In this episode, Alice and Janet sit down with Dr. Kelly Diehl of the Morris Animal Foundation for a conversation that spans everything from beloved pets to groundbreaking animal health research. Kelly shares stories about her Labrador retriever, Emily, her family’s unexpected fishkeeping hobby, and the lessons animals teach us. She also discusses the Morris Animal Foundation’s mission, which has funded more than $167 million in research to advance animal health, wildlife conservation, and veterinary medicine.
The conversation explores how research priorities are chosen, the science behind funding decisions, and efforts to address major canine health challenges, including aging and cancer. Kelly also highlights the landmark Golden Retriever Lifetime Study and its potential to improve both animal and human health. Plus, hear a touching tribute to Betty White and the lasting legacy she left in animal welfare.
Join us for an inspiring look at the research, philanthropy, and passion driving better lives for animals everywhere.
Learn more about Morris Animal Foundation or connect with Dr. Kelly Diehl here:
Dr. Kelly Diehl on IVC Journal
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Safeguarding Animal Health Through Research With Dr. Kelly Diehl
Janet, have you ever heard of the Morris Animal Foundation?
It was new to me until you sent me the link. It’s cool work that they do.
Overview Of The Morris Animal Foundation
It was founded by Dr. Morris. It funds research for animals, not only dogs and cats, but also tortoises and penguins, to research animal diseases all over the world. It’s a fabulous foundation. We are lucky enough to have Dr. Kelly Diehl. Kelly is a board-certified small animal internal medicine specialist.
She got her veterinary degree from the University of Tennessee. She did a year internship at Animal Medical Center out by you in New York City, then her three-year residency in small animal medicine at Colorado State, plus a three-year NIH postdoc fellowship at National Jewish Health. I can’t wait to ask her about that.
She joined the staff of the Veterinary Referral Center in Colorado, where she became part-owner of the Internal Medicine Service. She did that for fourteen years before deciding she’d like a career in science communications. That’s when she joined the Morris Animal Foundation. Her specialty is in the areas of immunology and gastroenterology.
As I said, she’s a board-certified small animal veterinary internal medicine specialist. She lives in Colorado. She has two kids, two cats, too many fish, she claims, and also one very lovable Labrador Retriever. We can’t wait to talk to Dr. Kelly about the Morris Animal Foundation and all the wonderful things they do.
The Golden Retriever Lifetime Study
Janet, with you and I, owning Golden Retrievers, they currently have the dog aging project, which features Golden Retrievers. Also, they’re looking into the most common cancer in Golden Retrievers, which is the hemangiosarcoma. That’s just two of the wonderful things they’re doing. I can’t wait to talk to her about all the research projects, far and wide, all over this world. It is a great foundation for animals and animal health.
You know what Daddy would say about Dr. Diehl, “She’s one smart cookie.”
We love having smart cookies on this show. Dr. Kelly, before we start talking about Morris Animal Foundation, we want to know about this lovable Labrador Retriever and the too many fish.
The lovable Labrador is mine, mostly. We got it. The kids said, “We’ll help take care of her,” but I knew that was never going to happen. Emily is my dog. She’s getting up there, but she does great. The fish is an interesting story. My daughter, like many kids, brought home a betta. They’re like, “I want a betta.” We had a little tank that we borrowed from somebody. My husband thought that a good thing would be to go to the Denver Aquarium Society so that they could be better betta owners.
The next thing I know, they go to the first meeting. A bag of fish comes home. A tank gets bigger. There’s another bag of fish and some plants. We now have six tanks with all different kinds of fish. This is one time I put my foot down, and I said to my husband, “This is your hobby.” Long ago, the betta died. My daughter abandoned the fish. It’s now my husband’s project. I do feed them. I do change their water, but all the fancy stuff, like vacuuming and all of that, is not my job.
Does one of those tanks have the requisite scuba diver?
No. Ours are very fancy, so they have real plants that my husband has artistically put in shells, driftwood, and all of that. We did have, though, a little sunken chest, the pirate’s chest. It’s a treasure chest in my son’s tank in his room. I use the term son loosely. It’s another place for my husband to store fish in his bedroom.
I often wonder what the fish think about that treasure chest, or they’re swimming around the figurine of the diaper. What are they thinking about?
It’s good mental stimulation, though, because Janet, when I volunteer at CROW with the wildlife rehab place for the possum and all those turtles. We change that. Every other day, we put new branches in. It keeps them going.
