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Heather is (or rather, soon will be) fine.

Completely and utterly fine. More than fine, really, according to the radiologist. Her radiographs are bee-you-tee-ful, appearing much younger than she is.

The Big C? Not today. Not today.

Hooray for (almost) 12-year-old retrievers! She lives to swim another day … many a day, I hope, after she’s back on all four legs again after her soft tissue injury — a/k/a “a really bad sprain” — resolves itself.

Thank you all! Your support means so much to me.

(Pictured: My Beautiful Heatherette, photo taken earlier this summer, after her “old dog summer buzz ‘do”.)

Heather is (or rather, soon will be) fine.

Completely and utterly fine. More than fine, really, according to the radiologist. Her radiographs are bee-you-tee-ful, appearing much younger than she is.

The Big C? Not today. Not today.

Hooray for (almost) 12-year-old retrievers! She lives to swim another day … many a day, I hope, after she’s back on all four legs again after her soft tissue injury — a/k/a “a really bad sprain” — resolves itself.

Thank you all! Your support means so much to me.

(Pictured: My Beautiful Heatherette, photo taken earlier this summer, after her “old dog summer buzz ‘do”.)

Tags: Pet Blog, Dog Books, Dog Breeds

There’s a lot to be said about where allergies come from (hello, genetics and lots of insults to the canine immune system from stupid and unscientific vaccination protocols), but once you have a dog with allergies, the “where” question comes in a distant second to the “what now” question.

While pets can be allergic to many things in their environment, one of the most difficult and perplexing — and hard to diagnose — problems is the food allergy. While a dog can be allergic to only one ingredient in a food or their diet, dermatologists have told me that they’re seeing mostly dogs with multiple food allergies now. And it can be very difficult to pinpoint those allergies and to eliminate those allergens.

There are blood tests for food allergies, and they’ve improved in recent years, but the gold standard remains the elimination diet. And vets often use commercial foods for such diets, even multi-ingredient foods, largely because most owners don’t want to prepare a homemade diet, even for a few months or weeks for diagnostic reasons.

But even so-called “hydrolized protein” allergy diets can contain substances to which your pet can react. They work by breaking proteins down into particles, called hydrolysates, that the immune system isn’t supposed to react to. But many dogs do react to them, which means the information you get from doing a food trial with such a food is useless, and they’re also useless as a therapeutic diet, at least, for those dogs. Furthermore, the process of hydrolizing proteins can in and of itself release biologically active peptides, to which the dog may also be or become allergic.

Just ask all the moms and pediatricians who’ve become skeptical of the use of hydrolized milk for babies and kids with cow’s milk allergies.

And if the “allergy diet” is a dry food, there’s also that pesky little critter known as the food storage mite. These mites can be present in all kinds of cereals, not just pet food, but they’re a potent allergen for some dogs — and so are their feces. (They can also be present in cheese, and any food that can grow mold.) One study found nine of out ten bags of dry pet food contained food storage mites.

Homemade, grain-free diets still sounding crazy to you, allergies or not?

Heather is (or rather, soon will be) fine.

Completely and utterly fine. More than fine, really, according to the radiologist. Her radiographs are bee-you-tee-ful, appearing much younger than she is.

The Big C? Not today. Not today.

Hooray for (almost) 12-year-old retrievers! She lives to swim another day … many a day, I hope, after she’s back on all four legs again after her soft tissue injury — a/k/a “a really bad sprain” — resolves itself.

Thank you all! Your support means so much to me.

(Pictured: My Beautiful Heatherette, photo taken earlier this summer, after her “old dog summer buzz ‘do”.)

Tags: Pet Care, dog, Dog Breeds

There’s a lot to be said about where allergies come from (hello, genetics and lots of insults to the canine immune system from stupid and unscientific vaccination protocols), but once you have a dog with allergies, the “where” question comes in a distant second to the “what now” question.

While pets can be allergic to many things in their environment, one of the most difficult and perplexing — and hard to diagnose — problems is the food allergy. While a dog can be allergic to only one ingredient in a food or their diet, dermatologists have told me that they’re seeing mostly dogs with multiple food allergies now. And it can be very difficult to pinpoint those allergies and to eliminate those allergens.

There are blood tests for food allergies, and they’ve improved in recent years, but the gold standard remains the elimination diet. And vets often use commercial foods for such diets, even multi-ingredient foods, largely because most owners don’t want to prepare a homemade diet, even for a few months or weeks for diagnostic reasons.

But even so-called “hydrolized protein” allergy diets can contain substances to which your pet can react. They work by breaking proteins down into particles, called hydrolysates, that the immune system isn’t supposed to react to. But many dogs do react to them, which means the information you get from doing a food trial with such a food is useless, and they’re also useless as a therapeutic diet, at least, for those dogs. Furthermore, the process of hydrolizing proteins can in and of itself release biologically active peptides, to which the dog may also be or become allergic.

