Good health starts with good nutrition. If your dog or cat is diagnosed with an internal medicine disease such as kidney disease, inflammatory bowel disease, diabetes, or even thyroid disease, your veterinarian may prescribe a special therapeutic diet for them. Many of these will be a therapeutic diet, meaning you will need a prescription from your veterinarian to get it and you won't be able to purchase the food at your local pet store.
Your veterinarian may recommend a premade commercially available therapeutic food, or they may recommend a nutrition consultation for a specific, tailored diet to meet the needs of your pet.
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Do you love hiking with your pup?
April is Prevention of Lyme Disease in Dogs Month and to help bring awareness to the disease we're talking about ticks and Lyme Disease.
Ticks are parasites from the arachnid family that feed off of blood from mammals, birds, reptiles, and some amphibians. Ticks live anywhere there is brush for them to hang out on, and wildlife is around to spread them. Here is how you can keep your little one safe from these parasites!
Ideally your pet is on a flea and tick preventative medication prescribed by your veterinarian. Be sure to use a veterinary approved product. Speak to your veterinarian for a prescription.
Since the best exploring is done outside, we must protect our pets as well as ourselves. After returning from exploring, take some time to carefully look through your pets fur to make sure they have not picked up any ticks. Remember to check near ears, between paw pads, and all the little nooks including the groin areas. Ticks like to hide in warm, dark, places. They are small and can appear to look like a 'skin tag' so be sure it's a tick and not a small skin mass/lesion. You can tell the difference by looking for the small legs sticking out around the body. The head will be lodged into your pets skin and the body of the tick will swell as it dines on your pets blood. Ticks will naturally fall off once they are fully engorged with blood, but it is best to remove them as soon as possible to decrease the chance of them spreading a disease. Vitamin B12, also known as cobalamin, is an essential vitamin absorbed in the guts of mammals. Dogs and cats with gastrointestinal disease such as inflammatory bowel disease or gastrointestinal lymphoma, can have low levels of B12 because their guts are not absorbing the nutrients as they should. It's an important marker for normal gut health. If your veterinarian suspects GI disease they may check the level of Vitamin B12 in your pets blood. If the levels are low your vet will recommend supplementing to help your pet feel better.
Check out the new page about Vitamin B12 and learn more about what it is, why it's important, and how to increase the Vitamin B12 levels in your pet.
DCM is Dilated Cardiomyopathy. It is a disease that causes the heart muscle to gradually get weaker and weaker. The inability of the heart to squeeze blood out well causes problems as the disease progresses.
How does this happen?
True DCM seems to be coded in the genetics of our beloved pets. The breeds that are diagnosed most commonly with DCM are large breeds including, Great Danes, Newfoundlands, and Irish wolfhounds. The top two however, are Boxers and Dobermans.
DCM shows itself in two phases |
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