The temperature is soaring, and it’s
only going to get hotter. Make sure you know how to keep your cat safe in the
summer heat.
Watch out forheatstroke. Symptoms
include panting, lethargy, drooling, fever, vomiting and collapse. If you
think your cat may have heatstroke, get the vet ASAP — the condition can
cause permanent organ damage and death. Learn more about heatstroke in
pets.
Offer your cat several ways to
cool off. Leave a fan on
in a place where your cat can sit in front of it, add some ice cubes to
her water or offer her a cool treat (check out our recipe for catsicles.)
Letyour cat find cool spots in
the house. Your cat will seek out the cooler parts of your home, so
make sure she has access to areas with tile floors or rooms that don’t get
much sun.
Play in the morning or evening. Any exercise should take place
during the cooler hours of the day. This is especially important for young
kittens and seniors, both of whom are very vulnerable to heatstroke. (If
your cat has just eaten, make sure you give her some time to digest before
you begin playtime.)
As the unofficial start to summer, Memorial Day is a
great excuse to get outdoors. But whether you’re partying, barbequing, or just
soaking up some rays, it’s important to keep your pet’s safety in mind at all
times. To prevent any Memorial Day mishaps, we’ve put together five tips to
help protect animals during the “Dog Days” of the season.
Party
Smart
Barbequing is one of the best parts of Memorial Day,
but remember that the food and drink you serve your guests may be poisonous to
pets. Keep alcoholic beverages away from animals, and remind guests not to give
them any table scraps or snacks. Raisins, grapes, onions, chocolate, and
avocado are all common at barbeques—and they’re all especially toxic to
animals.
Be
Cool Near the Pool
Don’t leave pets unsupervised around a pool or
lake—not all dogs are expert swimmers! Introduce your pets to water gradually
and make sure they wear flotation devices when on boats. Also, try to keep your
dog from drinking pool water, which contains potentially dangerous chemicals
like chlorine.
Skip
the Spray
Unless specifically designed for animals, insect
repellant and sunscreen can be toxic to pets. Signs of repellent toxicity
include drooling, vomiting, diarrhea, excessive thirst, and lethargy. DEET, a
common insecticide in products for humans, may cause neurological issues in
dogs.
Made
in the Shade
Pets can get dehydrated quickly, so if you’re
spending time outside, give them plenty of fresh, clean water and make sure
they have a shady place to get out of the sun. Note that animals with flat
faces, like Pugs and Persian cats, are more susceptible to heat stroke since
they cannot pant as effectively. These pets, along with the elderly, the
overweight, and those with heart or lung diseases, should be kept cool in
air-conditioned rooms as much as possible.
IDs,
Please
Time spent outdoors comes with the added risk of
pets escaping. Make sure that your pet is fitted with a microchip or ID tag
with identifying information, or both. It’s always better to be safe than
sorry.
Pets aren’t always easy to take care of, and they often require a
substantial time commitment (something you’re all too aware of at, say, 3 a.m.,
when Bing Clawsby is finally ready to go outside and do his business). But pets
provide an amazing return on that time investment, especially when it comes to
your health. Case in point: According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control
and Prevention, pet owners tend to have lower blood pressure, cholesterol, and
triglyceride levels than non-pet owners. But that’s not all. Pets also model
many surprisingly healthy behaviors that humans would do well to emulate. Here
are just a few, according to veterinarians, dog trainers, and other pet
experts.
1. They focus on what matters most. You may get grumpy after a bad
day at the office, but your pooch never does. “Companion animals mostly care
about food, love, and shelter (not always in that order). As long as they have
those things, they don’t need much else,” Mary Gardner, DVM, a veterinarian and
cofounder of Lap of Love Veterinary Hospice tells Yahoo Health. “Pets also
don’t complain much at all. People believe they hide their pain; I simply think
they manage it differently.” If humans could model these behaviors, Gardner
adds, we’d be healthier, happier, “and more people would want to be around
us.”
2. They practice portion control (even if not by choice). Snowball
might not want to limit her kibble intake any more than you want to limit your
tortilla-chip intake. Nonetheless, she typically eats reasonably sized helpings
of nutritionally balanced food — and never gets to eat straight out of the bag.