Just ask all the moms and pediatricians who’ve become skeptical of the use of hydrolized milk for babies and kids with cow’s milk allergies.

And if the “allergy diet” is a dry food, there’s also that pesky little critter known as the food storage mite. These mites can be present in all kinds of cereals, not just pet food, but they’re a potent allergen for some dogs — and so are their feces. (They can also be present in cheese, and any food that can grow mold.) One study found nine of out ten bags of dry pet food contained food storage mites.

Homemade, grain-free diets still sounding crazy to you, allergies or not?

Tags: dog, Pet Information, Pet Care

Didn’t take much, just a few thousand dead pets, contaminated baby toys, and oh yeah, the heparin thing… but the FDA just announced it’s opening three offices in China. From the Irish Times:

The co-operation is significant. It’s a sign of how China’s growing openness is combining with its need to improve its international standing in the pharmaceutical business, and Chinese health authorities hope the offices will also increase China’s own capacity to produce safe foods, drugs and medical devices. Thirteen employees would be assigned to work there.

The move is also a reaction by the FDA to criticism over its lack of overseas inspections after heparin, a widely used blood thinner, was contaminated and imported from China earlier this year. Heparin has been linked to more than 80 deaths in the United States.

[…]

Beijing has been under pressure to do something about consumer safety, after a series of scandals in the past couple of years did serious damage to the “Made in China” brand. Billions of euro worth of counterfeit and substandard goods, including snack bars, liquor, medicines and face creams, are produced every year in China and there are regular horror stories.

In one of the most highly publicised scandals, China revealed in 2004 that 13 babies had died from malnutrition in the eastern province of Anhui after being fed fake baby milk powder.

In July last year, Zheng Xiaoyu, formerly China’s drug and food safety czar, was executed for corruption.

Ah yes, I’ll never forget listening to a reporter asking FDA food safety czar David Acheson what he thought about that sentence during a pet food recall media conference last year. Good times.

Full article here.

[Update] From the comments, h/t to Nadine L.: It must be the night for remembering the pet food recall. USA Today’s Julie Schmit continues her tradition of excellent coverage of the issue with an update on the ongoing lawsuits against Menu Foods and other companies for harm suffered by pets who ate contaminated foods:

Almost 6,000 claims have been filed in a class-action settlement stemming from last year’s massive pet-food recall.

Menu Foods, other pet-food makers and retailers in May agreed to set up a $24 million cash fund to compensate pet owners whose cats and dogs became sick or died after eating food that had a contaminated ingredient from China.

The filing period for claims began May 30 and will run until Nov. 24.

“I expect that number (of claims) will go up a lot. There’s quite a bit of time to go,” says attorney Sherrie Savett of plaintiffs’ law firm Berger & Montague.

Julie apparently never drank the “13 confirmed deaths” kool-aid:

The Food and Drug Administration never identified how many pets were affected, but it received more than 17,000 complaints.

[….]

The recall grew to involve 12 pet-food makers and 180 brands of pet food and treats. Along with Menu, other defendants include Hill’s Pet Nutrition, Iams and retailers such as Wal-Mart.

Menu Foods, which supplied most of the recalled foods, has pegged its recall costs at $55 million, some of which went to the settlement fund.

If there is money remaining after claims have been processed, it will go to charities that promote the well-being of pets, the settlement says.

A website has been set up at www.petfoodsettlement.com. The claims administrator can be reached at 800-392-7785.

Catch it here.

Didn’t take much, just a few thousand dead pets, contaminated baby toys, and oh yeah, the heparin thing… but the FDA just announced it’s opening three offices in China. From the Irish Times:

The co-operation is significant. It’s a sign of how China’s growing openness is combining with its need to improve its international standing in the pharmaceutical business, and Chinese health authorities hope the offices will also increase China’s own capacity to produce safe foods, drugs and medical devices. Thirteen employees would be assigned to work there.

The move is also a reaction by the FDA to criticism over its lack of overseas inspections after heparin, a widely used blood thinner, was contaminated and imported from China earlier this year. Heparin has been linked to more than 80 deaths in the United States.

[…]

Beijing has been under pressure to do something about consumer safety, after a series of scandals in the past couple of years did serious damage to the “Made in China” brand. Billions of euro worth of counterfeit and substandard goods, including snack bars, liquor, medicines and face creams, are produced every year in China and there are regular horror stories.

In one of the most highly publicised scandals, China revealed in 2004 that 13 babies had died from malnutrition in the eastern province of Anhui after being fed fake baby milk powder.

