen tumor that ruptured and it looked like it was filled with blood on imaging, but she would have had to pay for the autopsy. So she kind of of just like, what's the difference? I don't need to get it, but is that normally what drives these cases is the family wanting to know or do you do it for scientific purposes?
Both? So I'd say cases that we get from from outside submission so at our lab, and I think most labs are like this. Owners or the pet owners are allowed to submit me dropsy so we don't have to have a referral, so they can just bring their pet straight from home to our labs. So I think that's
probably the majority of cases that we get. And usually it's it's that same scenario where their pet seemed healthy one day and then the next died suddenly, and they really want that closure to get an answer, and then otherwise it's for scientific interest or interest from our our clinicians in the hospital, So why did this dog that was doing so well on this treatment suddenly go downhill so fast and dye to determine extensive disease, so metastasis,
and they suspect that there's metastasis from a malignant tumor, and they want to know what organ it went to and how bad it was. We do have clinical trials patients that we do need propsies on that are purely for research to see how the therapy was working. And then a lot of times there's concerns for infectious disease, especially in our large animals, so a herd health issue.
People have chickens in their flock dying, they want to make sure that the rest of them are okay, or figure out disease process to treat other animals in the herd or flock. So it can be for a million different reasons, but I think pet owners often just want that closure and get an answer.
Since you work at a teaching facility, do you try to because I've worked at a teaching facility for humans, do you try to kind of recruit the necropsies just so your students could have exposure to something that they might not ever see again in their career.
We do, especially from the teaching hospital, so we encourage them to submit interesting cases or things that we might not see. It's fortunate. So in our at Colorado State, we do need propsies of patients through our hospital at no charge to the client. So we use a fund of money that comes from veterinary student tuition to pay for that. So it's there a patient that's been seen in the last six months to a year even and they die, then we'll do that at no charge to
the pet owner. So we have a be high caseload because of that. But outside some measure, submitters that are not patients of the hospital do have to pay. But we've at least since I've started, I've been here almost five years, and we've never had, you know, a problem with having enough cases to teach students, and we've had the opposite problem where we have too many cases for
the students to handle in one day. So I know that's different depending on what veterinary school you're you're working at, they may have very few cases and are recruiting a lot more actively. We used to accept donations, but we don't anymore. Just because we have such a high caseload.
This is so interesting when when I do an autopsy on a person that the permission form is very important as far as what we're allowed to cut and who gives the permission. There's a legal next of kin who's the only one that's allowed to sign it. It just it gets very complicated times because for example, a husband would be the legal next of kim, but maybe one of the children really don't want the autopsy done, but
we would still do it if the husband wanted it done. Right, So are there any kind of like who who gives permission? The owner? Do they have to give permission?
Yes, so we need permissions. We have them sign a forum that giving us permission to do the new cropsy and that we're really careful about only releasing information to that person, So we need it written permission if they want, you know, they're veterarian to see the report or talk to the pathologists. So that happens a lot where one owner will submit and then maybe the husband will try to call to get information, but we're not able to
release that. And then our cases from the hospital were a little bit more since those are often being used for research as well, or for clinical trials. We have a little bit more in depth form that they fill out where they give permission for tissues to be collected for research, or they can approve for the whole animal
to be used for teaching our research. And this because we often have requests from teachers throughout Colorado State for maybe a whole limb or ahead of an animal to practice dentistry or to practice dissection on, and we wouldn't want to do that without written and sign consent of the owner of that animal. So we do have a little box that they can check where they're aware that we may use this entire dog for a dissection purpose
we're teaching. So that's kind of nice that we're able to give the owners that ability, But otherwise we can use them signing. We can use tissues that we normally collect for an hrompcy that we might do this topology on. We can use that as part of a study if we want.
That's that's so cool. This is just like really mind blowing because I never really thought about it, and I just I actually just wrote about a case in the gross room about animal forensics, which we'll get to in a few minutes. But I never really I just really never thought that this was all going on behind the scenes for animals as well. When I took biology in my undergrad we dissected a variety of animals, but they all came from like Carolina Scientific or whatever, and they
were embalmbed and just smelled terrible. That smells just so terrible. So you're saying that your students have a big range of fresh animals to dissect or do they do them on fixed specimens too?