Follow her lead. “Both animals and people need structure and regulation when it
comes to portion size,” says Jme Thomas, executive director of Motley Zoo
Animal Rescue based in Redmond, Washington.
3. They know how to de-stress. Your pooch doesn’t pour a glass of
cabernet when the going gets rough (though, yes, it would make a very popular
YouTube video if she did). She may, however, start begging for a walk or to
play a game. Smart dog! “Actively seeking healthy activities — that function as
de-stressors when stress levels are high — helps to reset people as well as dogs,
and bring us back to a productive and functional status, from which many things
feel a lot more ‘do-able,’” Marisa Scully, a certified dog behavior specialist
in Philadelphia, tells Yahoo Health.
4. They hit the hay. People don’t get enough sleep: According to a
2014 survey by the National Sleep Foundation, 45 percent of Americans said that
a lack of sleep had impaired their activities at least once in the previous
week. Learn from your cat or dog, who knows just how important it is to get
enough shut-eye, says Jeff Werber, VVM, president and chief veterinarian of
Century Veterinary Group in Los Angeles. “Whether it’s a lazy dog day
afternoon, or a quick cat nap, you won’t find them burning the candles at both
ends.” 5. They stretch! There’s a reason one of the most common yoga moves is
named downward dog. Dogs (and cats) stretch constantly — and we should do the
same, notes certified dog behavior consultant Russell Hartstein. Why?
Stretching can improve flexibility and reduce your risk of injury.
6. They’re open to new things. Animals are naturally curious.
“Open a box or empty a bag and before you know it, your cat will have climbed
in to investigate. Walk your dog past a gardener planting flowers and chances
are she will check it out before moving on,” Werber says. “And they’re always
up for some fun. A game of catch, a walk, a visit — bring it on.” Since
research has found that seeking out new experiences can keep people feeling
young and healthy, we’d do well to follow suit.
7. They’re comfortable getting zen. Numerous studies have found a
correlation between mindful meditation and reduced stress, decreased heart
disease, and a stronger immune response — and that’s something your cat already
knows how to do instinctively. “Each morning I sit on the sofa with my cat,
Turtle, while I drink my first cup of coffee,” says Kristen Levine, a pet
living expert. “We spend about 10 minutes together, her getting neck and head
rubs, me enjoying her purring and having a few meditative moments at the start
of the day.It sounds simple, and it can be, but depending on the activity, it
can have a powerfully relaxing or invigorating effect for both human and
critter.”
Science is proving what pet
owners have long believed: Dogs understand what we're feeling. Specifically, dogs
can recognize the difference between a happy and an angry human face, a study
published Thursday in Current Biology suggests.
It's the first research to show definitively that dogs are
sensitive to our facial expressions, says coauthor Ludwig Huber, head of
comparative cognition at Messerli Research Institute at the University of
Veterinary Medicine, Vienna.
In the Austrian study, 20 pet dogs of various breeds and sizes
were taught to play a computer game through a series of exercises. In the
first, the dogs were shown two touch screens, one with a circle and one with a
square. Through trial and error, they learned that a treat would appear if they
chose the right geometrical figure.
Eleven of the 20 dogs were able to catch on to rules of the game
and make it to the next phase, where they were shown photos of faces. Half the
dogs were rewarded for picking a happy expression and half for choosing an
angry expression. The interesting catch: the dogs were shown only the upper
half or the lower half of a face.
It was easier to teach the
dogs to choose a happy expression than an angry one, suggesting the dogs do
indeed understand the meaning behind the expression, Huber says.
As a test, the dogs were then were presented with:
the same half of the faces they saw during the training, but
from different people
the other half of the faces used in training
the other half of new faces
the left half of the faces used in training
In the vast majority of cases the dogs chose the right answer 70 to 100 percent
of the time.
Dogs who had been trained to recognize an expression of anger or
happiness on the upper part of a face could identify the same expression when
shown only the lower part, and vice versa, Huber says, adding “the only
possible explanation is that they recall from memory of everyday life how a
whole human face looks when happy or angry.”
