Would you believe it?! A pet related book featured on Amazon’s home page. Well, by the time you read this it might not still be there. Anyway, here are two books that should provide some great info if you are looking to take better care of your older dog or cat.
Well, I hadn’t heard of this until now. Earlier this year the FDA approved the first drug for obese dogs. We knew it was only a matter of time. I was wondering if anyone had an experience in prescribing it to their own pet or a patient.
Here is some additional information for reference…
Drug Name: Slentrol (dirlotapide)
Manufacturer: Slentrol is manufactured by Pfizer Inc., New York, NY Read the rest of this entry »
In light of the recent spate of pet food recalls, many folks have considered preparing their pet’s diet themselves from fresh ingredients. Since any fresh produce that is out of season must be coming from South America or someplace, I’m not sure how that makes us feel that much safer.
There is nothing inherently wrong with eating table food: after all, that’s what you are eating, right? We know that there are many pets who subsist on table food, eating only what they like the best. Unfortunately, this seldom results in a balanced diet. Rather, it usually results in health problems over the long haul, particularly noticeable in bones, skin and teeth. I suppose you could live on little colored marshmallows for a while, but you would begin to lose strength, endurance, and your beautiful complexion.
Good name-brand pet foods supply good, nutritious ingredients in the proper proportions. When not contaminated with poisonous ingredients, this is the simplest way to provide your pet with a good diet. Most pets eating Science Diet, or Iams, or Pedigree, or Purina, etc. have obesity as their most common medical problem related to nutrition.
If you are bound and determined to feed a home-prepared diet, here are a couple of resources recommended by Veterinary Information Network: BalanceIt.com and PetDiets.com
If you are looking for someone to validate the fact that you feed your dog nothing but bologna (I know, I know, you remove the stringy wrapping first: good for you), I don’t think you’ll find that.
MSNBC recently ran an article regarding the lack of regulation in the pet supplement industry. I hope this is the first of many news articles on this particular topic.
Seems as though the lack of regulation on pet supplements is allowing the manufacturers to get away with what could potentially be murder. The pet supplement industry needs to be regulated!!!
We know certain pet foods contain ingredients that may be harmful to your pet, but what about other ingestibles, like supplements? Are they safe? Are the labels really indicative of what is actually inside the bottle? According to the MSNBC story, the pet supplements that they tested don’t contain the ingredients they say they do. No surprises, at least to me.
I would love to hear what our readers have to say regarding this topic.
In the September 1, 1993 issue of the Journal of the American Veterinary Medical Association, a letter to the editor appeared, entitled “Of Mites and Man”. This letter was submitted by Dr. Robert A. Lopez, and is (ostensibly) a description of the sensations he experienced after deliberately infecting himself with ear mites in 1968. According to the letter, one of his clients had developed a skin rash which cleared up when her cat’s ear mite infestation was cured. Verified reports of natural human infection with ear mites are virtually unheard of. Either Dr. Lopez is a dedicated scientist (sort of) or a talented writer. These excerpts remind me of Kafka’s Metamorphosis. “One morning, as Gregor Samsa was waking up from anxious dreams, he discovered that in bed he had been changed into a monstrous verminous bug.”
“…Then I … transferred approximately one gram of ear mite exudate from the cat to my left ear. Immediately, I heard scratching sounds, then moving sounds, as the mites began to explore my ear canal. Itching sensations then started and all three sensations merged into a weird cacophany of sound and pain that intensified from that monent, 4 PM, on and on… At first, I thought this wouldn’t and couldn’t last very long. However, as the day and evening wore on, I began to worry. The pruritus [itching] was increasing. The sounds in my ear (fortunately I had chosen only one ear), were becomng louder as the mites traveled deeper toward my ear drum. I felt helpless. Is this the way a mite-infested animal feels?”
There are many more details, as the letter is a full page and half of small print, but you get the idea. He repeated the experiment two more times, having less severe signs on subsequent infections. He recovered fully. If this were a bad movie, it would now say
“The End?”
This post was provided by Dr. Everett Mobley of Kennet Veterinary Clinic in Kennet, MO.