Pets are good for the health

Pet information

There are many health benefits to petsEveryone with a cat or dog knows they’re great company. Many pet owners see their furry friends as family members, and they make great snuggle-buddies. Did you know that they add other health benefits to human lives?

Cats and dogs protect children against developing allergies

This is particularly true for cats. A child under the age of one living with two or more cats or dogs has a smaller risk of developing allergies as he or she grows up. Living with pets is good for the human immune system.

Cats and dogs reduce stress in our lives

Petting a cat or dog has been shown to lower blood pressure and help humans relax. Pets have a knack for knowing when they’re needed, and even the most elusive kitty tends to show up when their human needs a friendly ear. Pet owners also adapt better to stressful situation than people without pets. And if anyone doubts the benefit of a dog, consider all the therapy and emotional support dogs that help people cope with everything from depression to post traumatic stress disorder.

Dogs keep us fit

The average American without a dog moves significantly less than the average dog owner. Daily walks, exercising, and playing with a dog helps us stay in shape, keep a healthy weight, and lessens the risk for health problems.

Pets give healthy hearts

The American Heart Association recently reported that pets help reduce the risk of cardiovascular diseases. Pet owners who suffer a heart attack recover quickly than people without pets. They also help lower cholesterol.

Pets improve our social lives

Walking a dog inspires conversations with other pet owners, neighbors, and strangers out for a stroll. Meeting new people and getting to know those around us battles isolation, loneliness, and depression.

 

Ice does not cause bloat in dogs

Pet information

Ice does not cause bloat in dogsBloat is a dangerous condition caused by a dog or cat eating too fast, sucking in air with their food or water. If this happens, the dog needs to see a vet immediately and might need emergency surgery.

Many people believe that ice or ice water causes bloat in dogs, and this is caused by blog posts and images going viral on Facebook and other social media platforms a couple of years ago.

The important thing to know is that ice does not cause bloat. Drinking or eating too quickly causes bloat.

If a dog slurps down ice water on a hot day, it’s easy to get a connection between the ice and the bloat, but it’s the speed of eating or drinking that’s the culprit.

When a dog is hot and thirsty, portion out water. Don’t let them drink too much at once. If a dog eats very quickly, portion out their food on several small meals during the day. Also, dogs who eat or drink quickly should avoid exercise for at least an hour after eating.

Why do dogs like to walk around before lying down?

Pet information

XoloitzcuintliEveryone who knows a dog has seen the bedding dance; walking around and around before lying down with a contented sigh. Ever wonder why they do that?

Humans and dogs have  a lot in common. Both species like to be comfortable. The walking around in circles doesn’t seem to make much sense on a doggie bed or carpeted floor, but a long time ago dogs made little nests for themselves through stomping the grass. It exposed the cooler ground below the grass, and marked the area with the dog’s scent, signaling to others that the place was claimed.

Today, some dogs still do the circle dance, but others can be much  more particular with their sleeping area. Some want all their toys near, and others don’t like to sleep without their favorite blanket or towel. It’s like a human being uncomfortable when the pillow is wrong.

Having the sleeping area just the way they want it helps the dogs feel secure and comfortable. Removing a favorite piece of bedding can in extreme cases make a dog anxious and unable to relax.

America’s pets are overweight

Pet information

The Association for Pet Obesity Prevention recently presented their latest survey with sobering numbers. 54 percent of US pets are overweight. 53 percent of adult dogs and 55 percent of cats have been classified as overweight or obese, and that equals 88.4 million pets.

To make the news even more disturbing, 15 percent of cat owners and 22 percent of dog owners think their overweight pets are within normal range.

The additional weight comes from a lack of exercise, and overfeeding. It is easy to forget how small a pet is compared to a human. A typical dog biscuit fed to a 20 lbs dog is the equivalent of a person eating two double-stuffed fudge cookies. Giving a pig ear to a  40 lbs dog is the same as a person drinking six cans of soda.

Excess weight in pets often shorten the life span. It can lead to joint disease, diabetes, heart conditions, and skin disease.

Get the right size food bowlGood ideas to keep the pet’s weight under control include:

* Exercise

* Use a smaller food bowl – it’s easier to overfeed a pet when the bowl looks empty

* Use a measuring cup

* Follow feeding instructions, and check every time you change foods, because the calorie  contents might be different

* Limit the treats

Summer plants to watch out for

Pet information

Rhododendron is poisonous to cats, dogs, and horses.Most dogs are super-curious, and summer invites to investigation. That’s usually not a problem, unless you have one of those dogs that try to eat everything, or play catch with wasps and bees.