I don’t know what the fish think. I will share a story because Emily is very jealous. We have two cats. She doesn’t like it when you talk to the cats. My husband was talking to the fish like, “Little fish, where are you?” That dog came out of no place. Why are you talking to those weird little water dogs? Everything’s a dog. The cats are little dogs. Those are the water dogs. She was jealous that he was talking to the fish.
I did read a study, though, that fish can recognize their owners.
They like him.
Your husband would agree to that.
Absolutely. Even if he’s not feeding them, if he walks by a tank, they go right to the front. They totally know. They can tell the difference between him and me because he is the primary caretaker. We always say they look at him like he’s their deity. They’re like, “Our deity is here to put food in and clean our tank.”
They probably give you the other end.
Kelly needs to do that with her husband. Look at him like he’s a deity. We’ll call him Fish Flick Man. Kelly, you lived in Manhattan, right?
I did for a year. I don’t know if you can tell by my accent, but I grew up in Jersey. Not far from Newark.
Don’t you pump your own gas?
Never. I then lived in Manhattan when I was at the Animal Medical Center. I knew New York quite well from growing up right outside it, but that was a whole different experience. Manhattan is fun if you have people to play with. Our intern class is big. There were 23 people, so you always have people to play with. That makes a big difference.
When Kelly sent me her bio, and I was reading it, I made a comment to Kelly. All of us vets have lived all over the United States. You’re doing an internship here, externship there, residency here, and taking boards here. You get to know the country. When you’re going to your yearly derm meetings for me and internal medicine for you, you get to see the country that way, too, because it’s always in a different city.
I moved around quite a bit. I’ve been in Colorado for 35 years. It’s been a long time out here. I was all over the place when I was young.
Where is Morris Animal Foundation located? Is that in Colorado?
We’re based in Denver. Mark Morris Sr. was from Colorado. He was a person who went all over the place because he went to vet school at Cornell, then had a practice in New Jersey. The first time I walked into Morris Animal Foundation and I saw a picture of his practice, I was like, “We took our cats there.” He had already sold it, but it was the same practice. Hill’s is based in Topeka. A lot of people think that’s where the foundation is, but we’re in Denver.
Kelly, I went to one of the national preserves. My husband and I got a pass to go into one of the caves. To get the pass, you had to say that you’d never been in a cave before. Anything you had on, you’d never worn in a cave because of white-nose syndrome. I was telling Alice about it. She said that you guys are funding a study.
Wildlife Conservation And Emerging Disease Research
We are. We’ve funded several studies over the years, especially for our wildlife portfolio. A lot of what we’ll study are emerging diseases. We revived what we call our rapid response fund, which is to be a little bit more nimble to respond to crises. We’ve done a lot of work after the Deepwater Horizon oil spill.
Over the years, we’ve funded several studies in our wildlife portfolio, many of which focus on emerging diseases. Share on XWe did some work on sea otters when they were dying in California. It turned out to be from toxoplasmosis and kitty litter. We did something on the gray wolves when they were about to be delisted. However, we have a call for wildlife proposals and white-nose syndrome. We do have one going on that we’re very optimistic about. They’re going to be finishing up. Things are looking good for them, so we’re excited.
Do these different studies apply for a grant from you all?
Yes. We have calls at various times of the year. They rotate. Typically, they’re the same time, but they can vary a bit. Our main buckets, if you want to call them that, are cat, dog, wildlife, and equid, which is mostly horses. Though we’ve done donkeys and mules as well. We’ll have special calls. We had a gentleman who was interested in immune-mediated hemolytic anemia, because he had a dog that had it, which survived and is lucky. It’s a terrible disease with a very high mortality rate. He said, “I want to sponsor studies.”
We may have something like that that’s donor-inspired. Other times, we’ll have a special interest. We did one on hemangiosarcoma. We’re going to do another one in June of 2025. It’s a special call. We have them rolling. The last bucket is for Golden Retriever Lifetime Study data and samples, which is a more unusual study for us in that it’s in-house. Those we rotate quarterly. We’ll open for a little bit, get proposals, review them, and open it again. That one’s a little different than the yearly calls that we typically have.
That’s amazing. I read that you’ve given out $160 million for 3,000 studies. That is amazing for 25,000 species. That’s incredible.
It’s a huge amount. We ran the numbers because we usually run them in July. We have now crossed $167 million and 3,100 studies. We’ll be updating soon because we ran that. That’s a huge milestone.
What are your donors like?