They both, So in their first year they dissect partially fixed dogs that that we do that don't come in through ne cropsy, so they similar they purchase them from companies or we have some agreements with some of the local humane societies where if strays or euthanized, they can be donated. So they do have a full semester dissection class on dogs where small groups that our new students will dissect fixed animals and to identify all the muscle groups, nerves, DearS,
and all of that. But then they throughout their education they have smaller group sessions where they'll practice surgical skills and joint injections on fresh tissues. So that's usually where we can they can utilize our neat cropsy lab for donated animals that way.
Yeah, I mean, it's way better to look at it fresh different, So I always prefer that too.
Yep, are students is in their last clinical year, that's where they have to learn how to ne cropsy, but they often enjoy that rotation just to kind of review anatomies that they haven't thought about since their first year and see it fresh compared to fixed. So it's nice that we can let them do that.
What's mind blowing about the field of batinary medicine to me is, for example, for humans, it's we have to learn one species of a mammal and then you guys have to know every single other animal in the entire animal kingdom. It's just and I know because from biology we dissected things all the way from like an earthworm to a lobster or something, and a fetal pig and a frog's completely different anatomy and all these animals. How do you guys learn all that?
It's challenging, you know. We often say that's why veterinary medicine is more exciting than human medicine, just because we get to we are able to learn all these different different anatomies of all the different species. So, like I said, we in our anatomy course they do focus on dogs, which dogs and cats are really similar, and then kind of teach in different ways the anatomical differences between species.
And then so focusing on for example, the rumin in or cow gastrointestinal system, which is is really different compared to our carnivores where they have the four compartments in their stomach. And then horses have a really different GI system as well, so different depending on what they eat. It can really vary. So we usually try to just
focus on the main differences. And then you know, muscles are all needing the same narrative groups and arteries means name the same, so that makes it a little bit easier. It can be a challenge though, I'm googgling a lot.
Yeah, because you learn it once, maybe five years ago, and then I totally understand that. I mean that's normal, every single person does that. I'm just trying to think of doing a necroptcy on a horse, just yeah, just how difficult that would that would be. Do you do you have specialized morgus for these larger animals? I suppose, Yeah, we have.
Our lab is pretty big, and we have a really advanced creaming system that goes through the whole lab, so we can lift horses off the ground and move them around with the creaming system, which is pretty shocking when people haven't seen that before. A whole horse kind of floating to the air in our crane rail. So we have really large hydraulic tables that fit a horse or a cow, or we'll put them actually directly on the
floor too. So it's quite different, I think than than human on autopsy is where you know, we if we have ten cases going out once, they can alter in our necropsy lab. So we're definitely have some more equipment that you probably wouldn't use in autopsies, like a sazzle for horse surprise.
You'd be surprised. I'm sorry, So how Yeah, because I'm wondering, like, how do you how do you even lay a horse down in the way that you would need to access their their chest and abdominal cavity because they don't really I guess they have a semi flat back. What do you have their head hang off the edge or something.
Or yeah, so a lot of and some people do it differently and I've learned both ways, but we actually do most of our autopsy or our necropsies and lateral recumbency, so which would be really weird in a human right, but yeah, so yes, So we'll only have to take off one side of the rib page of a horse, uh to to access long and heart, and we'll take out a pluck, which I think you probably do a humer in medicine too, so tongue tongue delungs, so that
makes it easier. I have seen different labs do horses and dorsal recumbency, which takes just a little bit of work to get them to kind of lay flat and not roll over. We do like some troughs and different tools like that, but we actually, at least at my lab, we do decropsies in lateral recumbency in most species, so
in dogs and cats as well. It's just a little bit quicker to just take off on one side of the root cage and just encourage the students to learn one way that they feel comfortable with and during their time with us, and if they do have to end up doing any cropsy on their patients in the clinics, which they can do, then they'll remember how from what we teach them.
