That’s a critical question because there are times where you might walk in with an emergency, and your veterinarian’s already in surgery. If it’s during regular office hours as something is happening, call your veterinarian immediately. Tell them this is what’s going on and that you need to get them in. And they will tell you, “Yes, come on in. We can see you right now,” or, “Oh, my doctor’s in surgery, and he won’t be free for the next hour or so.” And maybe there are times you might have to take them to a different veterinary clinic. We have to do what’s right and what’s best for that patient. If it requires you to go to a different clinic or go to a 24-hour facility, we have to do whatever is best for that patient. Call them before to get a better feel for what’s going on and if they can see you immediately or not.

That can be a tough one to answer. And it’s a rather broad list of questions. I think the safest bet is to look into various sites. I know for sure the ASPCA has a website that is fairly comprehensive when it comes to foods and even more specifically human foods that can be toxic or make your animals ill. So I would probably reference a list like that to find out for sure.

I think it’s a good idea. And I’m faced with this question a lot because they’ll come in for a yearly checkup on a, I don’t know, let’s say 10-year-old dog, and he’s perfectly fine. Well, I get it. You wonder—does he need it? I don’t know yet, to be honest with you. Do I recommend it? Yeah. You bet I do. Why? Because he’s 10. If I catch something early, then I have a much better chance to treat it effectively. If I don’t look, I’ll never know. Maybe he’s a dog that comes in two weeks after he was just here, and now his kidneys are greatly impaired. He’s in kidney failure. Something like that. Would I have had better results knowing that two weeks prior and addressing it then? Heck yeah, I would have.

So if given the opportunity, yeah, I will always choose for the side of being cautious and more proactive when I can. But the word “need” blood work is an interesting word because it’s, like I said, if you don’t look, you’ll never know. So it’s my job to be the advocate for the pet and recommend things earlier if possible so we can catch them earlier and have a better treatment outcome.

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At home, it’s probably just good, simple hygiene. Make sure the dog’s coat is cared for and that there are no significant mats. With long hair breeds, you either want to get them groomed often or just simply brush them often, particularly in the summer months where the shedding is going to be worse. A lot of dogs struggle with dry skin in the summertime, too, so using things like shampoos that contain aloe and oatmeals are great, as they are hypoallergenic additives that also help to clean them.

The other thing I would mention, too, is that fatty acids are very important for dogs’ coats, so check the ingredients of your dog’s food. Perhaps your food has fatty acids naturally occurring in it but, if they don’t, maybe add fish oils or something along those lines to the food. What you’re looking for is what’s called Omega-3 and Omega-6 fatty acids. Those are the two that most of the big food manufacturers look for and try to include because those have been proven to be beneficial for skin and coat.

With a physical exam. It’s what we do, all day, every day. When you see dogs for a living, you get very used to seeing what normal is. You can read body language. You can read the posture of the tail, the posture of the dog. How are they standing? How are they moving? What’s their facial expression? Are their ears up and perky? It starts with a basic observation and then when you put your hands on them. Again, pain is such a vague word. The pain of what? If they come in three-legged, well hello, that’s where the problem is, so we’re going to start on that leg. But if they come in just kind of not moving right and a bit sore, we have to start looking. You can check the range of motion. You can check the neck, the spine, the hip, etc., as It’s what we we’re trained to do.

And in some cases we’ll need an x-ray to tell you, “Oh, that spot equals pain.” But sometimes, you can see lesions on an x-ray to where you know that’s a painful process that’s going on. Sometimes we might need additional tests beyond just a physical exam. But I would say about pain, 90% of it is probably recognition and a hands-on physical exam.

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Unfortunately, yes, depending on where you live. Let me answer it this way—if you have mosquitoes where you live, then yes. They are how the disease is spread so, if you live, say, in Canada where there are no mosquitoes, it’s not going to be a big deal to you guys. But here in South Louisiana, the Gulf Coast, and the majority of the United States, I would say it’s a pretty big issue.

There are several points to be made about that. So spaying or neutering a cat, the first and obvious thing is population control. I don’t think that’s in the veterinary oath, but I do take that part of my job quite seriously, because we do have such an overpopulation problem, especially here in Southern Louisiana, but really nationwide it seems to be. So I feel like it’s our duty to prevent that when we can. Number two is for multiple health reasons—cancer, uterine infections, aggression, all these things that can be brought on by hormonal influences that we can control or even remove by doing these procedures at an early age.

Maybe a male dog who is becoming territorial. So the answer to that question could possibly be yes. If you had an intact male dog that was urinating in your house, then absolutely I would recommend neutering him and see if that curbs that unwanted behavior. A female is a little less prone to do so based on territorial reasons. Usually you have either a bladder infection or just a not so well trained dog. So they can help is the short answer, but I wouldn’t hang my hat on that for certain.

During your average preventative care appointment, it’s going to be a lot of the routines, so we’re going to test the dog for heartworms. We’re going to do a stool sample to look for intestinal worms. We do a great head-to-toe physical exam. We’re going to administer vaccinations to prevent all the diseases.

Also, it gives us an opportunity to do what we call wellness blood work. That is typically where we run a CBC and maybe a chemistry panel. On some of our older patients, we might also include a thyroid panel. But it’s before there’s a problem, so we’re looking to see if we can see the beginnings of perhaps inadequate kidney function, or the beginnings of something that’s affecting the liver, or electrolytes or blood sugar…those kinds of things. That’s why we call it wellness blood work. There’s no problem there at that time, but it’s allowing us to look behind the curtain and see if there’s anything more brewing under the surface.

That’s actually kind of an interesting question. And it’s something that I’ve toyed with and I don’t routinely do because it’s, if I’m being blunt, it’s a hard sell. Like it’s hard to convince somebody, “Let me do X-rays on your cat. They’re completely normal, but let me do X-rays on your cat as a baseline.” To answer your question, what’s the benefit? If we do X-rays on a one-year-old cat who has no clinical signs or problems of anything at all. That X-ray should and usually will be normal. That’s great. What does that provide me? That’s the baseline that we’re talking about.

Fast forward 10 years. And then now that same cat comes in and now he’s sick or now they’re behaving differently, and for whatever reason, we have to shoot X-rays again. Well, I can always go back and pull their films from when that cat was one year old, and compare to now at 11 years old and I will typically see differences. The baseline gives you the normal for that said animal that you can use for the rest of its life to compare back against. Is it always going to come into play? Maybe not, but that’s the point of a baseline is to know what normal is.

The same thing applies to blood work. Why don’t we do wellness blood work? To know “A”, that the animal is well and also if it is, to know what’s normal for that animal. We do this so, if at some point down the road, they become ill with any kind of condition, you have something to compare to. And it’s comparing apples to apples. It’s not just some cat, it’s that cat from X amount of time ago. And that’s the benefit of baseline radiographs and baseline blood work.

I said at the beginning, it was a hard sell because it’s hard to convince people to do that and to spend a hundred, $200, whatever it is, for X-rays when they don’t have a problem, but that would be the benefit of it.

The reality is most of these cats are going to show you much more subtle early signs, and you’re probably going to take the cat to your veterinarian to have them checked—to have lab work or x-rays—whatever it takes to diagnose what the underlying problem is. So again, with that information and the advice of your veterinarian and their staff, a group decision will typically be made in reference to what treatment options are. Euthanasia is usually the last thing that we can do to ease their suffering. So once all other treatment options have been exhausted and there is no improvement or the animal continues to decline, that’s when the time for euthanasia.

Unless you saw what happened or know what the dog got into, that’s the only way you’re going to know immediately. Unfortunately, there is no quick, immediate test that, when they come in, that we can say, “Hey, I’m going to run a test for antifreeze.” No, we can run blood work, and we can look where the kidneys are, but it takes days for the kidneys to be affected to where it’s going to show on blood work in time. So, unfortunately, there’s no rapid test. It’s just a matter of good observation on your part.

Again, start with the call. Talk to your veterinarian and their staff there and find out. I never want to imply that this is not a big deal or that you can handle it yourself. When in doubt, get your veterinarian involved. Because if you assess it one way, or your veterinarian tells you over the phone, “Oh, you probably can do this, it’s no big deal,” it could go badly. So if at all in doubt, get on the phone, bring them in, let the veterinarian assess it, and do it that way.

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If you ask the dog, absolutely. It’s more nutritious. It tastes better. Just imagine, you get to eat a little piece of dry kibble that looks almost like cardboard, or you could eat this nice, juicy, wet dog food. Yeah, they’re always going to choose that. Is it more nutritious? That’s a bit more complex. If you start reading the labels, most of the products—whether it’s a prescription diet or regular maintenance diet—most of the formulations have very close to the same levels of proteins and carbohydrates and fats and those kinds of things. Normally, my vote is dry food. I know I didn’t make it sound very scrumptious, but it’s better for the teeth. And I find it’s a little bit easier to control your dog’s weight with dry food.

The most common things that I do on a day-to-day basis would be things such as heartworm tests, fecal samples or stool samples, maybe urinalysis, and probably almost as common we do things like chemistry panels and CBCs. Those are probably the big five or so types of lab tests run in veterinary clinics day-to-day, numerous times a day. We might have to send off other lab tests, like maybe a test for Cushing’s disease, like a low dose dex suppression test or an ACTH stim test or thyroid testing. You could pick a disease presentation, and there’s probably a specialty test that I can run to give you more information about it. But the ones I listed previously were probably the most common that we use.

Some are public health concerns. Rabies. I know that your cat is only going to get rabies by being exposed to a rabid animal. It’s probably not going to happen indoors, but what happens if your window pops open, or your window is open and the screen pops out and your cat wants to take off? You can’t afford to risk those types of things. A disease like rabies, for example, is a human threat. If, by some chance, your cat gets out, gets bitten by a rabid animal, and comes back home, they will likely act fine for quite a while. But then on about day 9 or 10, your cat is not acting quite so fine. You see where I’m going with that? There’s no point in allowing that to even be a possibility.

So for certain public health concerns, there’s that. And again, even other viruses that I didn’t mention in that scenario could involve the same exact thing happening. Say your cat’s indoors and you think to yourself, “Oh, I don’t want to do feline leukemia.” What happens if he gets out? What happens if it’s a pretty fall day and there’s another cat that comes nose to nose with him at the screen. They didn’t even come into direct contact, but can it be transmitted that way? You bet it can. So that’s the reason why it’s still important.

There are some times when I have a full surgical day, I’ll go straight from one procedure to make sure the animal’s waking up fine, turn it over to my staff, and I have to jump back in the next surgery. That means that sometimes it will be the veterinary staff that will contact you and explains how your animal did, how they’re doing now, and how long before they’re awake.

I do lean on my staff quite heavily, but certainly, when possible, I try to make the phone calls myself at least to explain, “Hey, I’m done. This is how it went,” because nobody knows how well it went better than me. I was the one doing it. I try to make the phone call whenever possible—either immediately after surgery, or when the client picks up at the time of discharge.

Again, what the dog presents for will dictate what we have to do. And not to be repetitive, but on wellness visits, yearly checkups, heartworm tests, stool samples, and maybe even some wellness blood work, which is a CBC chem. Those are the most common. If you bring an animal in that presents for PU/PD, drinking a lot of water, urinating a lot…maybe they’re losing weight or dehydrated, then, no. My focus goes more to diabetes, hyperthyroidism, kidney failure, those kinds of things. So I’m much more inclined to get CBC chemistry and urinalysis on those animals. So again, it just depends on what they’re presenting for, how sick they are, what their clinical signs are. All of that is going to dictate what tests we potentially run.

It depends on what the procedure is, as to other questions you may want to ask. The most obvious things would be, “What do I have to do to prepare my cat before, i.e. fasting, water intake, all that kind of stuff?”

I think what’s as or maybe even more important is asking, “What do I need to prepare for afterward?” Again, that depends on what the surgery is. Some surgeries are very mild and quick, and have very quick recovery times where others might be a lot more involved, so, you just need to ask questions such as, “How should I prepare for when I take my cat home? Do I need a special kennel? Do I need a special diet, pain control?” Anything like that, which we’ll cover in a second.

Depending on what test we run and if we do the lab in the veterinary clinic, I would argue to tell you between five and 10 minutes you’ll have them back. And again, when we say lab results, we’re talking about fecals, urine analysis, CBCs, chemistry, maybe a coag panel. Most clinics, including ours, has in-house equipment that allows for point of care blood work, such as that, or lab work, I should say. In the cases of those tests I just rambled off, I’ll have the results in 5-10 minutes. Some tests that have to be sent off, like phenobarbital, certain thyroid panels, ACTH, or various endocrine type panels that we’re screening for, those likely have to be sent off to an outside lab. And that might take anywhere from one to maybe even two, three days to get back.

When it comes to the tools we use – X-ray and ultrasound – it’s a matter of hoping that the cat is cooperative enough with you to lay still. That’s it. With an X-ray, we typically want to get a lateral view with them on their side of whatever we’re shooting, whether it’s abdomen, chest, or even an extremity. If you want a lateral view coming from the side, then you typically want what we call it a VD ventral dorsal. So you want it from the bottom to the top. So we put them on their back and we kind of stretch them out that way. And that’s what we try to do. Some cats will do that quite readily. Some cats will not. Sometimes they require a bit of sedation to allow us to position them properly and get good images.

