
Created in 2005, it raises awareness of cat rescue and adoption needs, also giving cat lovers a reason to express their admiration for feline friends.
Rescue Pet Supply Pet Blog
Created in 2005, it raises awareness of cat rescue and adoption needs, also giving cat lovers a reason to express their admiration for feline friends.
Apple cider has been touted as a sort of miracle remedy for humans … but can you use apple cider vinegar for dogs? And if apple cider vinegar is safe for dogs, how and when should you use it?
Is your cat screaming — or are you not sure what this cat noise sounds like? And why do cats scream? Let’s talk about what causes cat screaming and which cats are most likely to scream.
Robbie passed away today peacefully today, July 27, 2017, after a short battle with kidney failure. He was 16 years, 11 months old. He was “human” smart, and “animal” sweet, and I can’t think of a bad thing he ever did.
A backyard pool can be a dangerous place for unattended kiddos. Likewise for you pets and wild animals. Skamper Ramp gives an escape path for animals stuck in your pool.
Take a look at Skamper Ramp for pool safety:
Our Westie is nearly 17 years old and suffers from a range of discomforts including toothache to arthritis. Our vet prescribed Metacam as a longterm solution. We used it before for a specific injury but never as a maintenance program. The other day we had, what we thought, was a setback in his pain meds, but turned out to be an unrelated issue. The point of this is that I called our vet and ask if our boy could have become resistant to Metacam and need a changed to another drug. We were advised that Metacam doesn’t lose its effectiveness over time unlike hydrocodone, et al. If you’re in a similar situation with your aging pet be sure to ask your vet about Metacam. It has literally change our boys life.
Thanks,
Steve Walker
Rescue Pet Supply
Corn gluten meal has been in the news lately. To help avoid confusion for those concerned with gluten in your pet’s diet, Corn gluten meal (CGM) is a byproduct of corn (maize) processing that has historically been used as an animal feed. It can also be used as an organic herbicide.
The word gluten here is inexact; there is no true gluten in corn, but simply corn proteins. The expression “corn gluten” is colloquial jargon that describes corn proteins that are neither gliadinnor glutenin. Only wheat, barley, and rye contain true gluten, which is formed by the interaction of gliadin and glutenin proteins.
Courtesy of Wikipedia.org
About one-quarter of all phone calls to the ASPCA Animal Poison Control Center (APCC) are about human medications. Your pet can easily ingest dropped pills or may be given harmful human medications by an unknowing owner, resulting in illness, or even death, of your pet.
The APCC provided us with the 10 most common human medication complaints they receive. Here they are, in order based on the number of complaints:
As you can tell from this list, a medication that does one thing for people does not necessarily do the same for our pets. And although this may be the list of the medications about which the APCC receives the largest numbers of complaints, remember that any human medication could pose a risk to your pets – not just these 10.
You can keep your pets safe by following simple common sense guidelines:
American Veterinary Medical Association (AVMA)
M. H. Archer, DVM
Loveland Veterinary House Call
Rory, our beloved Westie, went peacefully yesterday. He finally lost the battle with heart and lung disease. He was such a pitiful thing when we met him twelve years ago, but he grew into a great personality and a real comedian. He lost much of that over the past year as his health began failing, but was still the sweetest little boy ever.
It’s that time of year again when we tend to think and talk about heartworm disease with our clients. There is always misconception and confusion around this topic so let’s dig in. Heartworm is a parasite that lives in the heart and blood stream. Heartworm disease is transmitted by the bite of an infected mosquito. Once the mosquito bites and the larva is in the dog’s bloodstream it takes it approximately 6 months to go through is various life stages to become an adult in the right chambers of the heart. Imagine angel hair pasta inside your heart. That makes it difficult for your heart to work over time and will eventually cause heart failure and other related diseases. The hard thing is that sometimes heartworm infections don’t cause any symptoms other than sudden death. The symptoms will sometimes show up before this happens thankfully and coughing is usually the first sign. You may or may not see signs of fatigue, exercise intolerance, or collapse.
Myth #1: Clients are always telling me that their dog does not have heartworm because they don’t see it in the stool, well you shouldn’t. It does not live there; it is not an intestinal parasite, it is a blood parasite.
Myth #2: The next thing clients tell me is that their dog does not live outside so it’s not at risk, wrong! I hope your dog is going outside at least to go to the bathroom and hopefully for walks. Also mosquitos do come inside our houses so all animals are at risk. Indoor cats actually have a higher incidence of heartworm infections.
Myth #3: My dog only needs to be on heartworm prevention for 6 months – well maybe, it depends on where you live but for the most part (and definitely in Colorado) they need to be on prevention all year round. With our volatile weather all over the country nowadays it is possible for a mosquito to bite and infect your animal in those 6 months that you think you are safe because it’s “cold” out. A random fact that I recently learned was that one mosquito can bite your pet 80 times in a single evening.
Myth #4: My dog does not need to be tested yearly – yes they do and it is important for a number of reasons. Just like all parasite medications, there are heartworms that have developed a resistance to the prevention. If your dog is the unlucky dog to get one of these infections, we need to know about it so it can be addressed. Your dog could have vomited up the medication without you knowing it and was not covered for a month. User error also comes into play – a large amount of people forget to give it and may skip a month or two so that naturally makes them vulnerable.
Myth #5: Cats do not get heartworm disease – false. Cats do get heartworm disease just not as easily as dogs because they are not a normal host. When cat’s get the disease from a mosquito it is hard to know because they may not show any signs. They usually do not have as large of a worm burden as dogs and may only have 1 worm in their heart. The test for cats is not as straight forward as it is for dogs because of this.
So the moral of the story – make sure your pet is on heartworm prevention all year round and test each year too. This will save you much headache and money because treating a heartworm infection is expensive, has risk, and takes time and many tests to get rid of. This is a very simplified explanation of heartworm disease so as always, consult your veterinarian with any questions or concerns you may have for your specific pet.
M. H. Archer, DVM
Loveland Veterinary House Call