Category Archives: Health

Let’s Talk Chocolate Toxicity and Dogs

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Here’s an excellent article about chocolate toxicity and dogs from For the Love of the Dog. Cat owners, you have little need to worry, it seems that cats avoid chocolate for some reason. Maybe dogs could take a lesson in this!

As a dog owner, you should know by now that your dog should not eat chocolate. It is toxic and in a large enough quantity, it can kill! So let’s talk a little about chocolate and what’s in it that’s the problem.

  • The toxic component of chocolate is theobromine.
  • The half life in the dog is 17.5 hours.
  • The Toxic dose in the dog is 100-150 mg/kg (kilogram (kg) = 2.2 lbs, milligram(mg) = 1/1000 of a gram).

So for a 50 pound dog, a toxic dose would be roughly 2.2 grams (2200 mg) of pure chocolate. For a 10 lb dog, the toxic dose is 500mg.

However the concentration of theobromine varies with the formulation of the chocolate so:

  • Milk chocolate has 44mg/oz (154mg/100gm): toxic dose for 50 lb dog – 50 oz of milk chocolate.
  • Semisweet chocolate has 150 mg/oz (528mg/100gm): toxic dose for 50 lb dog – 15 oz of semisweet chocolate
  • Baking chocolate 390mg/oz (1365 mg/100gm): toxic dose for 50 lb dog – 5 oz of baking chocolate

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Supplementing Your Dog’s Diet – Glucosamine

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This comes from my For the Love of the Dog site;

Although I am not a proponent of commercial dog food, I will admit that most high quality dog foods do have most of the vitamins, minerals and whatnot your dog needs. As you stand in the store pondering the plethora of varieties of dog food for your dog’s diet, your mind can truly become overwhelmed. The numerous ingredients in dog food simply complicate things even further. Who really knows what all of those ingredients really mean? You see glucosamine on some of the dog food labels. That sounds a bit familiar. What exactly is glucosamine and why should it be in your dog’s diet?

You have probably heard of glucosamine in the news. Glucosamine has been beneficial to joint health in humans. Research has also shown that glucosamine in a dog’s diet can be beneficial to your pet’s health.

Glucosamine is a dietary supplement that has been shown to encourage good joint health. This supplement helps to maintain good joint cartilage. Glucosamine is one of the key building blocks to produce joint lubricants. The joint lubricant helps to keep the joints moving and functioning with ease. Glucosamine in your dog’s diet will ensure your pet’s joints work at their peak performance levels for years to come.

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Do You Know What To Do for a Choking Pet?

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This is some important and helpful advice from For the Love of the Dog

A choking pet is scary and something that requires immediate attention. If you don’t know what to do and how to do it, your pet may lost their life. Read on for information about what to do for a choking pet, including the Heimlich Maneuver and Pet CPR.

SIGNS

The signs of choking are much the same as a person. Your dog or cat is struggling to breathe, with their mouth open. They may be pawing at their mouth. They may be attempting to vomit. You may hear an unusual sound as they attempt to breathe and pull air through a foreign object lodged in their throat.

CAUSES

The causes of choking are with anything that can lodge in the throat. This is fairly exclusive to dogs – cats are usually more particular. An example would be a dog fetching a ball, and having it lodge in their throat. A variety of food objects can lodge in your pet’s airway.

SOLUTIONS

CALL YOUR VET IF NEEDED. Dogs are notorious for trying to swallow things that are a little too big. The result can be choking where an object lodges in the airway.

REMOVE THE OBJECT. When time is of the essence, you must act quickly.

For a dog

  • Open your pet’s mouth
  • Grasp the upper jaw with one hand over the muzzle.
  • Press the lips over the upper teeth with your fingers on one side and the thumb on the other so that the dog’s lips are between its teeth. Firm pressure may be required. The dog then can’t close its mouth without biting itself and is less able to bite you. Pull his tongue out of the way.
  • Reach deeply in to the back of your pet’s throat and try to grasp the object. If it is a ball, and you are unable to move it, try using some type of instrument; tweezers, pliers or even a spoon shaped tong.

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Does Your Dog Chew Grass?