In July last year, Zheng Xiaoyu, formerly China’s drug and food safety czar, was executed for corruption.

Ah yes, I’ll never forget listening to a reporter asking FDA food safety czar David Acheson what he thought about that sentence during a pet food recall media conference last year. Good times.

Full article here.

[Update] From the comments, h/t to Nadine L.: It must be the night for remembering the pet food recall. USA Today’s Julie Schmit continues her tradition of excellent coverage of the issue with an update on the ongoing lawsuits against Menu Foods and other companies for harm suffered by pets who ate contaminated foods:

Almost 6,000 claims have been filed in a class-action settlement stemming from last year’s massive pet-food recall.

Menu Foods, other pet-food makers and retailers in May agreed to set up a $24 million cash fund to compensate pet owners whose cats and dogs became sick or died after eating food that had a contaminated ingredient from China.

The filing period for claims began May 30 and will run until Nov. 24.

“I expect that number (of claims) will go up a lot. There’s quite a bit of time to go,” says attorney Sherrie Savett of plaintiffs’ law firm Berger & Montague.

Julie apparently never drank the “13 confirmed deaths” kool-aid:

The Food and Drug Administration never identified how many pets were affected, but it received more than 17,000 complaints.

[….]

The recall grew to involve 12 pet-food makers and 180 brands of pet food and treats. Along with Menu, other defendants include Hill’s Pet Nutrition, Iams and retailers such as Wal-Mart.

Menu Foods, which supplied most of the recalled foods, has pegged its recall costs at $55 million, some of which went to the settlement fund.

If there is money remaining after claims have been processed, it will go to charities that promote the well-being of pets, the settlement says.

A website has been set up at www.petfoodsettlement.com. The claims administrator can be reached at 800-392-7785.

Catch it here.

Tags: Pet Blog, Pet Care, Dog Books

La diferencia entre emergencia y urgencia está en el tiempo con el que se cuenta. En la emergencia el veterinario debe acudir de inmediato, mientras que en la urgencia el profesional se puede manejar con algo más de tiempo.

A veces el veterinario nos puede asesorar por teléfono. Cuando lo llamamos y le planteamos la situación, si bien no se puede hacer un diagnóstico telefónico, nos puede dar las primeras instrucciones sobre cómo proceder.

Se debe tener en cuanta que los veterinarios, a veces, tardan en llegar a las emergencias ya que en la mayoría de los países no cuentan con ambulancia, ni pueden usar sirenas.

La comunicación telefónica suele ser muy útil para calmar a las personas, que se ponen ansiosas, entre otras razones, porque no pueden valorar la situación y no saben qué tan grave es. Muchas veces, tranquilizar a la persona significa evitar que genere males mayores.

Las situaciones más frecuentas en las emergencias veterinarias son:

-Las intoxicaciones con venenos. Que a veces son muy peligrosas ya que para algunos venenos no existen antídotos.

Un error común en estos casos, es administrarle leche al perro ya que este es un alimento graso que hace que el veneno sea absorbido más rápido.

Aquí, lo más aconsejable es introducir un puñado de sal en la boca del animal, sin miedo, y si el perro lo rechaza volver a repetir el procedimiento hasta que vomite.

-Otra consulta frecuente son los golpes de calor. Cuando, por ejemplo, se deja al perro encerrado en el auto al sol, o se lo saca a pasear en verano a la hora de más calor. En esas circunstancias lo mejor es meter al perro debajo del agua fría.

-Cuando se trata de pelea de perros y el animal presenta heridas, lo que se debe hacer es aplicar compresión para detener la hemorragia. A veces, mucha sangre hace que la gente magnifique la gravedad de la herida.

-Los accidentes de tránsito son otra de las emergencias más comunes. Una de la cuestiones a tener en cuenta ante un perro que está herido, es que no se le debe agarrar directamente ya que seguramente va a morder.

Hay que manejarse con cuidado ya que un perro con dolor es muy agresivo.
Incluso el veterinario, que debe buscar el dolor para evaluar la situación, debe manejarse con precaución ya que la respuesta al dolor casi siempre es la agresión.

-El parto es otra instancia que genera mucha ansiedad ya que los dueños del animal no saben aquí qué es lo que esta bien o mal.

Lo mejor es que en cuanto la perra queda preñada, se comience a conversar con el veterinario, y se tienen dos meses, para llegar al parto con la mayor información posible sobre cómo se va a presentar la situación.

Además, esa información le permitirá a usted contestar al veterinario preguntas clave que le posibilitan evaluar la situación.

El hecho que el animal conozca al veterinario evita que sea un extraño el que llegue al parto, generando más estrés en la perra.