All over the place, though the majority, seriously, are people who give us $10 or $25. They’re not giant donations, but people are consistent. We have some donors who’ve been with us 30 years. We’ll hear from them in 35 years. They’re all over the country. We do get some donations internationally because we fund internationally.
We’ll have a few big donors here and there. We have some folks who have been with us for quite a long time. We have a few industry partners, but we don’t have as many with them. It is by far and away. I always go to people it’s my mom. It’s my mom giving at the end of the year, or she sees an appeal. It’s like most of us, how we give to charities.
Donors don’t realize. I’m in the nonprofit world as well. They’ll say, “I can only give you $25.” What I say to them is, “It’s $25 more than I had yesterday.” If twenty people give me $25, it adds up. No gift is too small. It truly does make a difference, no matter what level.
That $167 million is not because somebody gave us $40 million in a pot. That is all of those $25 and $10. People sometimes remember us in their estate plans. We get money that way as well. Many of those folks may have given us $400 in their lifetime, but then a couple thousand come our way after their estates are settled. Those are all where we get our funds.
How do you decide which diseases you’re going to focus on? You see the list. It’s amazing.
A lot of times, we don’t. The researchers decide for us. Sometimes, we’ll have what we call an open call. For years, that was most of our calls. Come to us with whatever ideas you have and whatever you think is important. Occasionally, we will focus because maybe we have a donor. Our last dog call was for senior dog health. We were very focused on things like osteoarthritis and cognitive declines. We have some microbiome studies. We have one on periodontal disease. These are all going to be reviewed.
Sometimes, we decide. For example, we got a nice donation from the Doberman Pinscher Club. They were like, “We want to do something that affects Dobermans.” We’ve done some cardiomyopathy work for them. We have one on wobblers. Somebody had a dog with wobblers. That’s a pretty devastating disease. They said, “Can you help us?”
We have several with the Golden Retriever Foundation. Sometimes, they just give us money and say, “Go find some studies.” Often, they’ll give us money and say, “Put that toward the Golden Retriever Lifetime Study.” They came with us and said, “Could we work together to fund a big study?” They had already identified, but they wanted us to come together. That’s a lymphoma study that’s going to occur at the University of Minnesota. All the different ways we may find studies. It’s not always targeted at a particular disease, but can be all over the board.
Some of it’s unrestricted funding.
A lot of it. In fact, we often prefer that. We’re all in the nonprofit world. Sometimes, when it’s restricted, that can be harder for us, but we get it. Most of our funding is unrestricted.
Do you have a panel that decides on where that unrestricted funding is going to go? They must be veterinarians.
Scientific Research Funding And Expert Review Panels
Absolutely. We say, “Here’s the pot of money we’re going to spend every year on these.” What we do to take some of the burden off of us, and also to make sure it’s not our agenda. We also can’t be experts in everything. We convene panels for every one of our calls. We’ll go out. We’ll find experts. We get these proposals sent to us. We screen them for what we call guideline deviations. You’ve got to be succinct. We don’t want to tome. We’ll do that and screen that first.
We convene these folks. It can be as small as five or six people. If it’s a single or two grants, typically, there are about ten people. They divide them up. We have two people per grant. They read them at a meeting where all we do is facilitate. Our only job is to sit and answer questions that have to do with procedure, but we don’t interfere or talk about the proposals themselves. They tell us. The people will present will say, “Here are the pros and cons.” They have a scoring rubric. They present it to the rest of the group. Everyone votes. They give it a score. We rank them.
We have a cutoff. We’ll say, “These are recommended for funding.” They’ll rank them because every time, it is rare for us to have more money than we have studies. Sometimes, our fundraising team will go out and beat the bushes because maybe that’s a study that they know someone will contribute to. I will honestly say we tend to have more cat money than we often have cat proposals. We might shift money around. We may say, “Let’s put some in wildlife or let’s divide it up.”
That’s how we figure out where the money goes, but we never tell our reviewers, “Dink it.” Unless they think the budget isn’t appropriate. We’re like, “We’ll figure it out.” We have some guidelines on the budget. We’ve had some pretty big-dollar studies occasionally, and sometimes multi-year. By having their experts there in the room, it takes the pressure off of us. Our biases don’t get in there. It preserves the integrity of the process to do it that way.
It gives your donors confidence in the money they’re giving you.
You’re trying to be good stewards. How can we be the best stewards? It’s by picking the best science. You need experts to do that for you.
What’s the most interesting study you all have invested in? I’m sure there are lots.