That's cool. So do you take them? Do you take all you're saying you take all the organs out in one block, or we do We.
Take at least a tongue to lungs out altogether, and then we take the abdomble organs out separately, so we're not usually doing just one nice why incision and putting them all nicely back in. So it's it's it's quite different, at least from from what I know about human autopsy. Yep, we take them all out together and then seem for them.
Imagine those blocks are heavy for you to pull out all.
It's so heavy a horse imagine you know how long a horse horse tongue or horse neck kids, And so definitely in teamwork situation when we have those really large animals. A few months ago we had a giraffe at my lab, so we had you know, like twenty people working on the giraffe just because for time and in how heavy all the organs were. So it's exciting for us.
You I was gonna say, were you like so excited to go to work that day? I would have been like.
Yeah, it's fun to see species that we don't always see.
So do you have a particular one that you're like, I need to see this before I die.
I was just talking about this the other day. I'd love to see to learn more about the anatomy of a platypus, just because they have the venom they have like a little venom gland and uh, I I would like to I would like to need cropsy a platypus.
Where are they native to? Oh gosh, I don't even know. I wonder if you could just call someone at a university there, because they're probably like, oh, we do them all the time right now.
Yeah, I might be able to Yeah, because they're not usually you don't usually see them at zoos either, so because we do get some animals from zoos and theroughout the street, so we do get a lot of different species that they aren't Keptain's pets. But I've never seen one of those.
So, yeah, giraffe sounds so cool. I would be I would be stoked to see that. I saw a video of an autopsy on a whale recently and just think like it's just so big and grand. I just don't even understand how how you would even navigate that when you would have to be standing inside the body to try to remove some of the organs. It's just nuts.
Yeah, I've never got to help with that. I'd like to. I have some colleagues that like to travel and go to Alaska and they've got to help with quite a few whale the crumpsis. But I haven't got to do that. But it would be fun and smell.
So I know, I thought about that, like, Okay, you have this large animal that's dying and decomposing in a bottle of body of water. It's probably the worst smell ever. They smell terrible when they're alive, right.
Like, yeah, I've heard it's pretty bad.
Yeah, I can't. I can't even imagine, because a human that's in a body of water that's dead is terrible. So I just can't. I can't even wrap my brain around it. But I always say, like, the science of it is so exciting that you just kind of ignore the horrible smell because you want to see something cool, you know.
Yeah, I think so. Yeah, I'm not really affected by it anymore, but are students that aren't always down there definitely have like the vics under their nose, And.
I love that I love when students come in and just have no idea what they're about to walk into, and some of them are just like, look like they're going to throw up in the corner, and you just think you better get used to this because this is what you're going to smell every day working here.
Yep.
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For any additional updates about crime Con, make sure to follow them at crime Con on Instagram and x and join their free mailing list at crimecon dot com slash email. When So, when you get these, you get a lot of specimens on animals and stuff. Is there a common tumor that used the most common benign tumor most common malignant tumors that you see in animals?
Oh? Geez. At least so there's definitely a difference in kind of the types of cases that we see. So here we are at Colorado, we see a lot of theoplasia. So we have a big animal cancer center in the teaching hospital, so a lot of the cases that we do get are neoplasia. But I did residency in the Southeast, so we had a lot more infextious cases come through surgical biopsy and necropsy. I'd say probably I thought of this when we were talking about your your friend's dog
that passed. But we do see a lot of famagiosarcola as far as malignant cancer goes. So that's a tumor of the endothelial lining of vessels, so the cells align blood vessels, and they're really common in the spleen. So we do get those cases really commonly where the fleet is ruptured and they have a female abdomen blood and the abdomen, so that's an unfortunate one. They do happen in the skin as well, and can be animals can
be predisposed from increased sun exposure. Use the exposure, so in Colorado, where it's really sunny and we're at a higher elevation, we see a lot of those in the skin. And then as far as benign. You know, we get a lot of hammer tolas, little gingeble mass that are just hyper plastic that are benign, just proliferations. I think that's pretty common. I mentioned I really like dirm paths, so I get a lot of allergy itchy dog skin biopsies that are technically benign but cause the pent discomfort.
