Petscreen, I am not impressed.

I got a call from my vet's office this morning. They were confused as to why Petscreen used my name and then insisted on their mailing address so that they could be sent more information. I had posted back in December that I had signed up for the Petscreen newsletter but have only heard from them twice in the past 6 months.

I must have given them my vet's information when I signed up, but I have since changed to a new vet. The vet tech and I surmised that they must have called my former vet and discovered we had gone to a different animal hospital. Anyway, the call totally confused my new vet since they never knew Watson or his story. The person calling from Petscreen didn't clear up matters and only kept saying that I wanted the vet to get this information.

Hmmm.... that seems fishy and odd to me. Or perhaps just really disorganized. Either way, I am not impressed so far with their communication or their outreach efforts in the U.S.

Petscreen newsletter

As you may remember from this previous post, I had signed onto the email list for Petscreen, a company based in the U.K. that is working on a canine lymphoma blood test. I just received my first newsletter with some interesting info (in bold). Here it is below (note: I did not edit the newsletter except to embed URLs):

Some time ago you registered on the PetScreen website and asked to be kept up to date with our progress. This e-mail message is therefore the first of periodic updates that we will be sending to you.

It has already been a very busy year for us. We have recently returned from the North American Veterinary Conference (NAVC) where we met up with many friends and collaborators in addition to meeting new potential partners to help us develop our range of tests and to supply them around the world.

Notably, we had a very enjoyable meeting with Dr Patty Olsen, President of the Morris Animal Foundation – an exceptional person who is making great strides in the fight against cancer in dogs. If you have not already seen the MAF Canine Cancer Campaign website, take a look here.

We discussed the progress on the research projects into osteosarcoma and hemangiosarcoma to which our Chairman, Graeme Radcliffe has provided donations. We have attached the Morris Animal Foundation’s press release to give you more information.

Straight after NAVC, Dr Kevin Slater (our Chief Executive) travelled to The Veterinary School at Columbia Missouri for meetings to discuss the collaborative work we are doing with Dr Carolyn Henry. Some exciting new ideas emerged which should help in the application of our DCA test to the treatment of lymphoma in dogs.

Later in February Kevin will be going to Copenhagen where he will give a paper describing the latest results from our lymphoma blood test to leading canine oncologists at the First World Veterinary Cancer Meeting. Dr Henry will also be giving a key note address on the subject of cancer screening in veterinary medicine. You can find out more about this meeting here.

Straight after the Copenhagen meeting it will be Crufts. We have a stand in Hall 5 number 132. If you are planning to attend Crufts this year, please come to see us. It would be good to meet you and to tell you in person more about our work.

Recruiting blood samples to enable us to develop new screening tests for cancer in dogs and cats continues to be a major focus for us. If your dog or cat has been diagnosed with cancer and you would be willing to donate a small sample of their blood, it would go a long way to helping us fight this disease. You could either let us know directly by replying to this e-mail or by going to the donation section of our website.

Finally, we thought you might be interested in the attached article from the Australian Shepherd Club of America which talks about fighting cancer in their breed and also makes specific reference to our lymphoma blood test in this capacity.

We hope to see you at Crufts, but if you cannot make it, we will be sending you another e-mail update in the coming months.

Kind regards
Renu Tuli

Operations Manager

Petscreen Ltd

I had no idea that they were asking for blood samples!! I'm not sure what I would do, even if I had known of this when Watson was sick. What do you think? Would you ever donate some of your dog's blood? Why or why not?

PetScreen outreach

So as I wrote in a previous post, I recently learned of a company called Petscreen that offers blood test to detect canine lymphoma. After signing up for their mailing list, here is the email that was sent to me:

Dear Linda

I hope this email finds you and your pets in good health. Thank you for your recent registration with Petscreen. I have now sent details of our services to your vet and if you wish to have your dog screened for lymphoma then please feel free to make an appointment from next week and take them along to the vet. If you have any questions, or would like further information, then please feel free to contact me on the number listed below, alternatively you can email me at this address.

I look forward to hearing from you in due course.

Kind regards
Renu

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Renu Tuli

Operations Manager

I think it is interesting that their outreach strategy is to send information to people's vets one at a time. Considering the thousands of vets in the US, that could take a long while before any and all vets know about it. I also wonder about the cost of the test. As we all know, canine diagnostics can get very expensive for even in-house procedures.

Petscreen / healthy cookies?

I can’t believe another week has flown by! Yay, Friday! Work has been absolutely insane and I feel like I can’t get a grip on the fact that it’s (a) winter and (b) the holiday season. I now understand why old people are always talking about how time flies and how life “used to be…”

Anyway, I have both a question and a piece of info. Folks in the UK like Graham and Lesley may have already heard of Petscreen, a company based in Nottingham. The company has developed a screening test for canine lymphoma. I don't know many details about it since I am still reading through their web site. As far as I know, Petscreen is not very well known or available in the US. Has anyone outside of the UK heard of this screening? If so, have you done it? Please leave a comment and share your thoughts/experience.

Also, I am on the hunt for a healthy dog cookie recipe. I have found countless dog cookie recipes on the web, but would like a recipe that has been tried and tested by someone I know. Upon reading the labels on dog treats, I am appalled at the number of ingredients that I can't pronounce. Right now, I feed Waldo the dried chicken breast treats or the natural dog treats from my local pet store. The cookies have less than 10 ingredients and all are naturally occurring. If you have a dog cookie that you can share, please leave a comment as well! Perhaps we can have our own version of a canine cookie swap.