There are a lot. If I had to pick, the most fascinating study is the one we’re doing at the Golden Retrievers, which has been a big lift for us. I talked to you about our process. We never typically run a study. For the Golden Retriever Lifetime Study, we are actually managing that in-house. We do the data collection. We facilitate. It is going to be, when it’s done, a $33 million study. That’s a huge chunk of change for us. It’s different. We manage it.
We provide samples for free to researchers. We’ve picked up the cost of collecting and storing the samples. All they have to do is give us a proposal. We screen the proposals. We have a scientific steering committee for the study. They look at them. They’re like, “This is a good use of sample or we’re not sure or too much. We can’t afford to send these. That’s too many samples.” We’ve tried to help facilitate.
Sometimes, we have funding that we can help with looking at this data. The other thing we’ve allowed people to do is go through our regular grant cycle and ask for money to do the data part of it. It falls under the regular cycle. We have a lot of unique studies. We have these little sub-studies. Those are being done at different universities. We did genetic sequencing on dogs, which is becoming all the rage.
I wouldn’t say that sequencing costs are amazingly cheap, but it used to be $1 million dollars a dog. It’s now $1,000. You can get the full genome of a dog. We were able to get funding from the V Foundation for Cancer Research. It’s a human cancer group. They gave us some money a couple of years ago. We put it all towards genotyping the dogs. We’re making that available free to researchers, so they don’t have to pay for it.
They don’t have to do that. They just come to us. We can give them the information. I always think of it as these concentric circles. In the very center, this information will help Golden Retrievers. The next circle is dogs. The next circle is other species. Outside are humans. Can we find data from the study that will impact health for all these other species, including people?
I was so glad to see that you’re doing research with hemangiosarcoma because every one of us knows an owner who’s had a dog or we’ve had personal dogs that have died from hemangiosarcoma, especially Goldens. You know how they hide things from you. You never knew anything was wrong with them. They go in the backyard to pee. They fall over dead because the tumor ruptures. I was so glad to see that you had grants toward that.
Cancer Research Initiatives And Hemangiosarcoma
That’s a good point. That was part of what prompted us to do the hemangiosarcoma initiative. The first call was in 2023. It was just canine hemangiosarcoma. It’s not a surprise that Golden Retrievers have a high cancer incidence. That’s why we did the study. The study, at its heart, is a cancer risk study. It’s morphing a little bit. We can talk about that. I’m going to get this backwards because I always get it backwards. I think 70% or 75% of our dogs have died of cancer. Of those 70% or 75%, it’s hemangiosarcoma.
Golden Retrievers have a high cancer incidence, which is why we launched the study. At its core, it’s a cancer risk study, though it has evolved over time. About 70–75% of our dogs die from cancer, and most of those cases are hemangiosarcoma. Share on XWe thought it was double the number of dogs we have with lymphoma, or they’d be even. Not at all. Hemangiosarcoma is way outstripping lymphoma in our study group. Because of that, we thought, “Maybe we should raise funds around this because we have so many dogs.” All this data and samples have been collected for years before they develop the disease. We want to get that out the door. We raised funds for hemangiosarcoma. We encouraged people to use the GRLS. Sorry, that’s an acronym I’m not supposed to use, but we always call it GRLS or Golden Retriever Lifetime Study.
We didn’t require it. We got a 50/50 split. We have some people using samples and data. Some people are like, “I’m good. I’m going to use my own stuff.” If you guys know, the University of Minnesota has a big emphasis on hemangiosarcoma. They are doing stuff with their samples, but we’re helping fund that. We are going to have another call in June 2025, only focused on canine hemangiosarcoma because it’s such a huge problem. I agree. We’ve all seen it.
When I was in practice, what would make me sad is I could see somebody for something else. Seven weeks later, their dog is bleeding out. The question is always, “How did you not see this seven weeks ago?” I have evidence. I remember ultrasounding at least two dogs that six weeks later, I’m like, “I didn’t see anything.” We were looking for something else or something going on. That’s a question we get a lot from our participants. They’re like, “Should I ultrasound my dog every couple of months?” The answer is, we don’t even know if that’s going to be helpful.
I did that with my cinnamon Golden, who was part of the aging group. She’s passed away now. Kelly, she had five different cancers, such as thyroid sarcoma and adenocarcinoma of her intestine. The last one came up suddenly because I had her ultrasounded every four months. It was a retroperitoneal kidney mass that was small enough that we would have gone in for surgery. She ended up bleeding out. I don’t even know what that was. These tumors are very sneaky.