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My dog crops grass like a cow. He eats it with gusto whenever he encounters it, to the extent that my friends have begun to refer to him, jokingly, as ‘The Ruminant’. This habit of his doesn’t bother me at all, since it seems to have no ill-effects on him whatsoever – although, when I’m standing outside in the cold waiting for him to relieve himself during one of his infrequent small-hours toilet calls (normally his timing is much more considerate), it’s hard not to hop impatiently from foot to foot while he enthusiastically tears out the mandatory five to seven mouthfuls of grass, chews thoroughly, and swallows, instead of just getting on with the task at hand.Unless your dog’s digestion is suffering unwanted upheavals from his grass-eating habit, it’s not really a problem. Dogs have been eating grass since the dawn of time (or at least, of the species) with few ill-effects, aside from the odd bout of vomiting – and really, this is one of those things that seems to bother owners a lot more than their dogs; most dogs, will simply re-ingest the vomitus and go about their day unfazed.

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Vet Advise – Part 7 – Blood Pressure, Kidney Disease, Anemia and a Pet First Aid Kit

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Dr. Andrew JonesI’m going to be passing along some vet advise from Dr Andrew Jones, author and creator of Veterinary Secrets Revealed.

Dr. Jones has more than a decade of experience and has his own veterinary practice.

Dr. Jones also has a great online vet site called ‘The Inner Circle’ where you can find some incredible information, answers to questions, a library and forum.

Now let’s hear from Dr. Andrew Jones!

Evaluation of blood pressure, treating kidney disease, treating anemia, plus how and what to put into a pet first aid kit.

Checking the pulse and evaluating blood pressure

Evaluate your pets’ blood pressure by palpating their pulse.

The best spot to do this is on the inside of the back leg (thigh). Place your three middle fingers across the middle of your pets inside thigh and apply moderate pressure. Here you are feeling the femoral artery. This is more difficult in small dogs and cats.

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Separation Anxiety and Your Dog

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Separation anxiety is one of the most common problems that dogs develop. It’s an anxiety disorder, and is defined as a state of intense panic brought on by the dog’s isolation/separation from her owner(s).

In other words: when you leave for work in the morning, your dog is plunged into a state of nervous anxiety which intensifies extremely quickly.

Dogs are social animals – they need plenty of company and social interaction to keep them happy and content. No dog likes to be left alone for long stretches of time, but some dogs do a lot worse than others: these are the ones most prone to separation anxiety.

There are a number of contributing causes to the condition:

– Some breeds are genetically predisposed towards anxiety and insecurity, which is something you should consider when deciding which breed you’re going to go for (particularly if you’re going to be absent for long stretches of time). A few of these breeds include Weimaraners, Springer Spaniels, German Shepherds, and Airedales

– A significant proportion of dogs from shelters develop separation anxiety. Most of these ‘shelter dogs’ have undergone significant trauma in their lives – they’ve been abandoned by their previous owners – and thus they have little trust that their new-found owner (you) isn’t going to pull the same trick.

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Vet Advise – Part 6 – Treat Heart, Lung and Cough

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Dr. Andrew JonesI’m going to be passing along some vet advise from Dr Andrew Jones, author and creator of Veterinary Secrets Revealed.

Dr. Jones has more than a decade of experience and has his own veterinary practice.

Dr. Jones also has a great online vet site called ‘The Inner Circle’ where you can find some incredible information, answers to questions, a library and forum.

Now let’s hear from Dr. Andrew Jones!

Examination and natural treatment of heart disease and lung problems -plus how to finally treat your coughing pet at home.

I’ll let you in on a little secret – Vets are only human. We don’t have all the answers. Many times when we treat a pet, the pet was likely going to recover on his own. But we feel obligated to do something – it makes us feel better.

You know your pet better than anyone else. Take charge of your pet’s health.

By reading this information you now know more alternative treatments than 90% of the Vets out there.

Your pet deserves all the options- don’t you think?

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Vet Advise – Part 5 – How to Treat Arthritis, Vomiting and Diarrhea

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Dr. Andrew JonesI’m going to be passing along some vet advise from Dr Andrew Jones, author and creator of Veterinary Secrets Revealed.

Dr. Jones has more than a decade of experience and has his own veterinary practice.

Dr. Jones also has a great online vet site called ‘The Inner Circle’ where you can find some incredible information, answers to questions, a library and forum.

Now let’s hear from Dr. Andew Jones!

How to treat arthritis, vomiting and diarrhea

Sometimes I envy other vets.

I guess it’s embarrassing to tell you that. But it’s true. They are the “specialists”- the ones who can fix any type of broken leg or diagnose the most unusual disease.

Treating pets with alternative at home remedies never came easy to me. My first attempts at using alternative medicine didn’t always work. I remember one time how I tried to direct a pet owner in applying a simple topical treatment for a hot spot.

It was a mixture of tea and aspirin. The owner thought that the dog should drink it.

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