Can animals. So this might this might be a stupid question, but I've been very allergic to dogs my entire life. I get asthma in if they lick me, I get hives, and just I can't be around them. Can animals have that towards humans? Is there is Has that ever been documented?
You know, it's I think it would be hard to prove. We do. Clinicians, dermatologists will do allergy testing and dogs, kind of like like we do for people where you get all the little pig Yeah. Yeah, So we can't do that in dogs. But it's a little bit the science is a little bit less clear than in humans. So I haven't heard of a case where, you know, human deander human skins came up as an allergen to dogs, but they do have pretty similar environmental allergens that people do.
The grasses and so seasonal allergies dogs get pretty commonly.
Yeah, that's I mean, it's possible, right, Like, it's definitely possible. I just never really thought about that when you have so you're talking you have a cancer center. What I feel like, I only know a couple of people that have had cancer and how to get chemo, one being my grandmom and my and my uncle both had billiary cancer, so they had terrible, like hardcore chemo. And I wouldn't really advise that for any human, let alone an animal.
And I know people talk about getting their animals chemotherapy, so and then some vetecs that are in the grosser room, I've mentioned that it's just not as the same as a human getting it. So can you explain that to us more?
Yeah? So, I mean, at least where I work, a lot of animals are getting chemotherapy, right since they travel here to get treatment from our own cologists. And from what I understand is often the dosages of the chemotherapeutics aren't as strong as what we give people, so they might not get as severe side effects. And I mean
we do see dogs. They're nounxious, a little bit inappetent, maybe self hair loss, but it's never as severe as it seems that people experience, and so we can treat again with anti nauga and medications and they seem to do really well. And I don't think it's you know, as understood, but I think it has to do with the dosage of what chemotherapeutic they're using. We do have animals.
I've seen some animals that just don't respond well or have such severe side effects that that they have to discontinue. So it does happen, but not as not as commonly as in people.
Yeah, So do you ever think maybe humans could get a little bit less and they don't know so.
Much or something. And I think, yeah, there's a there's a difference, right, Like we're and obviously in the animals too, or trying for curative intent with chemotherapy. But uh, you know, a lot of a lot of the neoplasia and the cancer that dogs are getting, maybe chemotherapy extend their life by one cancer for a year. That's like pretty hopeful for a lot of diseases, unfortunately, but people were hoping
for like complete remission and for life exactly. So I think that that has a lot to do with it as well, just kind of different, different therapeutic goals I guess for for dogs ors people.
Yeah, I understand them. Yeah, So talk talking about my same friend. Hopefully she listens to this. I'll tell her to anyway. Which So she has dogs that she gets from a breeder, and I feel like they have they have problems.
I don't.
I don't have dogs, so I don't know if every dog just has problems. But she's had autoimmune disease. A couple have had cancer and die at eight nine years old, not too old, but I don't know again how long
they're supposed to live. But she so I always say to her, like, maybe you don't want to get this from the breeder, because I did write an article last year in the gross room about inbreeding with humans, and I couldn't really get I did find a couple of articles talking about it with animals, but there was some
conflicting information with that. So I know, with humans, if you have children too close together, there could be an increased risk of genetic mutations and inherited genetic other inherited genetic diseases. What about with animals? You have been aion on that.