Hemangiosarcoma is tough. We asked people to go get a necropsy, a postmortem examination done. People are wonderful about it. I know how I feel when I lose a pet. I’m not sure that I’m always up for that, but we’ve got a lot of people who are like, “I’m going to do it.” We found a much higher incidence of histiocytic sarcoma, which is another cancer. We see it in Goldens. We see it in other breeds, but we’re finding a lot of those because we ask for a necropsy. Those can look like hemangiosarcoma.
If I were in practice and somebody loses their dog, I would go, “This is probably hemangiosarcoma.” I don’t push them to do anything more because we ask. There are more of those cases in Goldens than we suspected as well. It’s actually our third most common cancer. We did not expect that in the cohort at all. That is interesting. The other thing that we talked about, we always go, “It’s a cancer risk study.” We’re realizing it’s also an aging study because we have these dogs getting older.
We added some stuff for our poor participants to do. We’re like, “Can you answer these extra questionnaires on osteoarthritis and cognitive changes?” We smashed that on and said, “Can you tell us about it?” Cancer is a disease of aging. Most cancers occur in older dogs. We wanted this other information. We also did this interesting project a few years ago, where we went to our study participants. If you got one Golden, you usually got more Goldens. Some of them had older Goldens.
We called it the Golden Oldies. We said, “If you have a dog that has never had cancer over the age of twelve. Would you mind giving us a couple of blood samples? It’s because we want to bank that.” It allowed us to start comparing dogs with and without cancer earlier. Otherwise, we have to wait. We also made that data available for free to researchers. We got all these Goldens. They’re older. They have no cancer. With our cohort, they’re still going. We were like, “Are we going to wait until they all pass away?”
That could take years. We want a comparison group now. If researchers come to us, we’re like, “We have this comparison group. Would you like some of their sample?” We have had our first teenagers in the studies. We got our first couple that are in their teens. It’s a tough time. Our average age is about eleven and a half years. For those of you who know Goldens, that’s a prime time for them to get cancer. It’s seriously more than we expected.
I did derm, but I did general practice for a while. A lot of Golden owners would tell me they lost theirs at age eight. They’d say, “I’m so glad we got them past the age of eight.” I never thought about that because mine have lived to 14 or 15, but then I’m getting an ultrasound every four months.” Same with English Bulldogs. I noticed that as well. To get on a happier note, tell us about Betty White.
Betty White’s Legacy And Support For The Foundation
I’m going to work hard to get this right. We miss Betty a lot. That rapid wildlife study, that fund we had, Betty started it. That was Betty’s deal when she was on the board. There are a couple of legends surrounding Betty on how she found Morris, but the one I like, as the person who writes the newsletter, is that she saw a newsletter that somebody had. It was the late 1960s. Betty wasn’t on The Mary Tyler Moore Show yet. She’s in between jobs. She sees the newsletter. Her friend gives it to her. She said, “This seems like an interesting organization.” She was into animals.
She found us. People quickly got her involved. At one point, she’s done with Golden Girls. She had made some stuff in the ‘90s. She was the president of the organization for a while. She did a lot of fundraising and did so much for us. She slowed down the last few years of her life, but was still more supportive. We have clips of her. She was so wonderful. She would go on a show. I’m sure her advanced team said she would be like, “Ask me about my charities.” She always mentioned Morris out there.
That was marvelous of her to do. I met Betty in different circumstances, though. She was in town for a foundation meeting in the early 2000s. I don’t know how we suckered her into doing this, but we had a big practice here in Denver. I was part of internal medicine. Somehow, we got her to come to the practice. We had just opened a new building. We were taking pictures of Betty in the building. I got to meet her. She’s a super nice lady. She was a very small lady, but nice.
I got to meet her and chat with her for a few minutes. She was very interested. She was excited about women coming into the profession and there being a lot of women in it. She was super gracious and talked to me about what I did. It was several years later that I came to the foundation. She was still alive, but at that point, she wasn’t traveling out to our meetings as much anymore, but she left a big legacy for us. You can’t underestimate how much she did just by Betty being on a television show and throwing her name out there. That means a lot.
We were so lucky to know her. She’s such a wonderful person. A lot of people have great stories about her. We have pictures of her on the wall. There’s an insane picture. All of you need to go look. It was from the 1970s. It’s Mark Morris Sr., who was quite probably in his 80s. Mark Morris Jr. was wearing a brocade floral coat like a jacket that looked like he made it from draperies. It’s funny and so weird. She’s wearing a weird old peekaboo blouse. She’s got a dog. She’s got a little Poodle. They’re all standing together. They’re smiling.