Obviously, we don’t want to sedate animals if we don’t have to, especially sick animals, but sometimes in order to obtain a clear diagnosis and do it justice, you have to use sedation. You just can’t do it on an awake cat who’s fighting and trying to bite you. So sometimes they have to be sedated. Ultrasound is almost identical to that. We have a little V-shaped cushion that we’ll put them in and we’ll normally have my technicians holding them, giving them affection, and they do whatever they have to do to keep them occupied or distracted. And an ultrasound’s very non-invasive—it’s a little probe that you use after wetting their skin down with alcohol or some sort of a contrast agent. You roll the little probe around to see what you need to see. Again, some of them require sedation. It just depends on the cat.

The last two modalities – CT scan, MRI – are seldom done in common general practice. But if they do have to be done, those animals often have to be under general anesthetic or very heavy sedation because they can’t move. Those scanners are such that you cannot have people in the scanner with them holding a cat in position. The cat has to lay there perfectly positioned and not move. Good luck doing that on an animal that’s awake.

Fish oils would be the first one that comes to my mind. While there are veterinary options, you can probably find very comparable OTC products as well. Beyond that, not really. Topical things, yes, but anything oral additives? I wouldn’t think so. I would discuss that with your veterinarian first before trying any kind of at-home remedies.

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Why do they call it heartworm? Because the worms live in the heart. I’m not saying that to be silly, but anything that lives in the heart is obviously going to be detrimental. These worms can get pretty good-sized. Believe it or not, they can reach six to eight inches long, so that’s a pretty good size. If you get one or two, it’s probably not a huge deal. If you get 10 or 12, it’s starting to become a big deal now. If you get more than that, well, you can imagine. Common sense would tell you that’s going to begin to affect how efficiently and effectively that the heart can pump. Can those valves seal off? Is blood flow going to be impeded in going to the lungs to get oxygenated? All that stuff is a factor, so there are some very significant signs associated with the disease itself. And some of those changes are irreversible if they’ve been there for long enough, even if the dog is treated.

Basically, we’re just looking for anything abnormal. To say that there’s one thing I’m searching for is not true. It’s just once you know what a normal mouth and healthy gums look like, you’re looking for anything that varies from that—tartar, gingivitis, any of those things. So we start there, and then we kind of dig a little deeper if necessary.

Flea control. Can I give you a two-word answer? Flea control. You control it accurately for fleas. And they won’t get tapeworms that way. So you should be good to go if you do proper flea control.

No. I hear that a lot, that, “Oh, I’ve heard my grandma told me they’re supposed to have one heat cycle before, or even a litter before.” No, there’s no medical proof to back that up. In fact, if anything, I would argue the opposite. I would argue that there is medical proof to back up the fact that certain animals, females in particular, can develop mammary cancer. Let me say that in a different way, cats can develop mammary cancer more frequently if they’ve had multiple heat cycles. So spaying them at an earlier age makes that percentage lower.

Let’s be honest. It’s a cat and they’re going to rest pretty much whenever they want to rest. We all know the lifestyle of a cat. I think the biggest thing is to avoid stress. Now when we say “rest”, my mind immediately thinks sleep. More importantly, though, you should avoid exposing them to stress as much as you can.

If there’s a way to give them their own little space where there are no other animals in there harassing them, that’s ideal, especially if they don’t do well with the dogs or other pets in the house. Keep them separate so they don’t have to be traumatized by those kinds of things. I think stress is the bigger enemy there.

The most truthful answer is people that don’t handle vaccines for a living don’t always know how you’re supposed to handle a vaccine. The biggest example of this are feed stores—that’s what we run into here. They deal with feed, with all due respect. They have a very important role, but their job is not to vaccinate animals. So when they get a shipment in, they don’t know to look to see if that thing was stored below X degrees. The vaccines have to be refrigerated. They have to be stored under refrigeration without fail. Sometimes those things are not there when the vaccines are not from a veterinarian.

On the veterinary side, we are ordering from veterinary specific vendors that ship and package them properly. They arrive refrigerated and at the proper temperature, we immediately know how to handle those things. And if ever there’s a situation where that shipping process was not satisfactory, we send it back and we get the right shipment to us. So there’s no way to get around that. I would never imply that the vaccines from a feed store are ineffective. It’s just, I personally want the reassurance and peace of mind to know that they were handled by animal healthcare professionals.

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Very similar to people, actually. The most common and commonly seen and most common disease process is simple gingivitis. This is an inflammation of the gums, but that often progresses into various stages of periodontal disease, where you have now some soreness of the gums, maybe a little bleeding, and the tooth might be loose. We see masses or growths in the mouth. You can have oral-nasal fistulas. You can have broken teeth. There are tooth root abscesses. So, we see all of these things.

Nutritional, yes. There are various senior dog foods that are on the market and for good reason. They do have different nutrient requirements as they age. So yes, I think senior dog food would be a definite plus. And then some of the changes I kind of alluded to a few questions back when I was talking about ramps to get on and off furniture, into vehicles—those kinds of things are changes that you can make.

One other one that comes to mind if you have an animal with arthritis, you might consider elevated food bowls, food and water bowls that you can put on an elevated platform, if you will. It might make it a little bit easier for your dog to access. Just kind of think ahead of how you can make it a little bit easier for them to go about their daily lives.

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That is a good question, and I’m going to be honest with you. I’m going to say no on this one. Yeah, I’m going to say no. It’ll make them less vocal at two in the morning right outside of your bedroom window, maybe. I won’t go any further. Think about it, you can fill in the blanks. But yeah, just… Some cats are vocal, man. Some cats when they’re hungry, meow, meow, meow. When they want your attention, meow, meow, meow. Yeah. So no, I think the answer to that question, to put it concisely is no.

We are conveniently located on the corner of Cameron St. and Apollo Rd. in Scott, LA. Parking is available in front of our building.

The x-rays themselves don’t help your dog, but they can help your dog by potentially providing a diagnosis so that we know what the best treatment modality is to fix or heal your dog.

Hmm. That could also be for a variety of reasons. I mean, the first thing that comes to my mind is senility. I don’t want to say Alzheimer’s because that’s not really a condition we document in dogs, but it certainly happens.

It could be from being painful as well. If they’re laying on a hard floor or hard surface and they’re arthritic, there’s not as much muscle there to provide cushion or support, so it could mean that they are in pain.

It could simply be a dog that just misses you and doesn’t want to be away from you at night, so it’s hard to say for sure. Definitely get the animal looked at and have some blood work run, so that way, if there is something underlying, you can catch it early and address it.

Bare minimum once a year but, more realistically, I think twice a year is probably a better schedule to fall into because it allows the dog … they grow so rapidly and change so rapidly, much more so than us. Seeing an animal on a twice-yearly basis will definitely give you a better chance to pick up on conditions as they emerge, and not once they’ve been there for six or nine months or even a year.

Our main goal is to ensure we have enough time with all of our patients so that they get the care they need. Because of this we do prefer that you schedule in advance.

Well, probably the most important thing is just common sense and knowing it’s going to take time. If you want to do this the right way, it’s going to take time. It might not be a tone of time, but it’s going to take a little bit of devotion and effort every day, to be quite honest. It might only be a few minutes a day, but it will take patience and having the proper setup to prepare for bringing a young, untrained puppy into the household.

Surgery is certainly not warranted in any, or in very many emergencies, or certainly not all of them. It depends on what the emergency is. Right off the top of my head, the first two things I think of is if you have a dog with an intestinal obstruction, and that dog is vomiting. Perhaps a young puppy ate a sock. That’s the first thing that popped into my head. But if something like that happens, that might require surgery because you have to remove that physical foreign body and get it out. Otherwise, the patient will not get better. Maybe there’s a bladder issue, perhaps there are stones, or the bladder is blocked—those are instances that might require minor procedures, or maybe even a full surgery. Pregnancy issues can also lead to surgery. If you have dystocia where a pregnant female cannot deliver her pups properly, that might require surgery. But that is really about the only ones that I can think of on short notice.

I don’t perform surgery in the case of an emergency unless it’s warranted because the last thing that I want to do is put an animal that’s already stressed and debilitated under anesthesia. But there will be some cases where surgery is the treatment, or cure, for that set emergency. And again, what I just said is not a comprehensive list, but those are the ones that came to me off the top of my head.

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For starters, the first set of vaccines…I would normally give a puppy between the six and eight-week range for the first set. When they are young and they nurse and they get colostrum from their mothers, the antibodies that they receive from their mom usually last in the 9 to 10 weeks. I’d probably say 10 weeks would be my answer, range before those antibodies start to wane. We don’t know that for certain, and it’s not really feasible to get a blood sample and send off antibody titers on a six or seven or eight-week-old puppy. So, we normally start them early, just in case they didn’t get adequate antibodies.

The second part of that question was how often do they need to be seen for vaccines? I don’t give vaccines in puppies any closer than three weeks apart. So, if they had one at, let’s just say, seven weeks, the next one I would recommend doing is at 10 weeks. The next one after that would be 13 weeks, no sooner than that. If it’s a week or so later because of your schedule or something, that’s fine. You just don’t want them any closer together than that.

And my rule of thumb at the end of the day is I want them to have a minimum of two sets of vaccines after 10 weeks. That’s because, by then, those maternal antibodies are gone. They’re making their own antibodies to your vaccine, and they need to see it at least twice to get an adequate response with antibody production.

No, of course not. Nope. Nope. No, no. No. They don’t have to be spayed or neutered. I’m stumbling on the question because very few people have that standpoint. Obviously, if your dog is going to be a breeding animal, well then, hello, you can’t do that. Do they have to? No. Do I think it’s a wise decision for dogs that are not going to be bred? Yes.

If you see any of the things that we just talked about, get them in. Would you want to walk around hurting if you didn’t have to? No, of course not.It’s same thing with a dog. If you see any of those signs, get the dog looked at. You don’t know whether anything needs to be done or can be done, but you should let your veterinarian decide that. If you don’t take them in then, you’re pretty much answering that question for your pet, and it’s not fair to them. Get them in, get them looked at, and you and your veterinarian can come up with a game plan, what works best, and what’s available to you.

ASPCA has a poison control hotline that you can call. You would need to know what the dog ingested. You can’t just call them with a random question and say, “Hey, I think my dog …” Instead, you’ll want to say, “Hey, my dog just ate Devon-CON rat poison,” or whatever it is, and they can tell you exactly what the active ingredient is and what you need to do. Again, your veterinarian will have to be part of that solution in 99.9% of the cases. But to at least give you some immediate information about how to handle things, and what you may or may not experience with that dog, what your dog will experience, calling the ASPCA hotline is probably the first step.

Yes. So intestinal parasites can be passed on to people. Immediately my mind goes to … Okay, say an animal, a cat, in this case, has roundworms. They shed roundworm eggs in their stool. I think it’s two days or so, give or take a little bit. But let’s say that in two days, those roundworm eggs become larvae, and that’s infective larvae. Two things can happen. And thankfully, it’s not something we see in adults. Unfortunately, it can be seen in children, because they don’t always have the same hygiene as we do as adults. But number one, if you were walking around barefooted and maybe you have a cut or any kind of defect on your skin, an abrasion, anything that the skin barrier is compromised, and you step in a pile of infected roundworm poop, that can penetrate the skin, and cause cutaneous lesions. It’s called cutaneous larval migrans. But that is something that you will see. And that happen to an adult or a kid.

You can see what’s called ocular larval migrans. And there’s another version called visceral larval migrans. They are when an infective roundworm larva is ingested, usually orally. And yes, I’m talking about people the same way. Maybe you were handling the cat’s stool. You were cleaning the litter box. You didn’t wash your hands properly. If the stool is ingested, it can migrate to those areas, the eye, or your internal organs. And those roundworms will migrate right through specific organism and leave little fibrous tracks. It’s a mess. It’s a nightmare, and you don’t ever want to deal with it or have to deal with it in your kids. The ocular version can cause blindness. And it’s permanent—irreversible blindness.

How do you prevent all this scary stuff? You take your cat to the veterinarian, you get them checked, you get them de-wormed, and you keep them on a proper preventative. And we don’t worry about it.

Typically at their first visit, depending on when that visit is. I typically recommend the first visit be at 6-8 weeks, which is usually right after the time of acquisition of the kitten. And then those vaccines are boostered approximately every 3-4 weeks after that until about 4 months of age.

Not really. The care for a pregnant cat is virtually the same as any other adult cat. One thing that I like to do, however, is to switch the moms-to-be over to kitten food. Yes, of course, I do understand I’m talking about feeding an adult animal kitten food, but the reason why is because kitten foods tend to be higher in fat, higher in protein, higher in calcium. These are all things that they’re going to need when they’re producing a litter of kittens and very shortly thereafter in order to produce plenty of milk. They’re going to need some of those increased nutrients. I typically recommend that pregnant cats eat the kitten food until the litter is weaned.

As the name somewhat implies, diagnostic imaging provides images that are used to help us attain a diagnosis. It’s as simple as that. So what do they entail? The most common are X-rays, radiographs if you will, ultrasound, and then some of the more advanced modalities would be things like MRI or CT scans.

So how do you determine which one is the most applicable or the most useful in a situation? It varies tremendously on how the animal presents. If you’re looking at bones, then most of the time a simple X-ray is going to be fine. And I say a simple X-ray just because they’re very common. They’re readily available at almost any veterinary clinic.

If you need to look at the internal structure of the liver or the spleen or something like that, X-rays are probably not the best one for that. You’re going to want something like an ultrasound that can actually see what the integrity of the internal components of that organ looks like. So that would be a case where maybe ultrasound might be more applicable.

So rather than go through every device or every situation one by one, it really depends on what the presenting complaints or signs are that will dictate what type of imaging is best used.