Yeah, and you know what some of This has been pretty well proven with different breeds of dogs, and we'll just use dogs as an examples since that's the most common. But certain diseases, Yes, it's been proven. We've found the genetic mutation in certain breeds that predisposed to different cancers and different conditions. In other times, we haven't been able to sign that that genetic but it seems like there is a predisposition. A higher percentage of say Golden Retrievers
get osteosarcola and Mandia sarcoma. These are all just examples. Burne's Mountain dogs get histiocidic diseases histiocidic circla. Most of them get this some some sort of histiocidic neoplasm during their life. So I think it's it's proven that that certain pure bred dogs are predisposed to certain diseases. But that being said, because I get this question all the time, like, well I got a I got a mutt from the pound and it still got bone cancer, and like why
did that happen? And now there's still spontaneous point mutations that are you know, predisposed to to neoplasia. So I think we just don't know as much in dogs as we do and people about about genetic predispositions or genetic mutations, but we're getting there slowly through research and identifying these genes. So you know, I have all mixed breed dogs partly for that reason. But you know, it doesn't doesn't stop doesn't stop folks that love a certain breed from continuing
to to get them. So I think it's important to you know, look into what breeder you're buying dogs from and seeing if they're on top of research, because there are a lot of tests that you can do, a test for genetic mutations and breeds that we know about kind of and stop breeding those individuals. So I think, if you're gonna buy pure bread dogs, make sure you're buying some responsible breeders and not just you know, hobby backyard people.
That just made me think of something too, when you were saying that people were saying that their MutS were coming up with bone cancer or something too. I mean, I'm assuming that animals have that can have the same environmental exposures to viruses and even I mean what I've never thought about this either, but what about a dog living in a house with with a chronic smoker or something like that. Has there only been studies done on that kind of stuff?
There has been. It's again pretty difficult to prove. But you know we I get that question all the time too, Like I lived near sanctuaries, that's why my dog died? Maybe, right, We can't really say one way or the other. They've done big studies on swain A cell carsonoma and cats that thought maybe like cats that were in smoking households were more likely to get carconoma. But it's just it's
hard to hard to prove. And think about, you know, an animal that has such a shortened life span compared to a person, so their environmental exposures can have a greater impact in their lifetime, or at least that's kind of what we think. And you know, it's easier to study cancers and dogs because they have a shorter life span compared to a person. Right, So for example, on going back to the pure bread dogs were part of a Golden retriever lifetime study from the Morris Animal Foundation.
So they've followed around two thousand dogs Golden retrievers from tying their puppy to death and they get regular veterinary care and they'll all or as many as we can get the cropsies at the end of their life to try to get a little bit more information on what these dogs are dying from and do some more genetic research. So I think with time, when we're trying to catch up to human medicine, we'll figure more of that stuff out.
Yeah, it's just this is just so cool. I really appreciate this interview with you because I'm learning so much stuff today. So there's we're going to start turn talking
about now how your work could also help humans. There's infectious diseases for those of you who don't know that are listening that some can are specific to species, like feline HIV or HIV, and felines are Feline immuno deficiency virus is only something that happens in felines, and human immune deficiency virus is only something that happens in humans, So a human that has that just can't give it to a cat. But there are ones that are called
zoonotic diseases which cross species. And I know that most people could say that they've heard of that because of when they were talking about the origin of COVID, when they were trying to determine if it was coming from one of those wet markets and that they were saying that it crossed species from an animal to a human. So in those types of cases, someone like you would
get involved in that kind of stuff. Is have you ever been involved in a case where you were doing a necropsy on an animal to try to see if it was from if it was spreading to humans or vice versa.
Yeah, we get zoonotic cases pretty frequently. The biggest example is ravies, So our lab removes breeds and then the virology lave upstairs will do the fluorescent antibody tests to determine if an animal had bravies or not. So I think that's probably the best example where we get. My tech texted me the other day and we had we got fifty cases in one day where a brain brains
needed to be removed from wildlife and dogs. So we get mostly the dog cases are from bite bite cases where the dogs weren't vaccinated against rabies and then they bit someone and so they were euthanized and had to have their brain removed for to test for rabies to make sure the person wasn't exposed. So we get those all the time, we do get some positives, but by that time, hopefully the person who's had post exposure vaccinations.
