Long-time readers will have noticed I haven’t been posting much here lately. Partly, that is due to all the other work I am doing, both in the clinic and as part of the canine aging research I am involved in.
It is also somewhat due to a natural decline in enthusiasm for the game of pseudoscience whack-a-mole, where I try to pre bunk or debunk both the old classics of misinformation and the endless stream of new theories, products, and practices that are foisted upon pet owners with insufficient scientific evidence to justify them. After sixteen years of the blog, my book, and countless articles, interviews, social media posts, etc. on these topics, I have said much of what I have to say many times over.
I’m certainly not giving up, especially since advocacy for science and against pseudoscience and the Age of Endarkenment is more important than ever, given the anti-science madness that has seized our government and so much of the citizenry in the U.S. But detailed evaluations of specific claims and therapies will be less frequent, at least for a while.
In the meantime, I am doing things that might be of interest to some of you, and I thought I’d share the latest of these-
McKenzie BA. Assessing frailty in senior dogs. Companion Animal. 2025;30(10):2-5.
Abstract
Frailty is a measure of the net impact of ageing on the health and function of individuals. It is a manifestation of the decline in homeostatic mechanisms that lead to an increased vulnerability to negative health outcomes such as disability, disease and death. Frailty can be quantified through clinical metrology instruments. The most common of these are the frailty phenotype and the frailty index. Both frailty phenotype and frailty index instruments have been developed for use in dogs. The frailty phenotype is a clinical syndrome assessed by the clinician using a small set of measures to classify a patient as normal, pre-frail or frail. These measures typically include assessments of nutritional status, mobility, muscle strength and tolerance for activity. The frailty index uses a deficit accumulation approach, assessing a large number of variables, from historical and physical examination findings to disease diagnoses and clinical laboratory abnormalities, to generate a continuous frailty score. Measuring frailty allows clinicians to stratify patients by level of risk for negative health outcomes. This can aid in guiding diagnostic and treatment intervention, and facilitate making decisions about treatment options.
This is a review article summarizing what we know about frailty in senior dogs- what it is, how to measure it, and what we can use it for. It includes a link to a clinical frailty measurement tool for vets. I have also recently done a live webinar on this topic, which will soon be available on demand at the site of the Senior Dog Veterinary Society.
Moniot D, Allaway D, Bermingham E, Dowgray N, Gruen M, Hoummady S, McKenzie B, Olby NJ, Schoeman T. Aging is modifiable: current perspectives on healthy aging in companion dogs and cats. J Am Vet Med Assoc. 2025 Oct 1:1-8.
Abstract
Aging is a universal, continuous, and complex process in which an animal’s biological ability to resist, react to, and recover from environmental stressors declines and there is an alteration of physiological processes in response to accumulating cellular damage. In companion dogs and cats, aging is often perceived as an unmodifiable decline in physical and mental capabilities combined with increased morbidity, all aligned with chronological age. An insufficient understanding of healthy aging means missed opportunities to alter the trajectory of health span and maintain overall quality of life despite those changes that are inevitable. We believe that the course of aging is modifiable throughout an individual’s entire life, with healthy, or successful, aging being an achievable goal. We explored herein 3 aspects of healthy aging: the need for a better scientific understanding of aging processes in dogs and cats and practical potential of biological aging clocks; a meaningful definition of healthy aging; and greater use of validated clinical monitoring tools and resources. A universal, meaningful, and actionable definition of healthy aging is needed to dissociate aging from declining health and poor quality of life in all their manifestations. The unique relationship between pets and their caregivers may demand a more expansive definition than that for humans. We propose that healthy aging in dogs and cats should be regarded as aging in which the individual maintains functional capabilities and develops resilience sufficient to meet their own physical, behavioral, social, and emotional needs throughout all adult life stages, while sustaining the human-animal bond.
This is the result of a scientific working group I participated in last year. The goal is to help define healthy aging in dogs and cats and examine some of the main drivers of aging in order to point vets in the direction of better, more proactive management of this critical health issue in our pets.
McKenzie, BA. Overdiagnosis. In: Stephens T, Clutton RE, Taylor P, Murphy K, eds. Veterinary Controversies and Ethical Dilemmas: Provocative Reflections on Clinical Practice. 1st ed. CRC Press; 2025.
McKenzie, BA. What are general practitioners good for? In: Stephens T, Clutton RE, Taylor P, Murphy K, eds. Veterinary Controversies and Ethical Dilemmas: Provocative Reflections on Clinical Practice. 1st ed. CRC Press; 2025.
McKenzie, BA. An approach to ethical conflicts in veterinary practice. In: Stephens T, Clutton RE, Taylor P, Murphy K, eds.Veterinary Controversies and Ethical Dilemmas: Provocative Reflections on Clinical Practice. 1st ed. CRC Press; 2025
These are three chapters I contributed to a new book exploring some controversial issues in contemporary veterinary medicine. Several of these are topics I have written about previously, such as over diagnosis and the roles of general practitioners and specialists in patient care. The chapter on how to think about ethical dilemmas in vet med is new, a there is a lot more really interesting content from the other contributing authors and the editors.
I will continue to share my ongoing work in the aging field here, as well as periodically tackling some of the infinite variety of veterinary pseudoscience out there when I can’t help myself. ?
Since I have an aging dog–and because of my own advanced age, probably my last did — I am glad you are working in that area now. I thank you for your years of guidance.
I respect anyone who dedicates years to improving how we evaluate claims in veterinary medicine. That mission matters deeply. Where I struggle is with the assumption that all progress comes from swinging the same hammer at the same targets and calling the splinters a win. When the outcomes don’t change, science teaches us to re-examine the hypothesis, adjust the variables, refine the methods — not to declare the entire field hopelessly irrational.
Many of us are working hard to bridge the widening divide between pet guardians, clinicians, and scientists. We’re trying to make room for legitimate questions, for emerging evidence, and for the messy reality that clinical medicine must integrate data with patient needs and human preferences. That’s evidence-based medicine too.
There’s still plenty of pseudoscience out there to challenge. But there’s also a chance to elevate the conversation — to help curious people become better critical thinkers rather than shaming them into defensiveness. If the goal is better care for dogs and cats, collaboration will always take us further than vigilante debunking.
We’re on the same team. The work ahead requires both rigor and openness — and I’d love to see more of colleagues doing both.
“the assumption that all progress comes from swinging the same hammer at the same targets and calling the splinters a win”
That is a clever, but completely inaccurate description of science-based medicine and what I advocate. Science reinvents the hammer regularly and finds new targets every day. It is “traditional” methods rooted in outdated folk beliefs and validated by anecdote that keep repeating the past.
If you wish to police tone, you might want to start with the hate mail I get daily or some of the attacks on science and science-based providers that come from the anti-science fringe.
Most people using pseudoscientific methods have been fooled, and no one is shaming them for that.
Most people promoting pseudoscience are liars and grifters who thrive by viciously attacking legitimate science-based medicine, and they have earned all the shame they should, but apparently cannot, feel.