While many dogs wouldn’t dream of tasting a plant, others munch down on everything they see. Knowing your dog’s normal behavior goes a long way towards ensuring safety.

Some of the most common problem backyard plants for dogs are Oleander, Lilies, Daffodils, Tulips, and Rhododendron. Bulb plants cause problems for dogs who like to dig, because the bulbs are often toxic – and inviting to chew on.

Common signs of a pet ingesting something poisonous include slobbering, drooling, and pawing at the mouth. Also watch out for vomiting and weakness. A poisoning left untreated can have serious consequences and even lead to the pet’s death, so it’s better to be safe than sorry with calling a vet.

If you wonder about plants, the ASPCA has a great list that includes both toxic and non-toxic plants.

Pet treat makers create fund to compensate dog owners

Pet information

With over 10,000 pet deaths related to jerky treats and a further near 5,000 complaints about illness, two of the nation’s largest makers of the treats now agree to establish a $6.5 million fund to compensate dog owners who believe their animals were harmed.

The fund is a result of a class action lawsuit between pet owners in several states, Nestle Purina PetCare Co and Waggin’ Train LLC. If the settlement is approved, it will also require manufacturers to take on “enhanced quality measures” when it comes to treats made in China, and to modify the text on packages.

Neither of the manufacturers admit the treats might be tainted. According to NBC News, the settlement is just to “bring the litigation to a prompt and certain resolution.”

Pet supply firms such as PetSmart and PetCo have already announced that they will no longer sell pet treats made in China. The FDA has warned consumers about the treats since 2007. Despite extensive testing, no direct cause for the problems has been found.

You can see the settlement and press release here.

 

The dreaded nail trim

Pet information

Some dogs are fine with owners or groomers touching their feet and working on their nails. Others, not so much. Here are some simple everyday exercises that can make nail trimming and paw care easier.

1. Touch your pet often.

Sure, you pet your dog and that’s great, but make sure to touch areas you don’t usually pet as well, like the paws. If the pet seems disturbed by the touch or pulls away – assuming there isn’t an underlying medical condition – try giving a treat as you touch the area briefly and gently.  Repeat this every day until he or she “gets” it. Once the brief touch has been associated with something positive, that is, getting a treat, you can increase the time of touching before the treat.

2. Add grooming tools

Whatever the dreaded grooming tool might be – maybe nail clippers or a brush – this can also be introduced with a treat. Show the tool with the treat without trying to use it. After a while, the dog will associate the tool with treats and think it’s the best thing ever. When that happens, you can try touching the pet’s body with the tool while it’s getting a treat, and step by step, the strange and scary will be less frightening.

3.  Clip a nail

Once the pet accepts you touching its paws and the clippers, it’s time to start practicing for actually clipping a nail. Pinch a toe the way you would do if you were to actually trim the nail, release it, and give a treat. You might have to repeat this many times during a period of days or weeks. The next step is to touch the nail with the nail trimmer and give a treat. Once that is accepted, clip a nail and give a treat.

Before you know it, your pet will think that trimming nails is a great event.

Canadian pet owners surveyed

Pet information

Canada’s Pet Wellness Report is put together by the Canadian Veterinary Medical Association and Hill’s Science Diet and gives an interesting view of Canadian pet owners. There are around 7.9 million cats and 5.9 million dogs in Canada, and around 35 percent of households have at least one dog, while 38 percent have at least one cat.

Findings suggest that while pet owners adore their pets, pet lives can be enhanced and lengthened by improving pet owners’ knowledge of nutrition and health.

Overfeeding is the most common mistake pet owners do, and people are likely to consider the pet’s taste preference (60%) before what’s actually good for the pet’s health (33%). Veterinarians believe that pet owners are more likely to pick pet food depending on price than nutrition.

The report also shows that weight control is the most important thing to increase pets’ life spans. Fewer than 8 percent feed their pets the amount recommended on the food package. Weight control and exercise go hand in hand. Pet owners know that exercise is important, but still spend three times as much time watching TV and twice as much time on the Internet as they do playing with or exercising their furry friends.