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Kind of on day one. No, not literally on day one. I’m being silly, but early. Start with the very, very basics. For example, when you feed the dog, try to encourage them to sit every time as you’re putting the food down. Hold the food up high and then say, “Sit, sit, sit” and push their rear end down. That’s a simple thing that you can do, and don’t reward them or treat them until they stay. It might be for a microsecond that they sit but expect that of them. Make them sit first and then give them the reward.

As they get a little bit older, ask them to sit and then put their bowl down, and with my own dogs, I hold them there. I don’t release them until they’ve sat for a few seconds, and then I’ll usually snap and release them.

But my point is, these kinds of small behaviors can start very early. You don’t want to be too strict with them. You want to let them be a puppy, but you do want to start laying down the guidelines. It’s just like a child. They do better when there’s structure and expectations. They really do. If you just let them run wild, you have to correct them later. They don’t know why you’re correcting them or what they could have done differently. Show them the right way from an early age, as it just makes for such a better well-rounded puppy right out of the gate.

I get asked that one every now and then as well. The simple answer is, no. I can’t really justify a reason for me to say that’s better. I’ve been doing this for over 20 years and I can count maybe not on one hand, but probably on two hands, how many times an animal has died peacefully on their own at home. It just doesn’t happen very often. They fight. They hang on. They just don’t let go the way that we would want them to let go. So oftentimes it stinks, but we as veterinarians and sometimes you as owners have to make that hard decision for them. I encourage people to think of it not as being cruel because I, too, struggle with that.

What gives me the right to do that? What gives me the power and the right to decide if an animal lives or dies? It’s a weird power to yield, but I’ve come to realize that it’s the last bit of love that we can give them. It really is. When you know that the end is there, there’s nothing else you can offer and there’s nothing that’s going to make this animal turn around. Isn’t it kinder to let them go with dignity, pain-free, in a controlled, loving setting where their owner can be right there with them, holding them, talking to them? I would like to go that way.

I hope that that can be done for me one day, and I know it can’t, but who wouldn’t want to pass that way in that situation. So, yeah. I think it is much more feasible and humane for the animal to ease them in their passing, as opposed to drawing it out and just waiting and waiting and waiting for them to pass at home.

Absolutely is my answer to that one, although there are certain vaccinations that may be able to be slowed down or not given with as much frequency perhaps as the dog ages. For instance, I’m not really worried about Parvo in a 13-year-old Labrador as I would be in a 13-week-old Labrador. Your veterinarian will use their discretion to decide if those things are still necessary or not.

Preventative care, absolutely. I consider preventative care to be things such as routine blood work, heartworm prevention, flea control, and other things like that.

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I wouldn’t answer that in a way where I would say it could cause skin conditions, but I think it can exacerbate skin conditions. As we all know, stress is a real thing, and it is a factor when it comes to our immune systems and how they function. So an animal that is continually stressed will probably be more likely to have a weaker immune system, which means things like staph or fungal disease have a much better chance of gaining a foothold and causing an issue. So can it cause skin problems? Probably not, but can it make an existing skin problem much worse? Absolutely, yeah.

I’d love to answer that, yes, but unfortunately, the answer is no. Why? Because it’s not a tracking device. If the cat shows up at somebody else’s house and they say, “Oh, look at this cute little kitty,” and they just take him, it doesn’t mean they’re bad people. But if they never take the cat to a vet or a shelter, they have no way to know that the cat belonged to someone else before. Unfortunately, microchipping doesn’t guarantee you’ll get the cat back, but I would certainly say that it will increase the odds that you will get them back.

A lot of the things we mentioned earlier. I mean, some of the things I pay most attention to, for one, is the stool sample, looking for worms. I do put my hands on them and check for hernias, as we mentioned earlier. I listen to their heart and lungs to check for heart murmurs. That’s another very, very important one. I check out their skin and coat, as these are very easy to examine with a good physical exam. Just flipping through their fur, make sure there are no fleas, parasites, or staph infections. Those are probably the main things we’re looking for on that first exam.

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It depends on the veterinarian you use and what test that veterinarian runs. All the things I keep mentioning time and again, CBC chemistry, urinalysis, all of that. Many veterinarians now have those kinds of machines or equipment in-house in their clinic. The average turnaround time is probably 10 minutes for CBC chem and urinalysis. If I’m doing fecal and heartworm, it’s a little less than that. It’s probably more like six to eight minutes to have those two back.

If I have to submit a larger test, like an ACTH stim test or thyroid panel or level or a bunch of other things I don’t list, I don’t have those in-house. So those have to be pulled and sent to an outside laboratory. And depending on what test it is, it’s either 24 hours to perhaps 48 to 72 hours for some of the longer taking tests. It’s completely variable and depends on what it is and the lab test. But anywhere from minutes for point-of-care diagnostics or a few days for some of the bigger, harder-to-find tests.

Euthanasia would be us as veterinarians easing the passing of said cat, or maybe not easing, but causing the passing. There are drugs that we use injectably that, there’s no polite way to put it, but that will stop the heart of a cat. And obviously in their life, that way it’s very humane. It’s very quick. It’s very peaceful. It is quite literally an overdose of an anesthetic. So there’s no pain involved with it. It’s just, again, when we know that an animal (a cat in this case) is at the end of their life and there’s nothing else we can do, there’s no point in allowing that animal to suffer and to die a long, drawn-out, painful death. There’s no point in that at all. So it’s our responsibility as veterinarians to ease that suffering. And that’s how it’s done.

There’s a wide array of things they can have, the most common being simple gingivitis. You can have periodontal disease, and you can have tumors or growths in the mouth. You can have broken teeth. Cats are especially prone to what’s called oral resorptive lesions. I think that’s a pretty thorough list of them that we see. Depending on what we find, they all require different types of treatment.

Dog preventative care is anything that we do medically speaking that prevents disease. So the most common things would be vaccinations, heartworm preventatives, and perhaps flea control. It involves products that we can give or administer that will prevent disease down the road.

I’m definitely going to say “no” to that question, and the simple reason why is dogs are carnivores. I’m not even talking about domestic though. Let’s talk about dogs, canines. They are carnivorous animals. So to completely remove all animal protein from their diet is not how God created them. Can they live for a period of time? Heck yeah, they can. Would I recommend that you put a dog on a vegan diet long-term? My answer would be, “No.”

On the average size dog, meaning let’s say anywhere from Labradors on down, most blood panels that have to we pull require a jugular stick from the jugular vein. If we’re simply putting a heartworm test for lab work, that just takes a few drops of blood. We can usually pull that from a front leg or cephalic vein. But suppose we have to pull enough blood to do a CBC, chemistry, or any kind of send-off test. In that case, that usually requires several milliliters of blood, and it’s usually more efficient, quicker, and safer for the dog if we pull it from a jugular sample.

The simple answer to that one is that it can help reunite you with your cat. If your cat ever becomes lost, microchipping is one of the most dependable ways to identify who the cat is and who it belongs to, and reunite the owner with the cat.

Good question. Non-core vaccinations would be anything that has to do with the lifestyle of your cat. The core vaccinations would be things like rabies, rhinotracheitis, panleukopenia, those things. I give those to every cat. The non-core vaccines would be things like FIP or feline leukemia.

To answer your question of whether it’s safer to opt out of non-core vaccines, I suppose you could say that’s true, but only in the sense that I’m not about vaccinating every cat for every disease that’s on the planet if they’re never going to be exposed to them. If I have an animal that’s indoors 24/7 in a double-locked room and is never going to step foot outside and no other cats are coming in, would I be fine with just doing those minimal core vaccines? Yes, I would. Of course, I would. If you’re at all unsure if it’s one of those where, “Well, he goes outside every now and then,” or, “Well, he loves to run out the front door every time we try to go outside,” then I would absolutely do the additional vaccines, like feline leukemia and what have you, to keep that cat protected because you don’t know what they’re going to be exposed to.

I think in the light of this discussion that we’re having about reactions to vaccines and their safety, my honest answer would be if that cat never has a risk of being exposed to what you’re considering vaccinating for, then I ask you, “What’s the point? Why do something that they’ll never be exposed to?” That’s my answer there.

I’m almost scared to say yes. But with domestic cats and the most common parasites that we see, yeah. I’m going to say yes. With the parasiticide and de-wormers and preventative medications on the market nowadays, usually with domestic animals and cats. in particular—if they have intestinal worms, there’s going to be a drug that can treat it right now. So yes, that would be my somewhat short answer.

X-rays are usually done during the course of routine dental cleaning, and that is to help us see under the gum line. I used to not have an X-ray, and I missed so many teeth that I didn’t even know were affected or diseased under the gums. Sometimes you will have issues along the root where you have bone loss along the root of the teeth. There’s no way to see that by looking at the crown. So X-rays allow us to look under the surface so we can get a better idea of the health of that tooth.

Go off of the feeding recommendations of the dog food that you’re using. Pick up the bag you buy and turn it around. They’re going to have a guide that says, “Oh, a 20-pound dog should get two cups a day. A 40-pound dog gets X amount of cups.” If you follow that, you’re going to be pretty close. There are a couple of exceptions. The first is that you want to feed them off their target weight, not what they currently weigh. And I’m only saying that because many dogs that we see are overweight, if I can put it politely. If you have a Labrador who weighs 100 pounds, but he’s supposed to weigh 75 pounds, you want to feed him based on what a 75-pound dog should eat and not continue to maintain them at a hundred pounds.

The other consideration also depends on the activity level of the dog. I have friends that hunt with their dogs multiple days a week. Some of them almost every day of the week. They’re running numerous miles a day in the field. That’s an athletic dog. They’re going to require more energy and likely more food.

Third, if you have a dog that spends a lot of time outdoors when it’s colder, they require a higher calorie content in their food. Their metabolism is going to speed up. It takes energy to keep your body warm. And it’s a proven fact that in the summertime dogs eating the same amount will tend to put on weight, whereas in the wintertime they will drop weight, so their food depends on all those factors—activity level, diet, and medical conditions.

Again, I kind of briefly alluded to this, but it’s not a big deal. You don’t want to be months late. Again, keep in mind, guys, we were talking about puppy vaccinations. We’re talking about animals that have next to no immune system. So, you want to get them up and running on schedule as best you can.

But if you are late, as I mentioned earlier, a week or even a couple of weeks, I mean, hey, life happens. I get it. But I would make every effort to try to get them back on schedule as soon as you can. What I mean by that is just because you missed a week or two, and don’t think, “Oh, that’s it. He’s not …” No. Just pick up where you left off.

Your veterinarian will tell you how often they need to be seen or if and when it needs to be boostered again. But if you do miss them, just call the office, get them back in, and make sure they’re protected moving forward.

I’m going to answer that and say, “Only if your dog needs a prescription diet.” Most of these prescription foods, and I underline the word most, not all, are formulated for dogs that have medical issues that require dietary changes to help treat medical issues such as kidney disease, liver disease, heart disease, and diabetes. So for those cases, yes, prescription diets are superior. But if you have a young, healthy dog that has no underlying medical issues, the only thing that I would say is that a prescription diet might benefit the teeth.

That’s a hard question to answer because almost anything can cause pain; let’s be honest. It could be a sprain, arthritis, trauma, intestinal obstruction, you name it. So many of the things that we see daily cause some sort of pain in general. One of the most common ones we see is a dog that’s overweight or even obese—how does that cause pain? Because now you have a dog that’s walking around on their hip joints, and he’s supposed to weigh 40 pounds, and there is supposed to be 40 pounds of pressure on his hips. Well, now there’s 65 pounds of pressure on the dog’s hips and everyday activities—running, jumping, those kinds of things, are causing a lot more stress on the joints. So that can cause pain, particularly in older dogs that already have arthritis and are overweight. It exacerbates the signs that much more and makes them much more evident.

Usually very effective. Nowadays with the advancements and all these equipment, x-ray machines, it’s very rare to come across a non-digital x-ray machine. And the real reason I say digital, digital itself is not better, a clear image is a clear image, but digital allows you to darken or lighten an image or focused on a certain area to increase contrast.

And it allows you to do so much once the image is taken. Whereas with the old hand tank, x-rays you had one shot, like a negative one, it’s not like negative, it is a negative one, like old photography film. You either get it or you don’t get it. And if you don’t get it, then you got to do it again and again and again.

So yeah, a lot of the imaging now has come so far. Ultrasound is very commonplace in practice where when I started practicing 20 years ago, very, very few people that I can think of at all had ultrasound. It was only something that was available in referral centers and things like that.

So, imaging has come a long way, that has definitely aided the diagnosis of some of the tougher conditions out there. And if you can diagnose things more accurately, then you can treat things more quickly and more effectively. And it has the potential [inaudible] much better for every patient healthier because of that.

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When I’m choosing a puppy, I like to see a vibrant, interactive, confident puppy. When you’re looking at a litter of puppies, which one comes up to you? In the case of a young six, eight week old puppy, you should be able to bend down, make noise and they want to attack you because they want attention. Take note if there’s one kind of hanging out in the corner and just like real sheepish and shy or submissive or won’t come to you, or God forbid if he’s already showing you his teeth or just growling and unsure. I get that you’re a stranger, but a puppy shouldn’t be responding to you that way. So that makes a big difference and the flip side of that is what I was alluding to.

I like a dog that’s very confident and outgoing. I want one inquisitive, who’s going to come check me out—one that’s friendly, not aggressive, but I want one that is also very comfortable in their own skin. So that’s what I’m looking for personally…regardless of the breed, that’s what I’m looking for.