I haven't had one where since. Like we're using rabies as an example, it's so rare for humans in the US to succumb to riebies get disease from it, so I haven't had to go backwards in that way. But we do a lot of zoonotic testing in our lab, so we get wildlife and even dogs and cats where plague is suspected or tularemia. Those are big examples that are common in Colorado. We've had a couple of anthrax cases. We had one two years ago in the lab, which
is scary. Luckily, we have our a separate kind of area for zoanautic diseases, so only one person was around the cow that had it to do the testing. But that's a big deal that we have to, you know, afford the government about reportable diseases. Yeah, so we we do that a lot. What usually happens if an animal has plague, and especially a dog, this happens every couple of years where it was treated in the hospital, so vet students and nurses and doctors were all exposed in
this dog and that. Yeah, so so that's usually where kind of at least they don't have the disease, but they were exposed. So we want to make sure people are aware of that. We get chlamydia cases that are zonautic, so we have, you know, a biosecurity hood that we do all our pet birds in and certain abortion cases, so for cue fever and chlamydia. So we're exposed to quite a few different zonotic things on the necropsy floor.
Were so I I don't know if you listen to my interview that I did with doctor Michelle Miranda, she's a forensic tattoo expert and she was They did listen to that one, Yeah, did you so just briefly like she was talking about she had just been been at a conference in Australia and found out that koalas carried chlamydia.
Yeah, they do. Yeah.
Is that something that is considered zoonautically? Could it get spread to humans or it's a different kind of.
I think that one's different. It's Chlamydia cacorum. I can't remember if humans can get that one, but the ones that birds get is citicize, so for media citizize, So our citizen prayerents. So here is like cockatiles, all of them and we can get that from media. So oh god. But yeah, so we uh you know, that's a reason why we do all those cases in the biosecurity hood, even if we're I'm pretty sure that's not what it is, just in case. So since we're working with students a lot,
you don't want that. Uh oh, well went of you know, opening out to the animal and seeing that it's probably something zoonotic.
Yeah, we had one time. I used to work at a hospital that did a lot of neuropathology and we had a case of suspected rabies and they wanted us to do the autopsy in our lab. And I remember the neuropathologist came up to me and he was like, I just don't want you do in that case. And I was like, okay, he's just like, you don't want to be exposed to that. I don't know what the precautions are here, just it would be better if you're
not exposed to it. So do you do you guys have to do special precautions for suspected cases of rabies or is that just normal universal precautions.
We're actually all vaccinated, So all of that students and anyone that works in our lab is that's going to be around breeding tissues vaccinated against rabies. And then we do tires that our work pays for every other year to just make sure that we're good to go. But we do we don't expose the students even though they're vaccinated, So we have a separate area that we'll remove brains and then usually my technicians are doing that, so they wear cut gloves and take a little bit extra precautions.
Definitely not using any saus around potential rabies suspects. But we do have you know, in ninety fives and we get fit tested and we try to be as careful as we can with those cases.
It's mandatory then that you guys give vaccinate for that because I would I would think it should be yeah, yeah, we're not for.
Humans, that's right, right, So if we had a medical reason. I've had a couple of that students that got really had really severe reactions. It's a three vaccine series, so maybe they end up only getting two and then getting tighters more regularly, but otherwise were all required to do that and do the by or every other year tighter.
Yeah, because the it's it's not like, oh, I'll take my chances. You're you're going to die if you get that, so I would definitely.
Yeah, So all veterinarians are vaccinated just because they're gonna get they're probably at maybe a higher risk just because they can get bit.
Yeah.
Right, but.
Oh god, that's scary. All right, let's talk about the forensic aspect of this. I don't know how familiar you are with it, but in the Grosser Room last week or two weeks ago, I wrote about a k of a dog. So the scene investigators show up to the scene of a murder where a man was shot and also his dog was shot to death. They were both shot to death, and they said that one of the one of the man went to the medical examiner to get an autopsy, but then the dog had a necropsy
done to retrieve a bullet. So that got me really thinking about talking to someone like you, because this is this is really interesting. Obviously, the body of the human will go to the medical examiner's office, would the body of the dog go to someone like you?