Dog owners know their pets not only recognize emotions but also
feel empathy.
Delilah, a 3-year-old Chihuahua, always seems to know when her
owner Eva Shure is having a bad day.
Delilah knows when her owner is having a bad day.
Making eye contact and cocking her head to the right, the little dog will stare
at Shure's face as if trying to assess her feelings. “It’s weird, I can see her
thinking and processing,” says Shure, a 35-year-old New York City business
owner. “I’ll say, yeah, it’s not a great day and she’ll come up and sit next to
me.”
Beverly Levreault, 57, says her 6-year-old Australian Cattle Dog
mix is always tuned in to her moods. “If I’m not feeling well, like when I have
the flu, Lacey is definitely lower key and will not leave my side, ” says
Levreault, a graphic designer from Williamstown, New York. “If I take her for a
walk, she’s not as rambunctious as she usually is.”
Lynette Whiteman says she’s not sure that her 5-year-old
Yorkie-Maltese cross is using facial expressions to gauge how she feels. “But
she definitely reads my emotions,” says the 58-year-old from Toms River, New
Jersey. “I run a therapy dog program and the dogs are just amazing. They go
into a room and immediately pick out the person who needs help.”
Behavioral experts say the new findings, while important,
wouldn’t surprise anyone with an intimate knowledge of dogs.
Coco and Lynettte
"This new work continues to build the case for just how sensitive dogs are
to our subtle behaviors,” says Dr. Brian Hare, chief scientific officer at
Dognition and an associate professor of evolutionary anthropology at Duke
University. “This is the strongest evidence yet that dogs are even reading our
facial expressions.”
That sensitivity may be the
result of generations of selective breeding for a true partner, says Dr. Carlo
Siracusa, director of the behavior service at the University of Pennsylvania
School of Veterinary Medicine. “We have selected animals that are able to
perceive our emotions and communicate with us at a level that no other animal
can,” Siracusa says.
Dogs may not talk, but they are very good communicators, says
Dr. Nicholas Dodman, a professor in the department of clinical sciences at the
Cummings School of Veterinary Medicine at Tufts University and director of the
animal behavior clinic at Cummings.
“Just as we are masters of the spoken word, dogs are experts at
reading body language,” Dodman says.
“It’s almost impossible to hide your feelings from a dog.”
Turns out, reading facial expressions isn’t the only thing dogs
have in common with us.
They can be bitten by the computer gaming bug. “They can really
become freaks for it,” Huber says with a chuckle. “They don’t want to stop
playing. It’s incredible. They’ll play till they are exhausted and fall
asleep.”
PETCUBE:
Petcube is a box with a laser pointer, speaker, and light that you can control from anywhere in the world via the Petcube smartphone app.
You control the laser by moving your finger around your iPhone or Android phone’s screen. Anywhere your finger moves, your pet will follow, as long as she likes lasers.
You can also take screenshots of the app and share them via Petcube’s social network. What’s more, you can make your Petcube open to the public, so you can let anyone play with your pet while you’re home or away.
To be honest, letting strangers get a view of your home when you’re away (or home) sounds kind of strange, so maybe you’ll just want to stick with the lasers.
Pancreatitis is an inflammation of the pancreas caused by
leakage of the digestive enzymes and causing the pancreas to "digest
itself." Pancreatitis can be acute (sudden) or chronic (happening over a
course of time.) Both acute and chronic forms are serious and can be
life-threatening. Middle-aged dogs appear to be at increased risk of developing
pancreatitis. Certain breeds are more prone to the disease, particularly
Schnauzers and Yorkshire terriers.
Pancreatitis is more common in overweight dogs. When pancreatitis occurs in an
overweight dog it is more likely to cause serious illness.
Causes of Pancreatitis
Multiple factors can contribute to the development of
pancreatitis including:
Certain medications: The medications most suspected of
causing pancreatitis include azathioprine (Imuran Rx), potassium bromide (used
for seizure control), l-asparaginase (a chemotherapeutic agent) and zinc used
as a dietary supplement.