It’s one of my favorite pictures because they are all clearly enjoying each other. The outfits are hysterical because with Dr. Mark Morris Sr., being from Colorado, a bolo tie will serve for everything. He’s wearing the bolo tie in a very conservative suit. His son’s wearing this crazy floral print. There’s Betty and her peekaboo blouse in the middle, with a Poodle. I love the picture every time I see it. I wish it were in color. We don’t have it in color, which would be so much better. It is a great picture. She poured her heart into so much here.
You mentioned having sometimes more money than you need for cats, but I was reading about some biomarkers for heart disease in cats. How’s that going?
It’s going pretty well. The other thing that I can say that’s interesting is we’re partnering with EveryCat Foundation, which used to be Winn, for people who remember Winn. We’ve got a huge consortium of scientists led by Dr. Gregg Dean at Colorado State University who are going to Cyprus to study that weird FIP disease that broke out. It is feline infectious peritonitis.
If you guys saw in Cyprus all these cats, and it’s been all over the place, how many have actually died? It’s usually not that easily transmissible. Viruses are wont to do, they figured out that the FIP hooked into canine coronavirus and made a whole new virus that’s now transmissible in the feces. That’s not how we typically think about FIP. It’s a mutated form of the common feline intestinal coronavirus.
FIP is a mutated form of the common feline intestinal coronavirus. It’s a strange, almost Frankenstein-like virus—understandably tied to coronaviruses—and in most cases, it’s deadly. It has become a major cause for concern. Share on XIt’s some Frankenstein weird virus, and understandably, because it’s coronavirus. This is a deadly virus in most circumstances. This is causing a lot of concern. We made a partnership because people came to us. Some researchers came to us and said, “You’re Morris. Can you help us? We need to get some boots on the ground. They go to every cat.” We talked together. We sent out a call. This is one of those unusual calls that I talked about, where we commissioned people, almost, and from people we knew were experts in the field.
They’ve got this huge collection of international scientists who are going to study the outbreak and try to figure out what’s going on. It has some implications, not only for the cats in Cyprus, but if this is going to be some crazy do in FIP that’s more easily transmissible, how do you treat it? How do you find it? People in Cyprus were using some medications. It was not Paxlovid, though one of the studies hopes to look at that. It was some of those antivirals they used in people for COVID.
With variable success, though, it seems like maybe it worked. They’re studying that whole mess, trying to tease this out. Not only does it have implications for cats, but it could also have some significance. If there are coronaviruses reconnecting with each other to make them more virulent, that could be something we could be staring down as people. Who knows when? We’re excited about it. We’re going to probably specifically fundraise around that soon. Stay tuned. It’s coming.
Isn’t that odd that on one island like that, it would be so mutated?
It’s weird that it happened, but it’s got to start somewhere. Thank goodness it was maybe on this island, but that’s what they’re trying to sort out. Was there something about the conditions here? In Cyprus, they have a huge community cat population. I wouldn’t call them feral. These are cats that roam around. People feed them. You’ve got all these cats having kittens in an area. We’re lucky it started on an island.
Kelly, what’s your website?
It’s MorrisAnimalFoundation.org. You can see a little bit about what we’ve done. We have some historical stuff. You can see the wonderful picture of Dr. Mark Morrison.
It’s a wonderful website. I was looking at it. The other thing I wanted to ask you about is this. I noticed that there are a lot of comparative studies between dogs with osteosarcoma and the information we’re gaining from that to use in humans with osteosarcoma.
Osteosarcoma Research And Comparative Health Studies
We did our first osteosarcoma initiative back in 2015 or 2016. People bandy about the number. I’ve seen it for years. Ten thousand dogs a year get osteosarcoma. It’s very similar to pediatric osteosarcoma. Maybe 800 kids a year get that, but it’s bad. This is the kid who’s in the soccer field who breaks a leg as they’re running. They’ve got osteosarcoma. It metastasizes quickly. I had a client. This is a sad story.
She was an osteosarcoma patient. She was sixteen. She had this kitten that she got as a companion. This kitten developed a urinary blockage. It’s tiny. It ripped its urethra. It ended up losing a kidney. We got the urethra straightened out, but we took a kidney out anyway. It was so important to her to have this cat. The cat outlived her, sadly. I saw it for the rest of my practice time. I said, “I will see this cat for free for you and for the family,” because we felt we should do it. It mattered.