Yes, yep. We get forensic or legal necropsy cases all the time. We had two. I had two yesterday. So we get cases submitted from all different counties of law enforcement agencies or humane societies throughout Colorado. And then we also mentioned that pet owners can submit, so they can choose to submit their own themal for a forensic the propsy and with plans to you know, prosecute or try to try to prosecute whoever they think might have killed their animal or so we do get cases like that too.
That's that's really interesting. So when you learned this in school, you learned this in your in your residency thing that you were doing afterwards. So during that were you trained specifically in forensics how to handle evidence and how to take pictures because ultimately these case that information could be used in the prosecution with the case probably I'm assuming yep.
So we handle them a little bit differently. Uh, And I've you know, I have an interest in forensics, so I've I definitely seek out additional continuing education or training at our different pathology meetings, there's often different lectures or
workshops that we can do about forensics. So we do take photos differently than we do of our other cases with labels and not deleting photos that we take, making sure we're documenting every single part, which we don't always do with our diagnostic regular cases, and then collecting evidence a different way. We store tissues for much longer than we do our normal cases for years, collect them in
a little bit different way for forensic cases. But I know training can vary quite a bit amongst training programs. One thing that I try to expose our residents to these cases because we make sure that the residents don't take kind of primary responsibility for legal cases because we don't want them to get subpoenat and have to go to court for it. They may have moved away or be busy with studying or some things we don't want
them to have to deal with it. But I think that kind of does a disservice for our residents because then when they start a job and they're all of a sudden like, okay, here you going, Now you're the responsible party. So I try to at least talk to them about the cases that I take and make sure they're aware the process so that it's not a surprise when they're done with residency.
Yeah that makes sense, because yeah, they'll be getting ready to take a really important test and have to go testify at court and just exactly that would be the last thing on their mind that they want to deal with at that point. So there's been times where you will collect like bullets, do you collect DNA and stuff like that too.
We will collect at least fresh sterile tissue, but and I know, you know, other labs are a little bit better equipped to collect trace evidence and you know, fingerprint the animals and DNA, but we do rely on our law enforcement agency to do some of that before they
bring the animal to us. But I'll just try to collect as much as I then, and you know, we're not ballistics experts, so we'd still rely on the law enforcement officer that is assigned to the case to come and pick up the bullet fragments to do additional testing there. But we try to collect as much as possible at the time of the exam that we might need later on.
So we'll keep stomach contents and additional samples fluids that we might not for a normal ne cropsy, but try to just to anticipate anything that we might have to do later on.
What are other circumstances that you would do a forensic exam on an animal so.
We get the We get a lot of unfortunately, a lot of neglect and abuse cases, so hoarding cases where animal controls called out because you know, they see their neighbors starving their dog and it died, so they want to prove that and try to prosecute the person that they think killed the animal from neglect or abuse. So
that's probably most common. And then you know, we get unfortunately, we get cases like the one that you mentioned where a person was injured at the same time, so they want to try to use that to help in prosecution against the injury that they did towards a person or if they murdered them. You know, we've had a case where person you know, attempted to they killed the animal, They killed the dog, and then tried to kill their
girlfriend the same time. So they really want to hammer at home and use that in the prosecution to make sure that person goes to prison. Yeah, if they we get a lot of you know, starvation cases. Unfortunately, they're abandoned buildings and they find an animal in there, so they want to see if it was killed or if it died of natural causes.
Yeah, my husband works in Camden City. I don't know if you know anything about it. But he sees a lot of he's a firefighter and he just comes across cases of different things all the time, and I think about all of these. There's I guess there's special police officers like animal control officers, so you must deal with them when you're dealing with this, right, And would you or have you ever had to go to court to testify on any of these types of cases?
So so far I haven't gone to court, but I do get subpoena like multiple times a year, and you know, I've gotten to where the trial was the next week and that, but then the person pled guilty, so I'm almost had to go to trial. And multiple times I have kind of an active case right now that they think is going to go to trial later in the summer. But my colleagues have multiple times, some of them so over their career years. So we do get called as
expert witnesses for these cases. A lot of times they're able to just use our report to prosecute, but other times they really feel like it would be important for us to to go to trial, So we do get called a lot. So I may go to trial later this year, but often as soon as they put us in as expert witnesses, I feel like they kind of do a plea deal. Or at least that's been my experience.
