“Honey, did you clean the cat’s litterbox?” “Yes, Dear.” “Did you clean the dog’s litterbox?” “Did I clean the what ?” Regular readers know the basics of puppy housetraining. I’ve preached the sermon before: Routine, Routine, Routine. OK, let’s back up a step. Before you start the routine, before you even get your new puppy, [...]
Is your dog chewing on his bandage? Is your new puppy chewing on your wicker chair? You may find that Arrid Extra Dry spray deodorant is the answer to both problems. I don’t know why this particular brand is better at deterring canine chewing habits. I don’t even recall who originally told me about using [...]
Referral centers can be real lifesavers. Medical and surgical care of dogs and cats has advanced incredibly since I graduated from Auburn University’s College of Veterinary Medicine in 1980. To keep up with advances in veterinary medicine I calculated today that I have attended nearly 1000 hours of continuing education classes in the past 30 [...]
Jubilee is on camera today to demonstrate a very important point. What a pretty girl Jubilee is! First, notice how pretty she is. Now that you’ve taken in her beauty, notice her jewelry. She has a lot of it, which doesn’t mean she is a Hollywood celebrity, it simply means that she has lived a [...]
Here are some common sense tips for keeping your pet safe and happy during Halloween. If you have a black cat, keep him securely indoors for several days before and after Halloween. When Halloween falls on certain nights municipalities may declare specific dates for trick-or-treating, and that official night might not be the same as [...]
TID, tid, t.i.d. and T.I.D. all are abbreviations for the Latin words ter in die, meaning three times in a day. These abbreviations are commonly used on prescription pads when a medication is given on a schedule with an 8 hours between doses. Currently, few medications are used on this interval. Experience has shown that [...]
Pet foods can be classified into three main categories: premium, supermarket brands and other. In pet foods you truly get what you pay for. Premium brands of foods include Science Diet in Growth, Maintenance, Senior and Light formulas, Iams Eukanuba, Purina’s One and ProPlan and Nature’s Recipe. Premium diets are characterized by higher quality and [...]
Evamist contains estradiol, a powerful form of estrogen. It is used by menopausal women to reduce hot flashes. It is available in a spray form and is applied to the forearm between the wrist and elbow. Women who use Evamist, however, must take special precautions to ensure that the product does not come in contact [...]
Nature is a process of coming and going. Three times this week we have had to tell pet owners that their dogs had terminal conditions. One is already gone. Another will probably not last more than a few days. The third will likely have no more than a couple of months. We enjoy watching songbirds [...]
When we lose a pet we experience the same five stages of grief one experiences with any loss. One of the ways to help ease that grief is to perform positive acts that help us keep good memories alive. A memorial for a deceased pet is a healthy way to do just that. It is [...]
Lost to followup is a term used commonly in research literature when a patient is in a study but can no longer be found to determine its current status. For example, let’s say Company A comes out with Medication 16, a new and improved version of Medications 1-15. In therapeutic trials 100 dogs are studied, [...]
So, you want to be a veterinarian. For purposes of this discussion we will assume that you are older than age nine, as everyone that age and younger wants to be a veterinarian. At least, according to the kids who come into our practice and talk to me in public when I’m on errands around [...]
Rare is the veterinary practice that doesn’t offer boarding as an ancillary service. You have several choices when it comes to care for your pets during travel. Among them: take them with you have someone house-sit with your pet at home have a family member or friend keep your pets at their home board [...]
DVM Newsmagazine news editor Rachael Whitcomb reports in the September, 2010, edition that short-nosed breeds of dogs are more likely to die in flight than dogs with longer snouts. Anatomically termed brachycephalic, meaning “short head,” these dogs have all of the structures of longer-nosed or dolichocephalic dogs, yet all of those structures are compressed and [...]
Country artists Brooks and Dunn have a song out called “God Must Be Busy.” In it they talk about some of the problems in the world, including “old folks can’t afford the drugs they can’t live without.” We ran into a similar problem today when a client brought in this cute little dog we’ve been [...]
The acronyms for Hill’s Prescription Diet foods are not difficult to figure out. The “d” always stands for diet. It was easy in the old days, before there were so many different Prescription Diets. c/d was “cat diet,” k/d was “kidney diet,” and h/d was “heart diet.” If memory serves me correctly, when I graduated [...]
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