We will assess or triage your dog to see precisely what’s going on, and we’ll check the dog’s vital signs. We need to know just how critical this is right away. And based on those findings, we find out whether we need to start an IV catheter and fluids, a shock dose of steroids, or perhaps we need oxygen. Those kinds of things will be immediately assessed because, first and foremost, you’ve got to make sure the dog is stabilized.

Most of the time a follow-up appointment would be required. It depends on what the issue is. If it’s simple gingivitis, maybe a brief round of anti-inflammatories or antibiotics can be given on that visit and that takes care of the issue. But if there’s enough disease there or tartar there that requires treatment or dental cleaning, then, of course, they would have to return at a later date for the process to be done.

I think the most important thing to consider is what breed of dog you’re looking to get. And to be even more clear about that, what kind of dog is going to fit into your lifestyle? With some people, it’s quite easy. Maybe you’re a duck hunter and you know, hey, I want a Labrador Retriever and you know exactly what they’re all about and how they work and their drive and that’s great. But a lot of people tend to make the mistake of wanting a puppy because they’re cute, especially when they’re a puppy.

What I would implore you to do is look into the history of what that breed was, I don’t want to say created for. If you live in a one or two bedroom apartment, a Border Collie or a Blue Heeler is probably not going to be the breed for you. They’re very high-energy working-type dogs. They need a job to do. If you don’t give them a job, they are more than happy to make their job eating your sofa or your carpet or they’re going to find something to do with all that energy they have and it may not be to your liking.

So my best advice is plan ahead, look into the history of the breed, their temperament, their energy level, all those things, and make sure you’re picking a breed that fits not only what they look like. That part is easy but you want to pick a breed that fits your lifestyle and what’s going to mold best into your lifestyle.

Non-core vaccines are the opposite of what I just described. There are vaccines that may not be necessary in every cat and your cat may not need them if that’s the case. So, first off, if you have an indoor cat, is he going to need things like FIV, feline immunodeficiency? Yeah, probably not. He has to get that through the bite wound of an infected cat. How’s that going to happen if he lives indoors 24/7? So, that’s a non-core vaccine.

Might it fit the lifestyle of a barn cat living out in the country who’s with 20 other barn cats and likely to be getting into fights? Absolutely, it would be recommended there. So it depends on the cat’s lifestyle. Other non-core vaccines are things like feline bordetella, calici, and chlamydia. Those are about the only three I can think of right now, but those are non-cores.

Well, most vaccinations for puppies come in a combination, and the big ones that most people are familiar with and are probably still the most important are distemper virus and parvovirus. That doesn’t mean that those are the only two that your dog needs because there are other things like coronavirus, not the same one, a different canine coronavirus, hepatitis, leptospirosis. Those are all things that can be included as well. But distemper and parvo are probably the two most common that we still do see from time to time in practice on young, unvaccinated puppies. So, I think those are the most important ones.

That’s a good question and one that I think has gotten lost in the shuffle over the years. The answer to the question is, no, they’re not very common in cats. And there’s a couple of reasons why. First off, I want to share with you some figures, just to impress upon you how much of a different disease this is in dogs and cats. First off, if you took 100 dogs and gave them heartworm disease in a lab, you would pretty much have 100% of those dogs test positive for heartworms in a matter of a few months. This is because dogs are the natural hosts for heartworm disease. Cats are not, but they can contract it. The same study was presented to me as if you took 100 cats and exposed them to heartworms; you’re probably going to get anywhere between 5 and 15 of those guys come up positive. This is because they’re much more naturally resistant to the disease.

The other thing that I always thought was interesting, in dogs, especially in larger dogs, it’s not unusual to have a considerable population, 20, 30, maybe even more than that, worms that reside in the heart of a dog. Whereas in cats, it’s much smaller. One or two worms in a cat, and you typically have a pretty significant, I would argue, life-threatening infection in a cat.

It’s not common for that reason. Cats are naturally resistant to it to some degree, but I would also argue that it is a much more serious disease if they do contract it.

Yes, typically very transient and mild harm, but yes. The most common thing we see is when a diet has changed abruptly is gastrointestinal signs. What does that look like? Some cats can vomit, but more often they’ll have diarrhea. So if you do have to make a change, or if you’re planning on making a change, just do it gradually over the course of maybe a week. Use this period to gradually mix the new food in slowly, giving more and more of the new food to make sure that they tolerate it.

When it comes to basic comfort, I think things like giving them a nice, cozy bed go a long way. They even have Tempur-Pedic mattresses for dog beds.

Minimize the amount of steps or climbing that they would have to do to get in and out of beds or furniture or the house. Just be mindful of that because that is going to be a little bit more difficult for them to do.

Also, when it comes to loading for those that take their animals on trips often or like to take them for rides on a daily basis, consider getting a ramp so that they can load a lot easier. Those are the kinds of things that you will start to see them slow down in as they do age.

Quite a lot. Laboratory tests in dogs allow us to get information from things or organs, perhaps internally, that we can’t otherwise determine from an outward exam. And that’s the best way to look at it. Because I can put my hands on a dog, I can look at things, and I can check their color and listen to their heart and do all those kinds of things. But I can’t tell you what their liver function is. I can’t tell you what their kidney function is. I can’t tell you what their blood sugar is. So that’s where laboratory tests come in and give us answers that we may not otherwise be able to see from the outside.

I don’t know if there are health issues you can watch at home, but there are certainly health signs that you can watch for at home to point you to a more significant problem. What am I talking about? Specifically, when I hear this question, the one that comes to my mind is a dog that’s reluctant to jump on and off of things now. I have a couple of small dogs at home, and they’re like little jumping beans—they want on and off everything. What happens if one day they want to jump on you, but they don’t? Or they want to jump on the couch, but they don’t? They sit there, and they pause. They’re like, “Ooh.” As subtle as that seems, you might think, “Oh, they’re just tired today.” It could be that they have a hurt back as well. Or maybe they have a cruciate problem, a kneecap or something like that. Little subtle changes in their activity level can lead us to much bigger pictures.

Also, watch how much they drink, how much they urinate and check their bowel movements from time to time. I’m not saying you’ve got to stay around them every single day and time that they go. I have diagnosed many dogs with diabetes or kidney problems, even thyroid issues, just because of water intake and urination habits. All of those things factor in, and it’s all little subtle things that you can look for and keep watch for at home.

I’d do it early. The only caveat I’ll give you is to make sure if you’re socializing with other dogs, I strongly encourage you to do that in the right setting. I don’t like taking them to places where there’s a lot of other dog traffic, especially dogs that you do not know. So your big chain pet stores that let you bring pets in there—I’m not a big fan of doing that with puppies. Dog parks, groomers, boarding facilities,I will try to find any other alternative when they’re puppies. When they’re not fully vaccinated, I try to stay away from those kinds of activities for obvious reasons. You don’t know what those dogs have or where they’ve been or what symptoms they may have.

Now if you have friends or family members or perhaps even have other dogs yourself, and they’re healthy, and you know that, knock it out. Let them socialize. Let them be a dog.

I currently have a four month old puppy right now and I have a one year old and a seven year old dog. They are best of buds. They do everything together and that’s fantastic. The little four-month-old is learning so many things from other dogs, I’m not even having to show him anything. He just follows what the others do and he’s learning how to be a dog. That’s okay. But of course, I know that those other two are perfectly healthy and vaccinated. In that kind of situation, do it early and often. If not, hold back, and then before you start doing trainers and other things, I would wait until they’re fully vaccinated, which in most dogs is closer to, say, four months.

I get asked this question probably more than anything else is—how do you know what their quality of life is? And I think the best way I can answer it is, does your cat still do the things that they’ve always enjoyed doing? Does your cat still do the things that made them your cat, for lack of a better way to put it? It’s different for every animal. Some cats enjoy eating, some enjoy chasing toys, some enjoy chasing a laser, and some like to sit at a window and wish they could chase the sparrows and squirrels outside. Whatever it is, can your animals still enjoy the day-to-day routines that are its life?

Do they still behave the same way? Do they still get excited about the same things? If those things happen, then I would say that animal probably still has a fair quality of life. There are variations with everything, of course, but that’s probably the most tangible message that I try to convey to people. They’re going to lose weight as they age. They’re perhaps not going to eat as much. Maybe they drink a little more. Those are all factors as well, but at the end of the day when we’re making an end-of-life decision, it’s about whether they can still do the things that they’ve always enjoyed doing.

In my experience, I’m going to say no, because again, most of the medications I’m using to prevent are combination medicines that also do fleas, ticks, ear mites, heartworms, intestinal worms, and those kinds of things. I use things like Revolution, Revolution Plus, and Advantage Multi for Cats. Those are all things I’ve used. Full disclosure in answer to that question, yeah I have seen some cats that don’t like it when you put it on. They act very irritably, and they may even get a little patch of hair loss in that area because you’re putting it on the back of the neck. I’ve seen those kinds of side effects, but it’s not specific to the heartworm preventative that’s in it. Many of those products may be alcohol-based because that helps them to absorb through the oil layer in the skin and be absorbed in the bloodstream. I think more side effects have to do with the liquid itself or the carrier that the drug is in, and perhaps not the drug itself.

Any time you put a chemical in or on an animal, you always have the risk of there being a reaction to that animal, but it’s not something that I routinely see in cats.

That’s a tricky one to answer because there are so many medical conditions that can happen to a dog. It’s difficult and bordering on impossible to tell you if your dog does this or that, they need first aid. First aid is providing medical care in an emergency, so I think things like lacerations and blood loss are the most obvious and common things that you as a pet owner would see, be able to recognize immediately, and administer first aid to.

Maybe if your dog has a history of seizures, and you already have anti-seizure medications, then you might argue that giving that animal a higher dose of anti-seizure medications might be administering first aid. I can’t argue with that. That might be something that would be good too, but it just depends on what’s going on as to what kind of first aid that could be remedied or used. If there’s any question of what’s going on or what needs to be done, get on the phone and call your veterinarian, and they can walk you through what needs to be done more accurately.

In a whelping box. So what does that look like? What’s a whelping box? It’s a quiet, dark, and comfortable spot—preferably one that the dog is comfortable with because they don’t want to have puppies in the middle of your living room floor. You might want them to because, “Oh, look how neat. There’s one, there’s two.” She doesn’t want to be around all that. She wants to be in the dark where it’s quiet, and you have no idea what’s happening. So prepare that spot for her. And if you have that spot prepared, show it to her before, let her sleep in it before, and get her comfortable with it. That should be her safe haven. That should be where she knows she can go, and she’s going to be left alone, quiet, and nobody’s in her way. Show it to her for a couple of weeks leading up to birthing, if possible.

We’d be happy to send proof of vaccination to your pet’s kennel. Just let us know the fax number.

Alternately, if you register with VetScene you can have 24 hour access to your pet’s medical records as well as the ability to print out an ID card showing your pet’s vaccine history. You will need our clinic number (5660) and your client number which can be found on any receipt or by calling our office.

I think I can safely say yes, but I don’t work in shelters, so I don’t know how they operate. That is absolutely what they should be doing. Every animal that is picked up should be scanned when it gets back to the shelter and, if so, it’s not all that difficult to find your information, as I just mentioned, and to reunite that cat with their owner.

The core vaccines are probably most of the ones I just mentioned. Core vaccines are the ones that should be given to every puppy regardless of their lifestyle, regardless of what your intentions with that dog are. And I’ll explain a little bit better. So core, again, parvo, distemper. Every dog should get those ones.

At the same time, there are things called non-core vaccines, and those are a little bit more dependent on what your dog’s lifestyle is. Two examples I can think of right out of the gate, one is leptospirosis. Leptospirosis is usually a bacterial disease picked up from rodents. Well, if your dog’s never out in the field or in places where rodents seem to frequent, you might argue that that one’s non-core. Do I give it to my dogs? Yeah, but they’re outside hunting with me quite a bit.

Another one is Lyme disease. Depending on where you live and how outdoorsy, so to speak, your dogs are, maybe that’s not a core vaccine. The only way they get exposed to Lyme is if they’re exposed to a tick who carries it and that’s in certain regions of the country and outdoors, so that would be considered a non-core vaccine.

The most common things we see—especially here in South Louisiana in the spring and summer—is allergic dermatitis. Some people call it atopic dermatitis. It’s all referring to the same thing, in that dogs are allergic to something in their environment, and then their skin becomes inflamed and irritated. Because the skin is inflamed and irritated, often those will be followed by bacterial skin infections.

Those are the most common things we see, but to make a little bit more thorough list, you also have parasitic diseases, ticks, mites, and fleas. Those things are also very commonly seen. And, occasionally, we’ll see fungal skin conditions. Thankfully, these aren’t as common, as they can be a little tough to cure.

Preventative medication used monthly, heartworm prevention in South Louisiana is my first, second, third, fourth, and fifth answer to that question. Heartworms, are rampant. They are spread by mosquitoes. Heartworm preventative is absolutely imperative if you have a dog, and this is true anywhere, but particularly anywhere in the southern half to two-thirds of the United States. It’s just everywhere. And it would be downright silly to not have them on heartworm preventatives.

Other things that may not be mandatory depending on where your dog lives and what their lifestyle is, but various flea and/or tick controls could also be considered monthly preventatives as well.

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I’ve tried. I don’t like to be grim, but I’m going to be honest with you, my experience with cats that come in and we can confirm a diagnosis, it very seldom ends well for that cat, in my experience. So, again, that’s why I’m saying preventing it is so much more effective and wise to do, rather than playing Russian Roulette with the possibility that they might get it.