She was having constant surgeries. I remember her dad said, “It was so hard to watch my sixteen-year-old sign her own DNR or do-not-resuscitate order.” She was like, “Do not resuscitate me.” She had reached that level. She had lots of chemo. It’s a pretty terrible disease for kids. It’s a terrible disease for dogs, too. We did one initiative, but we have more coming up. We have a donor who lost a dog, a St. Bernard, not a surprise, to osteosarcoma.
She has been great in saying, “I want to fund this.” She’s funding some different studies. One is on strategies for what’s called a limb spare. Limb sparing was pioneered at CSU when I was there as a resident, which was a long time ago. We’ve done some studies on metastasis because these things spread. A lot of dogs can do fine with amputation. It’s more than people think. I’ve heard a lot of surgeons say that.
We can do some limb-sparing strategies, but it’s the mets that kill them ultimately. So many times, it’s already spread. What can we do to deal with the metastasis? It is also what kills kids. We have one that’s interesting where they’re going in and doing a metastectomy. They’re going in and cutting out metastasis from the lungs laparoscopically. If you know people who’ve had cancer, that’s not that unusual.
They’ll go in. If you have cancer, it’s not great to have to do it, but they’ll at least cut out some big metastasis if you have them in your brain, liver, or lungs. This one is where they’re doing it in dogs, partly not just to test whether this works, but also to gather tissue to say, “Are these tumors that end up in the lungs a little different? Is that why they’re resistant to treatment sometimes?” It’s an interesting study. We’ve never funded that. I can see one who ever said, “We want to go in and try to look at these mets.”
They’re almost like bacteria. That’s probably inaccurate from a scientific standpoint, but they’re always changing. If you don’t kill all the cells, there are a couple of different things. One is that we have had some studies where they are looking at what’s called minimal residual disease. We had a couple of studies from NC State where they were trying to figure out, “Can we tell if we got it all?” If you leave a few cells behind, they can come back. That’s different from, “We evaded it because we’ve got all these funky strategies. To avoid chemotherapy, we can hide from the immune system.”
Cancers are very adaptable. They’re us. They’re not invading bacteria, but they’re avoiding the immune system in all kinds of interesting ways. “Don’t look here. We’re you. We just look a little different.” Our immune system is properly stimulated. We’ve funded some studies. We did one with Listeria. Nicola Mason did a 60-minute show on it. They know that osteosarcoma has a certain molecule on its surface. Cancer has more than normal cells. They developed an antibody that bound to that thing on the surface, but their special little molecule also had a little bit of Listeria.
Cancers are highly adaptable. They’re part of us—not invading bacteria—but they find remarkable ways to evade the immune system. Share on XThe body would go, “You got Listeria over here. We’re going to kill this thing and hopefully kill the tumor.” It had some variable success. She was excited because there were some dogs that responded well. If she saw dogs spike fevers and get sick, it was a good sign. It meant their body was recognizing something was odd, and they went for it. We’re seeing some of those studies, too. Can we somehow make this attractive?
Kelly, I’m going to ask you the question that we ask all of our guests. Do you know what that question is?
I know what it is.
What is your pet or human peeve?
What makes me nuts is that I have two teenagers. They’ll be clean if they’re at my mother’s house, but they leave food around all the time. They’re like Petri dish experiments. My son will come down with five cups. I’ll be like, “There’s where all those cups and mugs went.” There’s stuff growing in them.
There’s mold in there.
He leaves them. I said, “Could you rinse them out?” I find mold in the drain. It is the big mold thing. I’m like, “Dude, then you’ve got to clean out the drain.” What peeved me was when I went to visit my daughter, who has her own apartment at college, clean. She came home for the summer. I’m like, “I’ve seen your apartment. Why has it changed?”
Kelly, you do such good work. Thank you for making a difference in our world.
I’m excited about this. I obviously have heard of the foundation, but then, when I was on your website reading about it, and then after talking to you, this is groundbreaking, the stuff you’re doing. I’ve looked at it. It’s all over the world. It’s every species, such as penguins, goats, and donkeys. It’s not just, “I love my dogs and cats.” It’s everybody.
That’s what people don’t know. We’ve been around for 75 years. We fund internationally. We have a new fellowship for underserved communities and individuals. We have a donor who’s funding that. We have some people, some in the United States, but again, we’re excited. We’ve got, for the first time, a lot of studies. There are a good number of studies in Africa, in Kenya.