Siempre hay que estar atentos a cuando hay un alargamiento de los tiempos habituales del parto o cuando hay sangre o líquidos de color negro o verde.

En cuanto a los cachorros, lo mejor es que sean puestos de inmediato con la madre que le brindará la atención adecuada.

Tags: Pet Care, Pet Information, Pet Shop Pet Health

When I first came up with the idea of looking at cars — wagons, hatchbacks, crossovers and SUVS — from the point of view of a dog-lover, I called Christie to share the thought, all excited. Her response? Basically, a shrug.

And that’s when I realized: There are people for whom cars are interesting, even exciting, and those for whom they are merely a way to get from Point A to Point B.

Christie is definitely in the latter category. She gets a car that works for her and drives it until it dies. Me? If I could get a different car every year — not necessarily new, but at least different — well, that would be great. I always notice new models, and usually read the car mags in the doctor’s office. That’s why I love the week-long tests of DogCars I do pretty regularly, and enjoy writing the reviews for the DogCars.com site as well as our syndicated newspaper pet page. (I know Kim loves cars, too, so Christie’s outnumbered!)

Which is all by way of explaining that up to this point, the experience of people like Christie who share their lives with giant breeds (Scottish Deerhound and Borzoi, in her case) really haven’t had their point of view represented on our DogCars.com site.

Not anymore. Regular DogCars.com reader and pet expert Marjorie Darby of GoodPooch.com weighed in the other day in a comment about the challenges of transporting Great Danes. The information was so helpful and interesting that we elevated it to a blog post.

Check out the post. Giants breeds are a real DogCars challenge! Christie could have told me that, I’m sure, but she just didn’t care enough about the subject to ever think about mentioning it.

Thanks, Marjorie, for cluing me in. And I thought my dogs were large, silly me.

Chicken news: OK, I know you all live for the Chicken Updates. My neighbor Judy and I have swapped some of the chickens in the interest of flock harmony. One of my Cinnamon Queens, Eulalie, and the Buff Orphington, Harriet, went to join Judy’s flock. In return, her Silver-Laced Wyandotte, Lacie, came over here. For some reason, this has solved the get-along problems here and there. I swear, it’s like Junior High all over with these hens, cliques galore.

And finally: Thank you, everyone! for all the kind thoughts and prayers for Heather. It may be the meds, but she had a near-normal day today. Tomorrow afternoon I’ll know for sure what we’re dealing with. I sure hope my suspicions are wrong, but I’m prepared for bad news, as much as anyone can be.

Tags: cats, Dog Breeds, Pet Care

When I first came up with the idea of looking at cars — wagons, hatchbacks, crossovers and SUVS — from the point of view of a dog-lover, I called Christie to share the thought, all excited. Her response? Basically, a shrug.

And that’s when I realized: There are people for whom cars are interesting, even exciting, and those for whom they are merely a way to get from Point A to Point B.

Christie is definitely in the latter category. She gets a car that works for her and drives it until it dies. Me? If I could get a different car every year — not necessarily new, but at least different — well, that would be great. I always notice new models, and usually read the car mags in the doctor’s office. That’s why I love the week-long tests of DogCars I do pretty regularly, and enjoy writing the reviews for the DogCars.com site as well as our syndicated newspaper pet page. (I know Kim loves cars, too, so Christie’s outnumbered!)

Which is all by way of explaining that up to this point, the experience of people like Christie who share their lives with giant breeds (Scottish Deerhound and Borzoi, in her case) really haven’t had their point of view represented on our DogCars.com site.

Not anymore. Regular DogCars.com reader and pet expert Marjorie Darby of GoodPooch.com weighed in the other day in a comment about the challenges of transporting Great Danes. The information was so helpful and interesting that we elevated it to a blog post.

Check out the post. Giants breeds are a real DogCars challenge! Christie could have told me that, I’m sure, but she just didn’t care enough about the subject to ever think about mentioning it.

Thanks, Marjorie, for cluing me in. And I thought my dogs were large, silly me.

Chicken news: OK, I know you all live for the Chicken Updates. My neighbor Judy and I have swapped some of the chickens in the interest of flock harmony. One of my Cinnamon Queens, Eulalie, and the Buff Orphington, Harriet, went to join Judy’s flock. In return, her Silver-Laced Wyandotte, Lacie, came over here. For some reason, this has solved the get-along problems here and there. I swear, it’s like Junior High all over with these hens, cliques galore.

And finally: Thank you, everyone! for all the kind thoughts and prayers for Heather. It may be the meds, but she had a near-normal day today. Tomorrow afternoon I’ll know for sure what we’re dealing with. I sure hope my suspicions are wrong, but I’m prepared for bad news, as much as anyone can be.

Tags: Pet Blog, Pet Care, Pet Shop Pet Health