To try to answer the question perhaps a little bit more accurately, yes, I’ve attempted to put animals on, say Prednisone, or things like that. But, unfortunately, it usually has a very limited effect. So you want to prevent this disease in cats before it ever gets a foothold because your treatment options are very limited.

One final thing I’ll add, anybody that’s had a dog that’s perhaps had the disease, maybe even was treated for the disease, that drug is not effectively labeled, nor used for cats. It’s just a much worse scenario with cats if they do contract it. So do your best to prevent it. Choose whatever vet product you and your veterinarian discuss and what you think works best for your cat, but prevention is worth every bit of treatment down the road. Believe me; you don’t want to go that route.

That’s truly a good question. And I’ll be honest with you. One that I had to look up myself to get the answer, but so the way I know it now, and the way I think of it is this. Palliative care is when you were trying to control the pain or suffering of an animal, but there is still hope of a recovery or a cure, whereas hospice care is still the ultimate goal is to try to make an animal comfortable, to remove whatever pain and suffering that cat might be going through. But with hospice care, typically there is no chance of a resolution or a cure. You have reached the end of your treatment options, and you’re just trying to make the cat comfortable until they pass or can be put down.

Right now? What I hear so much about is grain-free diets. That’s the biggest one because they think their dogs have allergies and they’re going to put them on grain-free and everybody’s going to live happily ever after. And let me just say that if your dog is allergic to grain, then yeah, you might live happily ever after. But that’s the only reason. If they’re not allergic to that, why do it?

If I’m allergic to strawberries, I’m not going to quit eating steak or anything like that. It just doesn’t make sense. Not to mention one of the things I will say about grain-free diets and a lot of the public is still not aware of, and I won’t go into great detail, but there has been plenty of studies that show that there is a correlation between dogs who eat grain-free diets that developed premature cardiovascular disease or heart disease if you will.

You will find a plethora of information out there about the potential dangers of a grain-free diet. Unless a dog has been proven to be allergic to grains, I don’t recommend grain-free diets. And that’s one of the big misconceptions that I hear on a weekly basis.

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Yeah, it’s kind of a tough question, because what do we really mean when we say human food? There are certain things that we eat that cats most definitely eat; chicken and fish, things like that, absolutely. Do you want to depend just on those? Of course not.

It’s always safest and, in my opinion, best, to feed them a well-balanced cat-formulated diet. Does that mean commercial foods are best? We can debate that when we have more time. But I think it’s the simplest thing that provides, as I said, a well-balanced diet with all the vitamins and minerals that they need. So that’s what I tend to stick with for my own animals.

Not necessarily. So, perhaps if people haven’t seen… The first thing, very quickly, I want to touch on diagnostic imaging means to me, ultrasonography, radiology, or x-rays, CT scan, MRI, those kind of things, those are imaging type studies.

Other lab work might be blood work, CBC chemistry, coagulation panels, that kind of thing. So with that background being said, does your dog need to have lab work before diagnostic imaging is done? And the answer is no.

It purely depends on what we are trying to diagnose by doing these studies. So, for example, if an animal comes in with a limp and we’re doing x-rays because that’s one of the more common things we do, to see if there’s a fracture and obviously I don’t need to run a blood work and look at the dog’s liver and kidney function if I’m worried about if there’s a fracture there or not.

So, I think that’s a prime example of when lab work would not be required. There’s multiple others, but I won’t go into all of them because there’s too many scenarios, but simply put, no, they do not require lab work necessarily before imaging can be done.

The short answer is, yes, they absolutely can. Anytime you put something foreign into the body of a living creature, there is a potential for a reaction to that said something foreign. Vaccines are no different. You’re putting a modified form of a virus, or in some cases, bacteria, into that cat and sometimes their immune system might go overboard with its reactions towards that particular item. So yes, they can have reactions.

It’s a good idea to see a veterinarian at the time of diagnosis. During the pregnancy, there’s seldom a need for it. Honestly, most of the visits are going to really come into play at the time of delivery or perhaps thereafter when we’re caring for the kittens and also maintaining care for the mother.

It depends on if they’re inside or outside and what their situation is. If they’re outdoors in a kennel where they have shade, food, and water, they’ll be fine for quite a while.It’s very easy to let them stay in that kind of a surrounding for a day. I do it almost daily with my own dogs, dogs that live indoors.

From a temperature standpoint, they can handle all day by themselves. The problem comes in with the water, what if they spill their bowl or those kinds of accidents? Do they need to eat throughout the day? A lot of smaller, toy size breeds need to eat more than just between 8:00 and 5:00 or 6:00 PM. And then you have to consider the elimination side or bathroom breaks. You’re probably going to walk into a mess if they’ve been alone for any more than four or five hours, depending on the breed of puppy.

My rule of thumb that I was always told years ago was that puppies can hold their bladder for one hour longer than their age in months. That’s theoretical and there’s no exact science behind that, but that’s what I was told by behaviorists and it holds pretty true to form most times.

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There again, it depends on what you’re looking for. I hate to be vague, but it’s true. That’s a tough one to answer with just a black and white answer. They’re all pretty good in their own right. You have a broken bone, don’t ultrasound it. Start with an X-ray. And if you need more detail, then a CT scan would probably be next. Again, you also have to keep in mind in the real world, a CT scan is not available at your neighborhood veterinary clinic. So usually CT scans and MRIs are reserved for cases where you can’t get an answer with ultrasound, X-rays, blood work, and you’ve exhausted all other diagnostic abilities. In those cases, you may have to refer that cat to a teaching hospital or a referral center or something like that, where they have specialists. And they are the ones that would typically have some of those advanced modalities. So it’s hard to say which one is more accurate just as black and white as that question implies.

Number one, pregnancy duration is 63 days, give or take. It’s a huge help if you know when your dog was bred, and so that whelping date can be established that way. So that’s number one. Number two, on the assumption that you’ve done some of the other preliminary testing (you’ve had x-rays and a pregnancy test and all these other things to confirm pregnancy done), the best way to know when they’re going into labor is to regularly check their body temperature.

For about a week to five days before the expected due date, start taking their temperature at least once daily, and you would typically see a temperature drop to anywhere between 97 to 99 degrees. And that typically happens roughly 24 hours before they go into labor. If their temperature is low, retake it in a couple of hours. If you get to back-to-back low temperatures in that range I just mentioned, there’s an excellent chance that you’re going to have puppies in the next 24 hours. So that’s probably the most accurate indicator that I can think of as to when your dog’s going to go into labor.

It depends on where the cat lives and what vaccines they’ve had prior to that, and the age they are. So let’s say your cat got vaccinated at 10 weeks and again at 14 weeks, and maybe your veterinarian wants to do one more at 18 weeks. You’re close. Can that cat go outside? I’ll answer it this way. I usually err on the side of caution, so I would rather that your cat not be exposed until I can be more certain and you can be certain that they are protected.

If in my previously mentioned scenario, would I expected them to contract something that they were vaccinated for? No, I would not expect, but vaccines are not 100% foolproof. So when in doubt, keep them indoors until they are fully vaccinated.

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That’s a tricky question to answer. I guess you could look at it in three ways. So number one, heartworm prevention is extremely imperative. I recommend it to everybody. Very seldom do I see complications with just preventatives. And that kills the infective stage of the heartworm that the mosquito tries to give the dog. So the risk isn’t zero but it’s close.

If an animal is positive for heartworms, that means they have adult worms there. And if we go through with that treatment, there’s risk associated with that because you are killing these worms that live, again, in the right side of the heart. And as mentioned, they’re pretty long (six to eight inches) so killing them is half the battle, but they’re still there. So now the body and immune system have to break down that dead worm and dispose of it, for lack of a better word. Well, what happens if they don’t do it properly? What happens when that dog’s too active after treatment? Then that dead or dying worm, or even partly disintegrated worm, can still migrate and go to the lungs and cause problems there.

And the drug itself, while I seldom see reactions or problems to it, it’s a pretty harsh chemical. It’s got to kill a bunch of big, active heartworms. Any time you put a chemical in the body of a living creature, things can happen that you don’t want to happen or don’t expect to happen. Do I see it commonly? No, I do not. But they can have pain at the injection site, soreness, and I’ve seen some dogs that are wobbly on their backend.

The third and final portion of this long answer is that sometimes when dogs have adult heartworms, those adults will reproduce and cause microfilaria, or baby heartworms. That takes a different modality to treat it. Some preventatives treat that nowadays, but oftentimes we’ll use a high dose of ivermectin or something to kill that. Can you have side effects from that? Yeah. It’s a high dose of ivermectin. Ivermectin is commonly used as a dewormer or heartworm preventative, but not usually at these levels.

You can have dogs that might have a sensitivity to ivermectin, which can cause neurologic signs. You wouldn’t want to give that to a Collie breed type of dogs, so Border Collies, Collies, Australian Shepherds, or any of those kinds of herding breeds. You’ve got to be careful when giving high doses of ivermectin. So all these complications are very rare, but they can happen.

Once the dog’s given birth, again, stay out of the way and let Mama do her thing as much as you can. But what does that look like? All I want you to do is be a conscientious observer at first. So I want you to ensure that those pups, shortly after birth, are nursing. If they’re not, encourage them to nurse. If you have to, that’s one way you might want to get involved. You can squeeze a little bit of milk out and try to put some on the puppies’ lips or tongue and encourage them to latch. You shouldn’t have to, as most puppies figured out with the help of mom, but you should observe that they are nursing properly. You should observe that each placenta passes. If there’s one puppy, that equals one placenta, so you should see that. You might have to look closely because momma might take care of that real quick. But you want to make sure that that passes.

You also want to make sure that she’s cleaning them adequately. Again, I’m not implying that you jump in there in the first five seconds. Oh no, she didn’t do anything. I’m going to dry it. But you know, after the first 10, 15 minutes or so, if she’s not cleaning or drying that puppy, then maybe you can stimulate them a little bit with a warm towel and dry them a little bit, so they don’t start getting cold. I would do that, but immediately try to put them right back with mom and let her take over that role, if possible.

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This is obviously a pretty broad question. So I would tell you it’s impossible to list every single thing that you can look out for. What I will simply say, to answer this question, is you’re looking for anything abnormal, such as your dog being slow to get up, having pain going up and down stairs; anything that shows that an animal is affected adversely, whereas they weren’t previously, I would have looked at by your veterinarian and addressed.

To be quite honest, we’re looking for anything abnormal. During every single exam we do on a dog or cat, one of the things we look at is their mouth. So it allows us to know what a normal mouth looks like. And that way, in contrast, when you see anything that’s abnormal, it very quickly stands out to you. And that’s what we’re looking for.

It kind of depends on the age of the kitten, number one, as well as how long of a gap there is. So first off, what do I mean by the age of the kitten? I like all animals, dog or cat, to have at least 2 sets of vaccines after they are 10 weeks of age. I also said earlier that I like to vaccinate every 3-4 weeks. So what happens if one time you’re late and you can’t come in for six weeks? Not a problem. Get them in when you can. It just can’t be any closer together than three weeks, as you won’t get the right immunologic response.

Yes. Yes, it will. Neutering will definitely help with that, because when we neuter, we are removing the testicles, we’re removing the source of testosterone. Why do they spray? Because they’re telling you that that’s their spot, so if you can neuter them at a relatively early age, hopefully before it becomes a learned behavior, then yeah, it can absolutely avoid that.

That’s a fair question. So number one, most clinics have a very well-trained staff that can do all the sticks themselves if necessary—we do here. If time allows, I’m back there pulling it with them or for them. But I have a very well-trained staff who knows how to restrain the animals and how to pull the samples themselves if necessary. So that’s step one.

Number two, if we have an animal that is fractious, nervous, anything like that, where snapping or biting is even a likely happening, then we’ll put a muzzle on the dog just for everyone’s safety, the dog included. And if that’s not enough, then there are cases where we have to get blood work done. Say we have a very, very ill animal and he doesn’t like anybody. So muzzle or no muzzle, he’s going to fight you tooth and nail. Sometimes, the only safe way to do it—both for technicians, veterinarians, owners, and patients—is just to give them mild sedation first, or sedative first. I don’t do that with everybody. Far from it. I don’t like to do it if it’s not necessary. But sometimes that’s the only effective way to safely and humanely get a sample from an animal.

Yeah, they can. It’s tough because where are they going to get it? Where are they exposed to the feces of an infected animal if they’re 100% indoors? It’s retty rare. The most common thing would be those tapeworms that we mentioned. That is the most common thing that we see, the most common parasite in cats that are indoors. It doesn’t take much for a flea to come inside. And then again, the way they groom themselves, they’re going to probably ingest it. And then they can break with tapeworms after that.

The most likely other scenario I would think is if you introduce a new cat into the household. So you can have this new one that comes in, and little typhoid Mary brings it into the healthy cat that’s in the house. And that’s what happens. So if you get a new animal introduced to the house, always get them checked at the vet first. Get a good stool sample done first. And then if they are clean, it’s okay for everybody to intermingle and hopefully live happily ever after.

It depends on what test we run. I was just laughing because you sounded very nervous about your follow-up blood work, but that’s okay. I’m sure the dog was too. No, it depends on what we uncover on the initial blood work. Let’s say we’re doing wellness blood work and your dog is, just as the name implies, well, and there is nothing doing, then no. There’ll be no follow-up. Maybe next year we’ll want to do it again just to make sure we’re staying on top of things. But no, there wouldn’t be any follow-up.