In South Africa, we’ve done it multiple times, but in Nigeria, it’s new for us. We’re excited about some of those. There’s a peeve of mine. It is amazing how many people don’t know how long we’ve been around. The people don’t even know about us. You’re a big fish in our pond, but you’re not a big fish when you’re talking about some of the big human disease-focused charities. We plug along. We plug away.
The thing about a charity is you can’t push everyone’s butt. It’s a personal thing when people give. What I appreciate is that you vet these organizations and these studies that you give to.
That’s wonderful.
It’s super important for them.
In Canada, it’s not all cancer. They do incontinence in spayed female dogs. They can make a pet be relinquished to a shelter.
Innovative Canine Scent Detection Studies For Disease
We’ve done behavior studies. We have one. I’ll end on one of the most unique ones. It’s a hemangiosarcoma one. It is a dog sniffer study. You’ve probably heard about dogs being able to sniff disease. This is coming out of the University of Pennsylvania. They are going to see if dogs can sniff hemangiosarcoma and tell it from other diseases. If they can do it, it’s not like every lab’s going to have a dog sitting there. They said that means that there are volatile organic compounds or something that is detectable. They can start looking for that and make a test for it.
I’m sure they can do it.
I’m sure they can smell.
I had a good client. She had Eskimos. I saw her for years. She came in one time. You’ve had these clients. She’s like, “My other dog is sniffing her butt, and I think there’s something wrong. There are zero signs.” This was a good client of mine. I’m looking at the dog. I’m like, “I’ll slap the ultrasound probe on the abdomen fast.” That dog had transitional cell carcinoma in its bladder.
It was small, but we were able to do something. I knew her well. I knew she wouldn’t make this up. She had blood work done. They had a urinalysis done. That had been clean. I said, “Why don’t I just put the probe on it?” By God, there was a little tumor there in that other dog. That was a valuable lesson. I am confident that they will find something.
Whether they can tease it out, that’s going to be tough. Dog sniffing dogs adds a layer of complexity to the sniffing versus an explosive device or a human sample. This same group taught dogs to sniff COVID. We’re working on it with people, but you put dogs in there, then you’re like, “Dogs sniffing dogs, are they going to be distracted?” We’ll see.
Kelly, this has been an absolute joy.
We love it.
This has been so fun, you guys.
We’re so glad you agreed to do the show. This has been so enjoyable.
We’ll have to do it again because this was so much fun. I appreciate you guys.
There’s a lot of good stuff going on out there.
We didn’t even talk about 1/5 of what they’re doing. We got to do it again.
Kelly, thank you. It’s been a pleasure to talk to you.
It was great. Thanks again for having me on.
Thank you, Kelly.
Janet, this has been so much fun. We learned so much about the Morris Animal Foundation. Please visit their website, MorrisAnimalFoundation.org. It’s a wonderful website. You’ll learn so much about ongoing research and where you can donate. All the diseases you can think of, they’re working on. I can’t thank them enough for that. It’s worldwide, remember. It’s not just the United States. It’s not just one country. It’s everywhere.
Some of their tests are tied to humans, which is pretty cool. That was great.
Janet, we’re going to wind it up. This is Dr. Alice Novotny Jeromin.
This is Janet Novotny King. We’re the Novotny sisters from Cleveland, Ohio, saying goodbye and thanks for tuning in. Don’t forget to follow us because we like to hear from you. Thanks.
Important Links
- Dr. Kelly Diehl on IVC Journal
- Morris Animal Foundation
- Doberman Pinscher Club
- Golden Retriever Foundation
- V Foundation for Cancer Research
- EveryCat Health Foundation
About Dr. Kelly Diehl
Kelly Diehl received her DVM from the University of Tennessee and started her practice career in a bustling emergency clinic in New Jersey. After one year in emergency practice, Dr. Diehl completed an internship at the prestigious Animal Medical Center in New York City. Following her internship, Dr. Diehl moved west, completing a residency in small animal medicine at Colorado State University. After finishing a 3-year NIH postdoctoral fellowship at National Jewish Health, Dr. Diehl joined the staff of the Veterinary Referral Center of Colorado as the co-owner of the internal medicine section.
After 14 years, Dr. Diehl left private practice to pursue a career in science communication and joined Morris Animal Foundation in 2013. Dr. Diehl is a board-certified small animal internal medicine specialist with an interest in gastroenterology and immunology. She lives in Colorado with her husband, two children, two cats, too many fish to count and one very lovable Labrador retriever.