Infections
Metabolic
disorders: Including hyperlipidemia (high amounts of lipid in the blood)
and hypercalcemia (high amounts of calcium in the blood)
Obesity
Trauma
and shock
Scorpion
stings
Nutrition also plays a major role. Dogs with high-fat diets,
dogs that have recently eaten the trash, are fed table scraps, or 'steal'
greasy people food have a higher incidence of the disease. In addition, dogs
that have previously had pancreatitis or abdominal surgery appear to be more at
risk.
Preventing Pancreatitis
Because fatty foods are a common cause of pancreatitis, it
is good to limit the amount of fat in your dog?s diet. Be especially careful
around the holidays as extra table scraps and fat trimmings in the garbage can
trigger pancreatitis.
Symptoms of Pancreatitis
The signs can vary from mild gastrointestinal upset to
collapse and death. However, most dogs have some signs of GI upset, such as:
Vomiting
Not
eating
Painful
abdomen, hunched appearance
Fever
or below-normal body temperature
Diarrhea
Depression
Dehydration
which can be evaluated by noting sunken eyes, dry mouth, and increased
skin turgor (skin tents when pinched)
Difficulty
in breathing
Heart
arrhythmias
Inflammation
of organs that surround the pancreas
Infection
and hemorrhages throughout the body
All or some of the signs may be present with pancreatitis, but are not specific
for pancreatitis, and can be seen with many gastrointestinal diseases and
conditions.
Diagnosing Pancreatitis
Pancreatitis can be diagnosed by looking at blood
chemistries and biopsies. While biopsy is the gold standard, unless surgery is
called for, these are not generally performed because of their invasive nature.
Treating Pancreatitis
The goal of treatment is to rest the pancreas, provide
supportive care and control complications. If vomiting is severe, treatment
usually consists of withholding all food, water, and oral medications for 24
hours to stop the stimulation of the pancreas. Depending on the dog's response,
food can be reintroduced after a day. At that time, the dog should be fed
small, bland, easily digestible meals that are high-carbohydrate, low-fat. Over
a period of a week, meal size and quantity of food can be increased. The dog
may need to stay on a special diet for life, or it may be possible to gradually
reintroduce the former diet. High-fat diets or treats should be avoided. Since
dehydration and electrolyte imbalances are common in dogs with acute
pancreatitis and water intake is often restricted, fluid therapy is usually
needed. Fluids are either given subcutaneously or intravenously.
Dogs that experience severe pain can be treated with pain
relievers such as meperidine or butorphanol. Antibiotics are often administered
prophylactically to protect against infection. If the pancreatitis was caused
by a medication, the medication should be stopped. If it was caused by a toxin,
infection, or other condition, the appropriate therapy for the underlying
condition should be started. In rare instances where there are intestinal
complications or the development of a pancreatic abscess, surgery may be
necessary.
Caring for Dogs with Pancreatitis
Pancreatitis can be a very unpredictable disease. In most
cases, if the pancreatitis was mild and the pet only had one episode, chances
of recovery are good and avoiding high fat foods may be all that is necessary
to prevent recurrence or complications. In other cases, what appears to be a
mild case may progress, or may be treated successfully only to have recurrences,
sometimes severe. Dogs with severe pancreatitis can recover, but may also
develop fatal complications. The risk of developing fatal pancreatitis is
increased in dogs that are overweight, or have diabetes mellitus,
hyperadrenocorticism, hypothyroidism, gastrointestinal tract disease, and
epilepsy. Dogs that suffer repeated bouts of pancreatitis may need to be fed
low-fat diets to prevent recurrence.
Some dogs develop chronic pancreatitis, which can lead to
diabetes mellitus and/or pancreatic insufficiency, also called maldigestion
syndrome. In pancreatic insufficiency, the nutrients in food are passed out in
the feces undigested. Dogs with this disease often has a ravenous appetite,
diarrhea, and weight loss. Even though he is eating, he could literally starve
to death. Treatment for pancreatic insufficiency is lifelong and expensive, but
is possible. The dog?s digestive enzymes are replaced through a product
processed from pancreases of hogs and cattle which contain large quantities of
the digestive enzymes. A change in diet with added nutritional supplements may
also be necessary.