Where follow-up blood work would come in is, say, you have an animal with elevated kidney numbers. Let’s just pick kidneys for a second. You do that. You put them on a special diet. You might put them on Azodyl or some other supplement to help drop some of those numbers. Maybe we increase their fluids. Maybe we’re giving them sub q fluids weekly or daily, something along those lines. And we’ll want to follow up in either days or weeks to ensure that those values are going in the right direction. So that kind of follow-up, yeah, makes perfect sense. If there’s no illness underlying and your dog’s perfectly healthy, then, of course, no follow-up is necessary. So it just varies on what we’re running and the condition of the patient.

Dog exercise is vitally important. It’s the same for us. The more active you are, it’s healthier for you in almost every capacity you can imagine—maintaining weight, maintaining the joints’ health, and muscle firmness and tone.

Dogs are also pack animals. By their very nature, dogs are pack animals who in the wild would be roaming and searching and all day long; they’re either eating, sleeping, or hunting. And we try to domesticate them and ask them to stay in a house or a kennel, and we think they’re going to be just fine. Well, most of them are. They adapt quite well, but they thrive in an environment where they can use that energy and use their senses and go out searching and exploring, so mentally, it’s a big deal for them—even if it’s merely taking a walk morning and evening, or playing outside if you have a big yard. I don’t have time for walks, but I have a giant yard where I can let them go and run and play fetch. And we play little scent games with my little Dachshunds, as those are exercises that use their minds and create a healthier dog in general. I strongly encourage mental and physical activities for your dogs.

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Yes, but the only way I can think of that happening is if your dog would be specifically allergic to an ingredient in that grooming product, maybe a medicated shampoo. Most of the hypoallergenic ones, by their very name, should not induce an allergic reaction. But yeah, certain ones that do contain antihistamines, antibiotics, antifungals, and other things like that do run the potential of causing an issue.

CPR, much like in humans, is cardiopulmonary resuscitation. So that would imply, by its very nature, that you’re having either heart or respiratory issues. So how are you going to know? Perhaps you’ve got a dog that just acutely collapsed and is struggling to breathe, or perhaps has stopped breathing. Maybe it’s a dog that’s choking. Without going into any further detail, that’s kind of how you would know if your dog would require CPR.

On the other hand, how to do CPR is different because it’s different anatomy than people. And I won’t go through all the play-by-plays of it here because it’s not the venue, and I don’t have anything to practice on or show you on. But simply put, CPR is usually chest compressions. The dog’s going to be on its side laterally, and you’ll start chest compressions right where the left elbow meets the body because that’s about where the heart is. So you want to do light compressions there. And see, this is the part I don’t want to talk about without a proper demonstration, but it’s light chest compressions there at a pretty rapid rate. You figure the average dog’s heart rate is anywhere between, say, 80 and 120 even at rest, so it’s pretty fast, more so than ours would be.

In people, we know to pinch the nose, kind of hold up the chin, and we breathe directly into their mouth that way. In a dog, you do the opposite. In a dog, you more or less close the mouth and breathe directly into the nose. You can put your whole mouth over their nose and breathe into their nose that way. And I know a lot of people watching this are probably thinking, “Ew, that’s kind of nasty.” It works, and it’s a pretty good seal, and that’s usually the most effective way to get it done.

There are always risks with vaccinations, let’s be honest. I mean, you’re putting a foreign substance into the body, whether it’s human, dog, cat, any of those things. There can be allergic reactions to those ingredients. So yes, there always is that possibility. The way I look at things like this is, does the potential benefit outweigh the potential risk? And I’m a big vaccine guy, so I don’t even have to think about it. I think that the benefit of those vaccines far, far, far outweighs the risk of a potential reaction or a side effect from those vaccines.

Dogs that are not spayed or neutered will be under the influence of testosterone or estrogen depending on their sex. We were all 18 once. You remember what those things made you want to do, so dogs are no different. So it can avoid any unwanted behaviors, any unwanted litters to overpopulate our little pet community. And it also prevents several medical issues that are very, very undesirable as well. Uterine infections, aggression, unwanted marking, all those kinds of things can be avoided if they are spayed or neutered at an early age.

Again, because we’re talking about four or five, potentially different modalities of imaging, it’s hard to answer that question with one answer. I guess the biggest thing with some of those imaging studies would require an animal to be very still.

Not all animals are very still, especially when they’re ill or painful or things like that. So sometimes mild or sometimes not so mild sedation might be necessary first.

Then the animal can be handled safely or stay in a position, usually a somewhat vulnerable position like being on your back, kind of stretched out for x-rays or ultrasounds, things like that for an extended period of time, that requires sedation. That’s probably what comes to my mind at the forefront when I hear that question, yeah.

Yeah, unfortunately, the honest answer is yes, of course, there is. I mean, you’re putting a foreign substance into a living creature. Animals are going to react differently, no different than people might do. So, yes. It’s hard to predict which vaccine they’re going to react to because, again, every animal is different, but the most common ones that we’ll see reactions to are things like rabies and sometimes lepto that I mentioned earlier.

You know that old expression, an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. I am one of those guys that really like to vaccinate my own dogs, because I would much rather take that rare chance of them having a vaccine reaction but know that they’re protected, because I can tell you, as a veterinarian, I’ve seen too many puppies die of parvovirus right in front of me that could have been prevented with adequate vaccination.

Let’s talk about cancer. Testicular cancer in a male dog can’t happen if he doesn’t have testicles. Ovarian cancer in a female dog can’t happen if you don’t have ovaries. So those kinds of things are true. So the most common thing, and the most realistic thing that we do see is pyometra.

Pyometra is the medical term for an infection of the uterus itself. And oftentimes it is a very large, distended pus-filled uterus that can become life threatening, especially if it’s a closed pyometra. Closed means the cervix is closed, so the infection doesn’t drain out. It just stays in the dog and they become very ill very quickly. That is serious. And it’s not all that uncommon. After a female dog comes into heat, the cervix tends to relax or open, and it’s much easier for bacteria to get in there and kind of wreak havoc.

Spaying or neutering, can it fix that? Yes, because when we spay them, I’m sorry, it is an ovariohysterectomy, meaning we take the ovaries and the uterus. Everything from the cervix beyond is no longer there. So those dogs are now incapable of really developing a uterine pyometra beyond that point. Long answer to a good question, but hopefully that clears up a few things for you guys.

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Do dogs like needle sticks? Probably not any more than you or I like needle sticks. So is there discomfort? I mean, yeah, they’re getting poked with a needle. Do I always use the biggest needle I can? Of course not. No. I try to use a small needle, but it’s a compromise. The smaller the needle I use, the longer it takes to get the sample, and the longer I have to restrain the dog and hold them in that awkward position.

So there’s a fine line between that. Not to mention, let’s also be honest; a lot of dogs are different. Some dogs are very stoic. You can do just about anything in the world to them, and they will just sit there wagging their tail and not even moving. You have other dogs that, if you pinch them, they will act like you did something a lot worse than pinch them. So it just depends on the dog’s temperament, how big of a blood sample we need, and what kind of restraint would be necessary to get that blood sample.

Proper preventative measures. Again, if you introduce a new cat into the house, have that checked and de-wormed properly. But preventative measures are products like Revolution Plus, Revolution, and Advantage Multi for cats. They’re flea control, some of them do ticks, they do intestinal worms, they do ear mite—all the things that cats can bring or spread amongst themselves. If you treat them accordingly and keep them on an adequate preventative regularly, you should avoid any problems with that.

Again, it depends on what the procedure is. In my mind, when I hear surgery, I think of cutting. I think I’m making an incision somewhere, and so yes, anytime you do that, there will be some form of pain.

The good news is though, is we have a bunch of different modalities to control that pain. There are anti-inflammatory drugs that we can use. There are other analgesic drugs like opioids that can control pain quite well.

So, if it’s a procedure that warrants any kind of pain control, and most of them do, there are many very effective and user-friendly modes that we can use to control pain in cats.

Probably the most common method is what’s called a fecal-oral route. And yes, it’s exactly like it sounds. They have to ingest feces orally to obtain it. And let me be more precise. It’s not just any feces; it’s the feces of an infected animal. And in many cases, those fecal eggs or those parasite eggs in the feces have the larvae for a day or two before they become infectious. It’s not a hard thing to do. I mean, it happens all the time. And it’s not always as deliberate as the cat walking up and eating a pile of stool. I know that sounds disgusting, but they do it. Especially dogs. But it can be as simple as they just stepped in it.

Maybe they share the same litter box as a housemate or littermate. And that animal has it. They go in the same litter box. They’re scooting around in there, and they get some on their paw. Well, what’s a cat going to do? The first thing that cats will do when they get anything on their body is they’re going to stop, and they’re going to lick it off. They’re going to groom themselves. So, boom, you just got infected that way. So that is the most common reason.

The only exception I would give to those, if we’re talking about all the intestinal parasites, is tapeworms, and that’s something we commonly see. The most common thing that we see is dipylidium caninum. That’s a tapeworm from fleas. So they have to ingest a flea. Not feces, but a flea. The other type of tapeworm is echinococcus, and the last name is granulosum, I think. But that is something that they usually get from eating the host animal, which is mice. So sometimes you’d have a mouse or cat, maybe a barn cat, something like that. And they ingest a mouse that is happening to harbor this type of tapeworm; they can get it that way.

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Most veterinarians nowadays have that. The technology’s changed a lot in the 20 or so years. When microchipping was first invented, whatever brand of chip was implanted, you’d have to have their scanner to detect it. So you could have a scanner for brand A, and that cat was microchipped with brand B, and it wasn’t going to pick it up. Thankfully, it’s not like that anymore. Now, they have universal scanners that can detect any make and model of chip, making it quick and easy to identify.

What is the best nutrition possible? If you know, please email me at The Waggin’ Train, and we can figure this out together. Nobody knows what that is. If you’re feeding high-quality dog food, you’re on the right track. What’s a good quality diet? Everyone has different opinions. I’m not going to stand on a soapbox and tell you it’s got to be this or this. But if you stick with one of the big four or five major food manufacturers, such as IAMS, Eukanuba, Royal Canin, or Purina One, you should be fine. Science Diet is one of my favorites. There are other companies, but those are the big ones that I look at. I know the research behind those foods. I know the companies. Most of those that I just referenced there have medical or veterinary lines to them as well.

The second part of that answer is if your animal does have an ongoing medical condition, you may have to alter their diets. For example, you might have to choose a diet that aids in kidney function. Let’s say you have an animal with kidney problems. You’re going to want to feed a low protein, low phosphorus, a magnesium-type diet so that you don’t make the kidneys have to work harder than they need to.

A lot. Let’s face it. They are going to bite and chew a lot. Some breeds and some dogs do it more than others and that’s fine, but you’ve got to think about part of it is they’re teething. We all know that babies teethe and chew a lot and drool, and their gums hurt and that kind of thing. Puppies do the same thing. They do it a lot more rapidly. The average dog will start to lose teeth (and, therefore, start to grow their new permanent teeth) as early as about four months. And usually by about six to maybe seven at the latest, all their permanent teeth are in.

You’ve got to think about this in reference to the chewing. They’re not doing it just to be disruptive. They might do it because they’re bored, but they’re probably doing it because their teeth hurt and it feels good to chew on those things. So they’re all going to do it to some degree. You just have to prepare accordingly for it and give them the right chew toys and things like that, which we’ll cover in a second.

The risks are pretty significant because if heartworm disease is left untreated and essentially unprevented, it’s probably not going to end well for that dog. It may not be next week or next month, but at some point, that disease will rear its ugly head, and usually by the time it does, it’s not good. They basically die of heart failure.

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There again, if the illness can be traced back to the addition of a new ingredient or food or something along those lines, that is when I would become suspicious. To answer one specific set of signs that can say, oh, that means your cat ate something bad, I can’t do that because it just depends on what they ate. Certain foods can be toxic to an animal’s gastrointestinal system. Some can be toxic to their heart and some can cause skin any issues. It just depends on what they ingest in order to be able to answer that.

X-rays help us to better diagnose what’s going on, not only in the mouth but, more importantly, under the gums where we can’t see. For example, you might have a diseased tooth that looks like there’s some tartar on the outside but the crown looks pretty solid and the tooth is not loose, but you do an x-ray and maybe you uncover that one of those roots has a tremendous amount of bone loss around it. Well, that tooth at that point is usually not a viable tooth so it would need to be extracted. Without x-rays, you would never have a way to know that.

If your dog’s on medication, first, bring the medications with you. I know typically, in an emergency, nobody’s thinking clearly. If you’re able to grab the bottles and bring them with you, great. Maybe you want to make a list and just keep it handy on the fridge or something like that. If you’re going to just grab a list and note that these are the medicines my dogs are on and what they’re for, do that. If it’s your regular veterinarian, you may not even need that list of medications because they should have it. But you never know; it’s better to be prepared.

Number two, make the veterinarian aware if the dog has ingested anything. Say they ate poison, maybe you put out rat poison, or perhaps you gave them a certain type of food, treat, or candy, or something, and it’s making them sick. If you have any opportunity to bring the packaging, the labeling, from whatever they were given, especially with toxins or poisons. But if you can bring in anything that your dog may have ingested, that’s helpful.