Top five most common mistakes when feeding dogs or cats – according to vets

  1. Overfeeding
  2. Giving too many treats
  3. Making food available at all times
  4. Poor quality food
  5. Human food/table scraps

Five most important things a pet owner can do to increase their pet’s life span

  1. Weight control
  2. Dental care
  3. Regular exams
  4. Exercise
  5. Proper food for the pet’s life stage

The most common health problem – also the one that surprises the most pet owners – is dental health. Dental problems are often followed by organ damage, strokes, osteoporosis, and diabetes.

Big gap between thinking and doing when it comes to pet exercise

Pet information

Joy!A recent study of Canadian pet owners made by the Canadian Veterinary Association together with Hill’s Science Diet reveals an interesting discrepancy of what pet owners’ think is important and what they actually do.

When asked what the most important thing is when it comes to enhance the length and quality of a pet’s life, most owners answered exercise. When veterinarians get the same question, exercise comes in as the fourth highest priority.

However, knowing that something is important is not the same thing as doing something about it; on an average weekday, Canadian pet owners spend 79 minutes watching TV, 48 minutes browsing the Internet, and 25 minutes playing with or exercising their pets. On average, women do a little better than men. Women spend 28 minutes playing with or exercising their pets, and the corresponding number for men is 19 minutes.

According to veterinarians, 55 percent of dogs and 70 percent of cats do not receive sufficient exercise to maintain good health.

On an average weekend day, the TV watching increases to 89 minutes, the Internet surfing sinks a little to 44 minutes, and pets get 29 minutes.

Overfeeding and obesity are the main issues amongst Canadian pets, and time spent together playing or exercising is a great way to strengthen the bond between humans and pets.

Watch out for heatstroke in pets

Pet information

Watch out for heatstrokeDogs can’t sweat. They pant to cool themselves off, but it’s not the most efficient system. Another risk for dogs is that they’re generally eager to please their owners and will not stop playing or even indicate that something is wrong until it is too late and heatstroke is a fact.

When it comes to cats and dogs, the pets most susceptible to heatstroke include:

  • Pugs, Bulldogs, and other short snout dog breeds
  • Persians and other cats with flat faces
  • Sick and elderly pets
  • Cats and dogs with heart conditions
  • Dogs who exercise in hot weather
  • Dogs who have airway problems or snore
  • Overweight pets
  • Cats and dogs who recently relocated to a hotter climate
  • Any pet who has had a heatstroke before. They are at higher risk of getting it again.

Heatstroke is a real problem. It can lead to kidney failure, liver failure, brain damage, swelling of airways, lung damage, seizures, muscle damage, bleeding disorders, and even death.

Make sure your pets have access to a cool area. If you don’t have AC, use fans to increase the circulation in the house. Always make sure your pets have access to cool water.

Pet doors allow cats and dogs to come back inside when they want to. An energy efficient dog door or cat door such as the PlexiDor dog doors and cat doors will ensure that the heat stays outside.

Symptoms of heatstroke include:

  • A blank stare or anxious expression
  • Heavy panting and possible raspy breath
  • Bright red gums
  • Salivation
  • Throwing up
  • Stumbling, falling, or collapsing
  • Elevated temperature
  • Lying flat on cool surfaces
  • Pet’s skin feels warmer than normal
  • Seizures

If your pet shows any signs of heatstroke, hose them down so their panting slows. Small animals can be sprayed with a spray bottle of water set at a fine mist. The water helps prevent the body temperature from raising further.

Call the vet. Heatstroke is serious and this is not a time to apply a wait-and-see approach.

When you go to the vet, keep the AC on in the car to keep the pet as cool as possible. If you don’t have air-conditioning, make sure to keep the windows down. Just watch the pet so they don’t jump out of the car!

At the vet, treatment can include intravenous fluids, blood tests, and oxygen. Severe cases of heatstroke require hospitalization up to ten days.

 

Warning for poisoned meatballs

Pet information

Dog walkers in San Francisco are frightened and shocked by someone putting out poisoned meatballs, apparently with intent to poison dogs. This morning’s finds come from San Francisco’s Sunset District. Police have collected the meatballs and report they have pills lodged inside.

In February, two dogs in the Twin Peaks neighborhood found and ate poisoned meatballs, and last summer hundreds of treats laced with strychnine were found between Diamond Heights and Twin Peaks. Those make many dogs severely ill and killed at least one.

The meatballs have been found hidden in places like the underbrush where dogs are likely to find them before the owners realize what is going on.

There are several rewards offered by various organizations to find the person responsible. Anyone with information should call the San Francisco police.

