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.

Check out the new page we added about pet's abdomens under our 'Diseases - Gastrointestinal' page. We discuss the difference between bloat, or GDV, abdominal swelling, and distention of the abdomen in dogs and cats. 

We hope you take a look around the website as we're working hard on keeping it up to date and creating more pages just for you!

Let us know in the comments if there's something specific you're looking for and it just might be the next thing we work on. 

No matter what you call it: Poop, Feces, Stool, Bowel Movement, Number 2, Defecation, Boom-Boom, Turd, or even Trots; it all refers to a very important part of your dog and cat's overall health.

So, what is normal when it comes to your pet's bathroom habits?

It's a common question when you take your dog or cat to the vet: "Is Fluffy having normal bowel movements?" Well, after thinking about it you answer a resounding "Yes!" After all, Fluffy's stools have been normal; normal for her. ​

​We may ask you for a description of the stool. (And don't worry if you take a picture of it to show us. I know it sounds gross to have a picture of poop in your phone, but it really can help us understand what you are seeing!)

When discussing a pet's feces, it helps to know what's normal, and what is not. Let's check out the things we look for in good GI health.

There is a lot of hype right now about grain free foods and heart disease in pets. We reached out to Ann, our nutrition and internal medicine small animal ​VTS author, for her prospective and she gave us the low down.

In July 2018, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) issued a bulletin regarding a potential connection between diet and cases of canine Dilated Cardiomyopathy (DCM).  Veterinary cardiologists had alerted the FDA of an increase in cases of DCM in breeds not typically genetically prone to this condition (1, 2).

Dilated cardiomyopathy has been genetically linked to a number of breeds of dogs including Great Danes, Boxers, Newfoundland’s, Irish Wolfhounds, St. Bernard’s, and Doberman pinschers. Cardiologists were seeing an increase in non-typically breeds including mix-breed dogs and smaller dogs. (1)

​Veterinary cardiologists were recently surveyed about cases of possible diet-associated DCM in dogs examined in the past 2 years.  Information was provided for over 240 dogs.  For dogs in which the breed was specified:

• 134 (56%) of them were mixed-breed
• 23 (9.5%) Golden retrievers
• 9 (3.7%) Labrador retrievers
• 8 (3.3%) German Shepherd dogs
• 7 (2.9%) Cocker Spaniel
• between 1-5 dogs of each of 25 other breeds. (2) 

​Through collection of diet history, many of the affected dogs had been found to have been fed BEG diets.  This includes Boutique foods, Exotic ingredients, and Grain-free diets. ​

Getting tablets and capsules into cats can be challenging, but sometimes getting them to pass into the stomach can take even more time than we thought.

Did you know this could cause problems?

In an abstract published by ACVIM, Auburn University did a study to see if using butter helped tablets to pass from the mouth into the stomach of cats. 

In the study they used fluoroscopy to monitor a tablet as it passed from the cats mouths to their stomachs. In half of the cats it took over 10 minutes! 

However, when a small amount of butter was applied to the tablet it was able to pass easily into the stomach in under 1 minute. The same if a small amount of either butter or Nutrical was applied to the cats nose it helped facilitate licking and the tablets also passed in under a minute.

What does that mean? To prevent medications from sticking in the esophagus possibly causing esophagitis it is important to encourage cats to swallow. **only use butter or Nutrical if it approved by your veterinarian**

Nothing gets us out of bed faster than the sound of retching in the middle of the night!

​But what about those times stuff just flies out of their mouths like in the movie "The Exorcist"? (You know the scene we're talking about: split pea soup!)

We know, it's not our favorite thing to talk about but it's important to know the difference between vomiting and regurgitating.

We're launching a new page on the website: Decoding a Pet Food Label

We're super excited to have Ann teach us how to decode a pet food label. These are not as straight forward as you may believe. Definitely a must read for those looking for just the right dog or cat food.

Ann Wortinger is an amazing veterinary technician with her VTS not only in small animal internal medicine, but also in emergency and critical care AND nutrition! Talk about a well rounded tech. We're honored to have her contribute to the website.

Let us know what you think! ​

The Pet Health Journal: A 6 Month Journal For Medications, Exams, & Healthy Living was officially published this week!

We're so excited to share this work book with you and hope you get a chance to see it in person. If you live near Ashley or Yvonne, you've probably seen the proof copies because we've been carrying them around everywhere with us the last few weeks!!!

If you'd like a journal of your very own, visit Amazon and grab a copy today! We'll be setting up with additional online retailers in the next week or so, so keep a look out for the Pet Health Journal at your favorite retailer.

We are also making the Pet Health Journal available for wholesale to veterinary clinics and hospitals, so if you think your veterinarian might want to carry it have them send us an email at [email protected] and we'll get them set up.

We want to give a big thank you to everyone who helped get the Pet Health Journal finished. 

​We hope this journal helps pets and their families live a happier, healthier life together.