No more than it’ll make us overweight. Everything in moderation. I’m not a big fan of feeding table food, people food, human food, or whatever you want to call it. It’s not balanced very well for dogs. Does that mean it can’t be done? Of course not. If you are feeding a balanced diet that contains what they need, it is fine. But the question about being overweight or not because of that food, no, it’s everything in moderation. If you feed a lot of it, yes they could very well be overweight.

Well, for obvious reasons, if we’re preventing things like infectious diseases, for example, we give a rabies vaccination to prevent that dog from getting rabies. That’s pretty helpful. But also things like parvo, distemper, hepatitis—all the different ingredients in these combination vaccines. Heartworm disease, that’s huge. In South Louisiana where we practice, it’s rampant, really. So how do we prevent it? We prevent it by doing monthly heartworm prevention. And there’s only one way to do that.

I get this question a lot. My answer to that question has always been, “No, not necessarily, because you have to think about their diets.” Most of these commercially prepared diets are formulated to contain all the vitamins, minerals, nutrients, and everything else they need. I would be a hard person to convince that they’re not getting enough in those diets. And now they’ve got to start seeking out grass—that doesn’t make sense.

What I have seen and anybody that’s owned a dog that eats grass will probably see is that they usually throw the grass right back up. It’s hard to find a known cause in literature, but I think that when they feel nauseous, they will seek grass out to empty their stomachs and hopefully make them feel better. This is only my impression and my interpretation, but that is what I have seen. That’s what I’ve seen in my own dogs for the 30, 40 years I’ve owned them.

Yeah, it is. I do it quite often, so it is. I have the benefit of being able to take my puppy to work. Some people don’t. But yes, it definitely can be done. That’s why it’s important to have a safe and secure place where you can kennel your puppy throughout the day.

If you have the ability to go home and check on them over lunch, even better. That’s better for them, but that’s basically what it takes. Give them the chance to use the bathroom just before you leave, put them in their proper bedding with things they can’t chew up, destroy, choke on, etc. Try to check on them once if not twice during the day to let them out, clean up, and just to make sure they’re not getting themselves into anything that they shouldn’t.

Think about what a dog could get into. You’ve got to think of it from that aspect and perspective, like the viewpoint from being a couple of inches off the ground like that of a young puppy. They’re going to see what’s in front of them. They’re going to find food on the floor. They’re going to find trash cans that they can reach up and knock over. They’re going to find anything they can get their mouth on and try to chew it. So you might want to invest in a nice kennel or crate—some place that you can put them in. And not as punishment, but let that be their normal domicile when you’re not there. So at night, when you have company over, when you’re not home directly supervising, the kennel should be a good and comfortable place for them to go.

You might also want to consider depending on where you live and how it’s laid out, maybe some baby gates that will prevent them from going to various areas of the house. Those are probably the most basic common sense things I would think that you would need to do first.

Thankfully, that’s not as grim of a question to answer. So pain can be as simple as vocalization. It can be carrying their body posture differently. If it’s arthritic type pain, they will be carrying themselves differently. Maybe they’re hunched back. Maybe they’re walking with real short steps because it hurts to walk. Maybe it’s that you go to pick them up or you touch them in a certain area, and they either vocalize or they try to bite you or something like that. If they have a tender or painful spot, they’re going to lick or bite at that area a lot because it hurts and they can’t figure out why, and they don’t understand it. So they just want to lick and lick and lick or bite at that area.

Depends on what kind of obedience training you’re talking about, first off. So I will tell you that obedience training that you’re going to do at home? As soon as possible and, again, in moderation. You know, with a six week old puppy, you don’t put them through bootcamp. Let them be a puppy. If you’re going to give them a treat, why not have him on a tabletop like this, hold the treat up high so they’re looking at you, and then say, “Sit. Sit.” And watch their rear end drop to the ground. If they’re not, hold it up higher. Go above their head so they’re going to follow that treat and then they’re going to sit. It’s a natural response. So that kind of training, heck yeah. I’d do it from day one.

Other small training, like every time I feed my dogs, I put the food down. I make them sit or at least stay and I’ll put the food down. I do not let them attack the food bowl. It’s by design. I want them to know that they’re going to do what I’m asking them to do. It doesn’t hurt. I’m not being mean in any way, shape, or form. But they do kind of learn that they have to do things my way and not their way all the time. And you would be amazed at how many things that spills over to. I mean, keep in mind, I’m a veterinarian. So I see dogs walk into exam rooms all the time. A dog that is well-disciplined even if they don’t know 50 tricks, that’s fine. But even if they know discipline, they know to sit, they know to stay, they know to heel, those kinds of things—that is such a big advantage for us and for the owners.

It just makes for better dogs when they have discipline like that. So I implore you that even if it’s small things, train when you can in moderation. Don’t do it for 30 minutes a day. Do it for three or four minutes a day and stop. They’re still puppies. Make it fun. When it’s not fun and they’re losing interest, stop. Do it again the next day and you’d be much better off for it.

Let’s look at it this way. They eat every day. The most common thing we see is food allergies. If the allergy is consistent 365 days a year, then it’s probably not fleas and it’s probably not seasonal. I would approach illnesses that are related to food the same way.

If it’s something that you’re feeding—maybe it’s a new additive that you added to the cat’s diet or a new ingredient or perhaps even a new bag of food—and right at that point you see that your cat has been constantly ill with a variety of signs, it’s a strong possibility that it’s the food. If it began with the initiation of a new ingredient and it’s consistent after the cat has been eating the new food, that is kind of a big red flag for me.

Aha, yes. The unfortunate answer is yes, they can. There is an injection site tumor called a fibrosarcoma that they can sometimes develop. I have been in practice for 21 years and I think I have seen three in 21 years. Is it common? Obviously, no, it’s not common at all. In fact, there’ve been a lot of changes to vaccines in probably the last 10 to 12 years or so, and I’m just randomly picking that timeframe, but around there, to where they changed it. It used to be due to what’s called the adjuvant, the carrier in the vaccine. They would put an additive in vaccinations to stimulate the immune system and it’s thought that a lot of the adjuvants in some of the vaccinations, particularly the old leukemia vaccines, were thought to be the ones to do that. To my knowledge, that adjuvant has been changed or taken out completely. I don’t know for certain, but I can tell you that I have not seen a reaction that way in many, many years—it’s probably been double-digit years since I’ve seen one of those cases, but it is possible, unfortunately.

There is pain involved in the procedure, of course. Yes. A female, for example, we are opening up their abdomen and we are physically removing their ovaries and uterus. So yes, of course there is some pain. The good news is, nowadays, the anesthetic protocols that we use, the pain control that we have afterwards, the pain is almost negligible. Most of the time now with the regimen of pain control that we use, if the animal is painful after surgery, we didn’t do our job right, let’s put it that way. So there are so many good drugs out there that make them pain-free and allow for quick, healthy recoveries. Yeah, it’s virtually a nonissue now.

Earplugs? No, I’m kidding. Not earplugs. But you can. I’ve done that before, too. The first few nights of a new puppy coming home are going to be the hardest. I’ll tell you that right now. Unless you have an exceptional dog, the first four nights are usually a living hell. Let’s just be honest. I am a big fan of kennel or crate training.

And for me, what that looks like is when I go to bed, I’m the last one to go to bed at my house, so I stay with the dog. I take them outside. And the last thing before it’s lights out is I put them in the kennel. I personally do not put food and water overnight. I’m not eating at night when I’m sleeping, nor do they need to eat at night when they’re sleeping. It just makes a mess. So I put them in there with no food or water. I’ll put a nice bed in there for them. And if I really am kind of worried about how they’re going to behave, I might even cover it with a blanket, so it stays nice and dark and cozy in there for them.

It’s kind of like raising a child. There are people that will wake up every time the child goes, “Eh,” and run to them and pick them up to take them to their bed. You can do that with a dog too, but you’re going to be creating a monster. So I normally will kind of let them cry it out within reason, but I will let them do that the first couple of nights. If you stick to your guns, trust me, they will figure it out. The kennel becomes a comfort zone for them. It’s just those first few nights. They’re away from home. They’re away from their mother, their siblings. They’re not sure what’s happening. I get it. But if you do give in and put them in bed with you, that’s fine, but you better get ready to do that for the next 15 years or so. So, that’s my advice on that one.

No. Just in case that wasn’t clear on tape, no. No. There’s no evidence or proof that that is a positive thing. Look, I grew up with people telling me that my whole life. “Oh, I heard it’s a good thing to let them have a litter,” and the simple fact is, there’s no truth to that. I will tell you that in recent years, certain research has come out that shows that large breed dogs may benefit from not being spayed or neutered until closer to that year of age. Okay? You can find plenty of information about that if you look, and I think there’s some truth to it. What it implies is that dogs that are spayed or neutered at a later age have a less likely chance of developing hip dysplasia, or if they do develop it, they don’t develop it as early. So that’s very intriguing to me. I have to heed that and I do want to pay attention to that.

At the same time, normally I will spay or neuter animals before their first heat cycle. Why? Because there are also studies that show that with every heat cycle that a female dog goes through, she is more likely to develop mammary cancer later in life. So which way do you go? It varies on personal opinion. It varies depending on the veterinarian that you use. But for the average case, usually before the first heat cycle is when it’s done on females and about six to seven months or so on a male as well.

That’s a tricky one to answer. So I will simply say this. I’m going to focus on the literal act of dying. And I know that’s grim, but if this question is intended to cover things such as maybe my cat is passing away at my home now with me, I would expect to see things like a cat that is no longer responsive, number one. They’re usually laterally recumbent laying on their side, but you can’t rouse them. They’re breathing but you can’t rouse them. They don’t respond if you call their name. There may be what’s called a palpebral reflex. You can touch by their eye and they should blink just like we should but they don’t. You start seeing a diminished or a lack of a palpebral reflex, things like that.

Sometimes severe dehydration will be evident if can pick up their skin and they have a very prolonged skin tint. That’s not an end of life sign, but most cats that are at that point usually are going to be severely dehydrated. And then I would think the last, and I mean the very last that you may see (hopefully you won’t see it at home) would be what we call agonal breathing. That is anytime an animal passes, whether they’re passing on their own or if that’s something that we’ve assisted them with, oftentimes they will take to take these very, very deep breaths right at the end as they’re passing. Again, a grim topic but these are some of the things that you would be looking for at the absolute in stages of life.

I’m going to be honest with you; just from personal experience, I can tell you that this is a highly variable answer. I have seen some dogs where they are over and done in a matter of 30 minutes to an hour—even with a Labrador-sized litter where they might pass 10 or 12 puppies. I also owned a dog that came from a litter that was born over three days. This female would have three or four, and then she’d stop and think she was done. And the next day, the owner would come home from work, and there were four or five more. And then it happened for three days.

Is that normal? No. Would I be nervous? Yeah. Had that dog been brought to me as a veterinarian, I probably would’ve done x-rays and said, “Oh God, there’s still three more. Let’s go get them.” But there’s a lot of variability. I would tell you, on average, a couple of hours is about right. But there’s so much variability depending on the size of the puppies, the size of the female, the size of the litter, and the breed of dog. There are certain breeds like English bulldogs that are sort of the poster child for dystocia. Those guys have a hard time passing through the birth canal naturally so that it can take a little bit longer, and sometimes people don’t even want to take that chance, and they’ll do a scheduled C-section. For certain breeds, that’s not a bad idea too.

Most of the time a follow-up appointment is required. If I’m doing an exam and, say, I find that your cat has periodontal disease or maybe even a fractured tooth, it’s very rare that I’m able to proceed and go and put the cat under general anesthetic and perform the procedure right then and there on the spot. We need to prepare, we need to have the animal fasted, we might want to run blood work before, those kinds of things. So typically we diagnose on the first visit and then have them come back for treatment on a later visit.

Absolutely. Where else is she going to have it? Unless there is a veterinary situation such as dystocia, preeclampsia, or another kind of medical condition that would warrant a veterinarian getting involved, then there’s no reason for me to get involved. Assuming you have the proper preparations at home—a whelping box, towels, a good dark, and a quiet spot for the dog to go. We covered the preparations in the previous video, so if you didn’t, go back and watch it. But if you have those things ready, a dog can have their puppies at home. You’re just looking for any abnormalities. If the dog is in active labor, contracting for 30 minutes or more, and no puppy, I need to know about it.

If they’re going multiple hours between puppies, I probably ought to know about that too. One of the things that helps is how to know when they’re finished. How do you know if they’re finished? Well, that’s when x-rays come in, and you can do x-rays after about day 50 of pregnancy and get a good idea of how many puppies that she has to deliver because otherwise, you’re just kind of guessing. So maybe she has four, and she stops—are you going to know if that’s all she has? If you didn’t do x-rays, you are not going to know. That’s one of the benefits of checking x-rays before they go into labor.

They should be under anesthetic because, otherwise, you’re cutting on a cat that’s awake. I’m ot trying to be silly, but to answer that question, yes. I would think if it is a true surgery, then that cat should be under anesthesia.

Only if there’s a problem. She knows what she’s doing. Even if the dog has never given birth before, it’s called genetics; they’re going to figure it out. So I try not to intervene unless I have to. And again, I kind of briefly touched upon it earlier, pushing for 30 minutes with no puppy, and those kinds of things might require intervention. If things like that are happening, then absolutely get on the phone, call me and let me know, or, better yet, bring the dog in, and we’ll do what we have to do. But other than that, stay out of the way and let her do her thing. She’s going to eat the placenta. She’s going to lick the puppy clean.