Spanish poo detectives

Pet information

As several “scoop the poop” campaigns around the US have pointed out, it’s a bad idea to leave dog poop on the ground. Despite scented poop bags, poop vacuum cleaners and poop-scooping services, there’s still an abundance of dog droppings in yards, parks, and along city streets. 

This byproduct of dog owning spreads germs, pollutes water supplies, and releases unwanted substances into the ground. In the small Spanish time Colmenar Viejo, the mayor’s office has tired of residents ignoring signs and information campaigns. They’re hiring professional Canine Detectives.

The detectives will film culprits and hand the evidence over to the police along with a report. Fines are up to 150 euros ($200) with higher penalties for repeat offenders. Before the detectives start working full time on filming dog walkers, hired actors will imitate the detective behavior in order to inform citizens of the campaign.

The campaign is initiated because of health concerns. The city says most of the dog owners are responsible, but a minority destroy the environment for everyone, leaving piles of poop not just along the street but at schools and children’s playgrounds.

Keep an eye on the cocoa mulch

Pet information

Gardening time is here, and there are some things to watch out for when planning the summer’s work. It is widely known that some plants are poisonous, but more innocent looking gardening items can also pose a danger to dogs.

Cocoa mulch is popular in the USA. It smells good, repels garden pests, retains moisture, and darkens over time instead of fading. Unfortunately, it can also be dangerous to pets.

Many types of mulch are made from wood, but cocoa mulch is made from cacao shells left over from the cocoa bean roasting process. It is environmentally friendly, and contains theobromine – the same substance that makes dogs sick from eating chocolate. Snopes.com reports that depending on the kind of mulch, it contains 300-1200 mg of theobromine per ounce.

Whether this is dangerous or not depends on the dog’s propensity to eat unusual things. While theobromine is toxic to cats, they are very unlikely to munch down on mulch. Dogs might.

Some manufacturers of cocoa mulch claim their mulch goes through extensive cleaning processes to strip the cocoa fat from the shells, thus making them harmless. If you have a dog that likes to eat strange things from the ground and you want to use cocoa mulch, do some research and make sure you get a kind that’s free from theobromine.

Do you Doga?

Pet information

Doga is Yoga, with dogs. It combines massage and meditation with stretching, and is good for both dogs and humans. There are video classes allowing people to learn at home, and many places now offer classes where dogs and people can Doga together.

In Doga, dogs and humans work together as one unit. The humans help their dogs get into different poses, and in some cases the pets are used as instruments or weights as the humans perfect their poses. The dogs usually take to this quickly. Watch a dog stretch; it looks like a Yoga position.

Opponents of the idea claim that Doga trivializes sacred and ancient practices, and that the dogs interfere with participants’ concentration. Proponents claim that the practice is perfect, because it emphasizes unity and connection, strengthens the bond between person and pet, and might get some people to move who ordinarily wouldn’t.

Whether Doga should be considered “real” Yoga or not probably depends on the participants. Either way, it gives an excuse to do something together, to bond, stretch, and hopefully find harmony.

 

Can cats eat dog food?

Pet information

eating catCats should not eat dog food. Dogs can eat cat food just fine, but cats should not eat dog food. Cats and dogs are more different than meets the eye, and they have vastly different nutritional needs.

Dogs have developed side by side with humans to a point where they can eat most of the things we eat and digest. They are considered omnivores, which means that they are able to digest carbohydrates, and they can survive on plant based foods. That doesn’t mean that dogs prefer meat to vegetables and other plants, or that a diet based completely on plants would be nutritionally adequate, but they can survive on it. A cat cannot.

Cats are carnivores. That means that they cannot live unless they eat meat in some form. One major difference between dog food and cat food is the percentage of meat.

Other differences between cats and dogs include the ability to handle vitamins and amino acids. Dogs, for instance, have the ability to break down organic pigments from plants called carotenoids and convert them into active Vitamin A. Cats can’t do that.

Cats have to get Vitamin A already converted by some other animal. That is, they have to eat the meat from some animal who already converted the carotenoids to active Vitamin A. This is one of the reasons most carnivores don’t eat other carnivores; they need to eat animals who live off plants in order to survive.

Arginine is another big difference between cats and dogs; it is a building block for proteins and cats have to get it with every meal. Dogs produce an enzyme that helps them produce Arginine, and they only need to get a little with their food.

Taurine is an amino acid distributed through the heart, retina, and other organs. Dogs produce their own, but cats must eat it, and it is not present in any plants.

There are more examples of substances cats must get through their food, such as niacin and arachidonic acid.