But yeah, at least like three or four of my of the other pathologists I work with, have had to go multiple times for different cases.
Yeah, that would make me so nervous. I mean, I guess I don't know, because I feel like when I do autopsy and stuff, I'm very confident in what I find. And I think I would be I would be fine. I just I've been to court a couple times with the medical examiner and the defense lawyers are just so like scummy and ask these stupid questions, and I would I don't know how I would. I wouldn't be I would be like a smart ass to them.
Maybe yeah, I one of the cases. I you know, when I first started, I wasn't really sure how the process worked, and I didn't know that you could say no to the defense about meeting beforehand. So they wanted to meet before the trial, and it was a video chat and it was an hour long interrogation from them like how can you say this? Like what if this was your animal? And how old do you think this dog should have lived and just oh my god, it
was a lot. So I was happy that that one didn't go all the way because it did give me a taste of what it could could be like. But yeah, I think, you know, whatever case we're doing, we should have considents in what we put out in our report, so as long as we can stick to that, But you know, they do, they do want us to give our opinions as well, like not based on our findings,
which I really try to avoid. Uh, you know, just like I can only tell you what I see in my exam, and they have a lot more information about the case than we do to kind of make those inferences. And it's up to the officers and the prosecution to put the story together.
So yeah, And isn't it like the court might be a whole year or later after you actually did the case. So you're like, I don't I don't remember read my report. This is what I saw.
Yeah, they they'll email me and say, hey, you're gonna get a subpoena from and they just give you the animal's name maybe or like I'm like, I have no idea what case that is. I'm going to need a date range or something.
Right, You're like, I've done fifty this week, Like what do you what do you want from me here?
All right?
Well, do you have anything else that that you want to talk about that I didn't cover?
Oh? I just saying, you know, for anyone that then is thinking about, you know, going into veterinary medicine, just keep all your options open. Can do a lot with this degree or even any science degree like you mentioned. You know, look what's out there. There's a lot of careers that you might not have heard of. I think most people that I tell what my job is, they've never they don't know what pathology is, or didn't know
that there are venternoring pathologists to any propsy. So just to do your research and keep keep your auctions open, uh, for what you want to end up doing.
I love that this is this is so interesting and I think what I gather from this whole interview is that your job is so cool and at any level if you just if you want to be a tech so I guess if you went to there's like a degree for associate's degree for vet tech. Right, it's associates, yes, man, Or if you want to go the full route and do the whole doctor. If you want to be a doctor too, there's a different there's lots of different education
levels that you could do this job. And on top of that, it's cool because I feel like in human medicine you have to pick like, Okay, do you want to do hospital pathology or forensic pathology, And with yours, it's like you can kind of do everything and see lots more. Honestly, it sounds really interesting.
Yeah. Yeah, I think it's best job ever.
So you've definitely sold me. I'm very interested in Thank you well, thanks for being here with us today. It was so nice meeting.
You, nice, feeding you to you.
Thanks, thank you for listening to Mother nos Death. As a reminder, my training is as a pathologists assistant. I have a master's level education and specialize in anatomy and pathology education. I am not a doctor and I have not diagnosed or treated anyone dead or alive without the
assistance of a licensed medical doctor. This show, my website, and social media accounts are designed to educate and inform people based on my experience working in pathology, so they can make healthier decisions regarding their life and well being. Always remember that science is changing. Every day, and the opinions expressed in this episode are based on my knowledge
of those subjects at the time of publication. If you are having a medical problem, have a medical question, or having a medical emergency, please contact your physician or visit an urgent care center, emergency room, or hospital. Please rate, review, and subscribe to Mother Knows Death on Apple, Spotify, YouTube, or anywhere you get podcasts. Thanks