She’s going to lick the puppies to make them go to the bathroom for the first time. They need to nurse on her immediately to cause not only for milk letdown but it also causes a release of oxytocin. This release helps the uterine to involute and start to either contract more, or when pregnancy is done, it makes the uterus collapse and empty blood clots and extra placental tissue. And just the simple act of a puppy nursing does that. So again, stay out of the way as much as possible. Call me if you need to, but otherwise, let the pups do their thing.

All of these are so variable, but it’s okay. So orthopedic injuries, obviously I’m looking at fractures, dislocations, any change in the structure of the bone, if there’s a tumor there, those kinds of things is what I’m looking for, for that.

Where it gets a little hairier, you start getting into ultrasound, maybe MRI. A lot of times you’re looking at soft tissue structures for that. So maybe you’re looking for a tumor that’s growing off as a soft tissue organ.

Maybe you’re looking for something with the integrity or lack thereof inside of an organ, like in the lungs or the spleen or the liver or things like that. So again, if people saw the last segment I talked about, you have to know what normal looks like before you can recognize abnormal.

That’s where it’s difficult to answer this question with being very specific, because it just depends on what condition or disease process we’re looking further into. I’m sorry, that’s a real fake answer.

Well, hopefully it’s not true aggression that this question would be geared towards. I have seen puppies that are aggressive at a very early age and that’s a little bit disturbing. More times than not, it’s just playing. They’re trying to find themselves in the pack. They’re trying to find out who’s the alpha and who’s not. What can they get away with? They’re learning how to interact with dogs. And if you’ve ever watched a pack of dogs, wolves, any canine species, that’s how they are. It’s what they do. So the playfulness/aggressiveness is okay for them to do those things in moderation, as long as it’s in play.

If it becomes growling, snarling, pulling and as if they have to have the last word, that’s a problem, and that needs to be addressed straight away. I’m not a trainer so I’m not going to stand here and try to give you this long, drawn out process on how to do it.

But one thing you might want to do is consult with a trainer and see the right methodology on how to break that or steer that energy elsewhere to where it becomes productive and not leading down a not so good road.

If it’s the first time that this particular veterinarian sees your dog, then you’re going to want to bring as much as you can. So what does that mean? You’re going to want to bring previous records (including vaccinations) from the former veterinarian, a stool sample, the latter of which is a good thing to bring whether it’s a new vet or your current vet that you’ve seen for years. A stool sample is often something they want to look at.

Ask the office first whether they want a urine sample. You might also consider bringing a previous rabies tag if you’re unsure or you don’t have the rest of the records with you. And then the other thing I would bring is a list of medications. Again, if you’re seeing this veterinarian currently and have been for a while, they should have a list of those medications because they’re probably the ones prescribing it to you. But if you moved or you’re switching veterinarians, bring a list of all current medications that your dog has taken.

I’m going to say yes and I’m saying this while I tip toe walking on eggshells, because I don’t want to rub anybody the wrong way. Dogs need discipline no different than a child needs discipline, so yes. If I stuck with a short answer, I would simply say yes, but I feel like I have to explain.

If you catch them in the act of doing something undesirable, such as messing in your house, chewing on your favorite shoes, fighting with another animal, trying to bite you too hard, or anything like that, it requires correction in moderation. It doesn’t mean you have to go smacking them around. A lot of times it’s just a loud noise. And most dogs when they hear that and they stop, that’s correcting in itself for probably 80% of puppies. Have I at times tapped mine on the nose if they’re really not getting a message, if they’re not responding to an auditory stimulus or something like that? Yes, I have. Is it okay? I think it is in moderation.

Again I am not advocating going around smacking your dog. But they do need correction. They need discipline and they do better when they know what’s expected of them exactly like a child would be. If caught in the act, yes. If you were trying to correct them for something that happened maybe while you were at work, it might’ve happened hours ago, nah, you’re wasting your time. And I have learned the hard way, do not even bother because they will have no idea what you’re correcting them for. And then it just becomes a thing where, oh my goodness, now they’re fearful of you because you’re just this big old guy that just comes in and starts spanking them for no known reason. So if you catch them in the act, yes, punish in moderation, otherwise let it go. Deal with it the next time you see that behavior happen.

You’ll know the number of pups due to the x-rays. Ultrasound is another test that you can do leading up to it that might tell you about the viability of the puppies and how vigorous they were. It’ll check their heart rate, and that’s kind of neat to see, but it’s very, very difficult. I would argue almost impossible to give an accurate puppy count on ultrasound. X-rays anytime after day 50 will be when the skeletons are visible on an x-ray, so that will be the best information you can have to know the number.

X-rays… Broken bones, intestinal obstructions, bladder stones, things like that. Those are what I think… Dentistry. Those are where I think that X-rays, they serve their purpose. They’ve been around forever, not forever, but I mean, they’ve been around a very long time, but they serve their purpose. They work very well for that, and they’re much more cost-effective. So things like that. That’s what I’m reaching for first.

If I need to look at a soft tissue structure and I need to see the internal components of said soft tissue structure, then I’m grabbing my ultrasound. It allows you to look at the internal components of the bladder, the kidneys, the liver. I can see the vasculature and the blood flow and the drainage in everything from the liver to the heart, and I can see the heart valves. I can actively see the heart contracting and watch the heart valves fluttering and closing with an ultrasound. So it’s perfect for that kind of study.

MRIs and CT scans are more advanced. You need much more acute detail. We’ve all seen medical shows on TV. What does an MRI or CT scan look like? It’s a hundred little slices. You see their films on the wall and it’s got all these tiny images, not tiny images, or small squares on these great big films. That machine will hypothetically take hundreds of slices as it goes through the tissues and it lays them down and puts them on a film.

Say you’ve got a brain tumor. You’re looking at a soft tissue structure that’s encased in bone. I can’t see that on an X-ray. My X-ray is going to pick up that bone. It’s going to be bright white, but I can’t see the soft tissue of the brain underneath. Ultrasound cannot penetrate the bone. So that’s useless to try to see that. You need something that can actually take those slices, if you will, of tissue, and then be able to look at them this way. You’ll see the bone, but you’ll also see all the soft tissue encased underneath. And you can literally say, “Okay, this is at one millimeter, two millimeters.” It’s probably smaller than that, but you can literally break it down and have a sequential step. So you can see exactly where a growth or a mass or any kind of a lesion starts and stops based on that.

Lastly, too, I know MRI is pretty superior when you’re looking at ligament. Let’s say you have a torn cruciate or a torn meniscus and for whatever reason; my mind is stuck on knees right now. But if you have some sort of a soft tissue structure, an orthopedic soft tissue structure, MRI is really hard to beat if you need that kind of acuity to see if something is torn or partially torn. No other study can touch that kind of accuracy that you get with MRI on that.

Well, I touched upon the beginning first. When the dog first gets here, it will be stabilization, fluids, steroids, oxygen, whatever’s necessary in that particular case. Beyond that, if it is something that requires more diagnostics, we’re going to run tests. We might have to run a urinalysis, a stool sample, blood work, x-rays, maybe an ultrasound. Those kinds of things will happen once the patient’s stabilized. But that might need to be done, so once again, we can pinpoint a diagnosis and then really begin a specific treatment. What does that look like? Is the treatment steroids? Is it antibiotics? Sometimes, the blood work is necessary to tell us what it is, so we know which one to go with.

Yeah. We don’t live in a bubble. Even in this world of coronavirus, we don’t live in a bubble. We are going to be exposed to airborne pathogens, things like that.

Parvo, for example. If your dog never goes outside, not to say that’s great, but okay if that’s your choice, but parvo can still find its way inside. Why? You go outside. What happens if you are around another dog and there are viral particles on that dog? Maybe they have a bowel movement or had a bowel movement that you didn’t see, you step in it, it’s on your shoes… something like that. If that viral particle makes its way back into your house, well, guess who’s going to find it? Your dog will. Is it as common in indoor dogs? No, of course not, but it’s still possible. And once again, as I said, an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure, especially when you’re dealing with potentially fatal viruses like parvo.

Unfortunately, no. To know a location, we would have to have some sort of a GPS device or signal. This is different—microchips use what’s called R-F-I-D, Radio Frequency Identification. What this means is that when the chip is scanned, it sends a very quick signal to the reader, and it is just a unique number— usually a 16 or so digit number. And if you’ve taken the time to register that microchip and you linked your contact information to it, then you will have your cat returned to you.

Any time that number is scanned, it will allow us as veterinarians or employees at animal control to pull up your information, so that we can call you and say, “Hey, we have Fluffy at our clinic,” and that’s how you’re reunited. Unfortunately, it’s not a GPS though.

Just exposure early and often is the best way. I don’t have a formula. Every dog is different. But it’s just exposure. Start with a leash so you have them under control. You don’t know how those other animals are going to react. So do it in a controlled setting where they’re both leashed, but start small.

If one or both of the dogs are either acting aggressively or perhaps the other way, being very fearful, do it very matter of factly. Just take them for a walk and let them get close to each other, but keep on walking. And then as they get comfortable and they realize it’s no big deal, maybe then you make another pass and they get a little closer. Or maybe you stop and talk with the owner. Try to mimic a normal day-to-day situation that you might run into.

Start early. Do it often. If you can implement any of this, trust me, you will be happier for it, and you’re going to have a much better, well-rounded dog when it comes right down to it.

Intubating a cat is when you use an endotracheal tube that insett into the trachea, the windpipe, if you will. We do that in the vast majority of cases, especially those that require a general anesthetic. When I say general anesthetic, that is that a surgical plane, and we give them a drug to induce anesthesia, usually propofol. Once the cat loses consciousness, we insert the trach tube just described. Then the cat is breathing oxygen, and a certain gas isofluorane, cepofluorine, something like that that holds them under anesthetic for as long as they keep breathing that gas.

That is what’s called general anesthetic, and that’s how the bulk of our anesthetic procedures are done. Occasionally, you might have a milder surgery if I can use that term. Maybe it’s a surgery to debride a wound or clean up an abscess…even a male cat neuter. These types of procedures don’t require a general anesthetic because they’re pretty fast procedures. In some of those cases we can just do heavy sedation, and those cats are not always intubated for those more minor procedures because they don’t entirely lose consciousness. There’s pain control. They do lose consciousness, but not the ability to swallow. So, we don’t have to worry about them aspirating anything.

It’s a good question, and it’s one that probably has quite a few answers there. Signs of pain can include but are not limited to what I’m about to say—panting or biting at either you or themselves. Sometimes if their hips are hurting, they’ll turn around and try to bite at those or look at them. You can have swelling in a certain area; depending on the nature of the injury. You might experience vocalizing, crying, barking, and growling. Dogs have a hard way, at least in our language, of letting you know they’re in pain, so sometimes it’s those simple things. If you’re going to make a simple day-to-day motion or you’re petting them or picking them up like you might’ve done every day for their entire lives—if they hurt and have, say, a back injury and you pick them up by the front legs or something, they’re going to let you know it hurts.

And the flip side of that is sometimes a sign of pain might be a lack of something. So again, referencing a back, consider the example of dogs that are on and off of furniture all the time or they’re on and off of your lap 20 times a day. If their back is hurting, they’re not going to want to jump up and certainly not going to want to jump down. So all of a sudden, the dog is going to sit there and look at you as if, “Oh no, no, I don’t want to go.” And they’re going to sit there and do that 10 times when they normally would just hop right up onto the sofa. That is a subtle sign that they’re telling you something hurts.

So again, depending on the intensity of the pain, where it’s located, there’s a lot of variability with that question. But I think those are some of the most common signs that we see that tell us a dog’s in pain.

Plan a visit to your veterinarian. Just a good physical exam will do, and then perhaps even taking a stool sample to check for intestinal worms. That is a problem that we will sometimes see with cat pregnancy. The hormonal changes that cats go through during pregnancy can cause them to begin to shed intestinal worms, even though they might’ve been negative before then. Those are good approaches to take when you first find out about cat pregnancy.

Respiratory issues—again, being a more serious condition in cats and how it normally presents, I guess you could say similar to dogs, it takes fewer worms to cause these. That’s the most common thing that I see. A cat that might come in for hacking, coughing, maybe even open mouth breathing, or perhaps poor color. Maybe the cat was running around playing or just jumping around a typical day, and all of a sudden just collapsed, acute collapse. It usually presents as either cardiovascular or respiratory signs in a cat.

Every once in a while, you’ll see vomiting, although I personally have not seen a cat come in for vomiting and then later be diagnosed with heartworms. It’s always been the respiratory signs that I have picked up on.

Core vaccines are the essential, don’t-pass-on-these vaccines. And they include things such as rhinotracheitis, which is a herpes virus. There’s calicivirus, feline leukemia is actually now considered a core vaccine, and rabies. So those are the big ones that, regardless of your cat’s lifestyle such as whether they live indoors or outdoors.

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Broken teeth. Not any broken tooth, but if the break has extended into the pulp of the tooth, that may need to be extracted to alleviate pain or prevent the future formation of an abscess. Severe periodontal disease is arguably the most common thing we see. If you have a tooth that’s diseased to that point, it’s often much more effective and healthy for the dog to just take that tooth out and not allow it to continue to be a source of chronic infection.

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X-rays help us to better diagnose what’s going on, not only in the mouth but, more importantly, under the gums where we can’t see. For example, you might have a diseased tooth that looks like there’s some tartar on the outside but the crown looks pretty solid and the tooth is not loose, but you do an x-ray and maybe you uncover that one of those roots has a tremendous amount of bone loss around it. Well, that tooth at that point is usually not a viable tooth so it would need to be extracted. Without x-rays, you would never have a way to know that.