Chocolate, Macadamia nuts, avocados…these foods may sound delicious to you, but they’re actually quite dangerous for our animal companions. Our nutrition experts have put together a handy list of the top toxic people foods to avoid feeding your pet. As always, if you suspect your pet has eaten any of the following foods, please note the amount ingested and contact your veterinarian or the ASPCA Animal Poison Control Center at (888) 426-4435.
Chocolate, Coffee, Caffeine
These products all contain substances called methylxanthines, which are found in cacao seeds, the fruit of the plant used to make coffee and in the nuts of an extract used in some sodas. When ingested by pets, methylxanthines can cause vomiting and diarrhea, panting, excessive thirst and urination, hyperactivity, abnormal heart rhythm, tremors, seizures and even death. Note that darker chocolate is more dangerous than milk chocolate. White chocolate has the lowest level of methylxanthines, while baking chocolate contains the highest.
Alcohol
Alcoholic beverages and food products containing alcohol can cause vomiting, diarrhea, decreased coordination, central nervous system depression, difficulty breathing, tremors, abnormal blood acidity, coma and even death.
Avocado
The leaves, fruit, seeds and bark of avocados contain Persin, which can cause vomiting and diarrhea in dogs. Birds and rodents are especially sensitive to avocado poisoning, and can develop congestion, difficulty breathing and fluid accumulation around the heart. Some ingestions may even be fatal.
Macadamia Nuts
Macadamia nuts are commonly used in many cookies and candies. However, they can cause problems for your canine companion. These nuts have caused weakness, depression, vomiting, tremors and hyperthermia in dogs. Signs usually appear within 12 hours of ingestion and last approximately 12 to 48 hours.
Grapes & Raisins
Although the toxic substance within grapes and raisins is unknown, these fruits can cause kidney failure. In pets who already have certain health problems, signs may be more dramatic.
Yeast Dough
Yeast dough can rise and cause gas to accumulate in your pet’s digestive system. This can be painful and can cause the stomach or intestines to rupture. Because the risk diminishes after the dough is cooked and the yeast has fully risen, pets can have small bits of bread as treats. However, these treats should not constitute more than 5 percent to 10 percent of your pet’s daily caloric intake.
Raw/Undercooked Meat, Eggs and Bones
Raw meat and raw eggs can contain bacteria such as Salmonella and E. coli that can be harmful to pets. In addition, raw eggs contain an enzyme called avidin that decreases the absorption of biotin (a B vitamin), which can lead to skin and coat problems. Feeding your pet raw bones may seem like a natural and healthy option that might occur if your pet lived in the wild. However, this can be very dangerous for a domestic pet, who might choke on bones, or sustain a grave injury should the bone splinter and become lodged in or puncture your pet’s digestive tract.
Xylitol
Xylitol is used as a sweetener in many products, including gum, candy, baked goods and toothpaste. It can cause insulin release in most species, which can lead to liver failure. The increase in insulin leads to hypoglycemia (lowered sugar levels). Initial signs of toxicosis include vomiting, lethargy and loss of coordination. Signs can progress to recumbancy and seizures. Elevated liver enzymes and liver failure can be seen within a few days.
Onions, Garlic, Chives
These vegetables and herbs can cause gastrointestinal irritation and could lead to red blood cell damage. Although cats are more susceptible, dogs are also at risk if a large enough amount is consumed. Toxicity is normally diagnosed through history, clinical signs and microscopic confirmation of Heinz bodies. An occasional low dose, such as what might be found in pet foods or treats, likely will not cause a problem, but we recommend that you do NOT give your pets large quantities of these foods.
Milk
Because pets do not possess significant amounts of lactase (the enzyme that breaks down lactose in milk), milk and other milk-based products cause them diarrhea or other digestive upset.
Salt
Large amounts of salt can produce excessive thirst and urination, or even sodium ion poisoning in pets. Signs that your pet may have eaten too many salty foods include vomiting, diarrhea, depression, tremors, elevated body temperature, seizures and even death. In other words, keep those salty chips to yourself!
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