Author: Nicole Pitts

As pet parents, protecting your pets from disease and sickness is a big concern. Keeping up with annual vaccines and check-ups helps to keep our fluffy friends’ tails wagging, but there’s one important practice that you especially won’t want to miss: heartworm prevention.

What is heartworm disease?
Heartworm disease is a serious disease caused by foot-long worms that live in the heart. These worms can affect dogs, cats, and ferrets, although dogs are their most natural host. If left untreated in dogs, heartworms can reproduce and increase in numbers, causing lasting damage to the heart, lungs, arteries, and quality of life even after the worms are gone. In cats, most heartworms do not survive to the adult stage but if they do, they can also cause respiratory disease.

How does heartworm disease spread?
Mosquito bites are the most common way for this to spread. A mosquito bites an infected animal and takes its blood, picking up microscopic baby worms. When the mosquito finds another animal to bite, the baby worms enter that animal’s bloodstream through the bite. Once inside a host, heartworms can take up to six months to fully mature and can live in a host for up to seven years.

What are the signs of heartworm disease?
Symptoms in dogs usually show once the dog has been infected for a significant amount of time. These symptoms can include weight loss, decreased appetite, fatigue, and a mild, persistent cough. Cat symptoms can vary dramatically, so it’s best to visit your vet if you notice anything “off” about your cat.

How can I protect my pet?
Routine Testing: Testing for heartworms should be included in your annual check-up so that they can be identified sooner rather than later.
Preventative Medicine: The FDA mandates that heartworm preventatives must be prescribed by a veterinarian. Ensure you give your pet their monthly prevention medication.

Visit the American Heartworm Society’s website for more information, and if your pet is exhibiting symptoms or is not on a regular heartworm preventative, contact your veterinarian.

Have you noticed your cat having distinctly bad breath? This could be a sign of stomatitis. Stomatitis is a painful oral disease found in cats. It causes severe inflammation of the entire mouth, including the gums inside of the cheeks and the back of the mouth. The bone around the teeth can also become inflamed. Frequently, the pain from this condition can be so severe that your cat will stop eating. In addition to bad breath and refusal to eat, symptoms of this condition include:

• Bright, red inflamed gums
• Drooling, sometimes with blood present
• Pawing
• Lack of grooming
• Crying while eating
• Dropping food from their mouth

Stomatitis is a complex condition that remains a bit of a mystery. Veterinarians believe the primary cause is an overreaction of the immune system to the plaque on the teeth. But while vets are still learning about this condition, it can be managed with medical intervention. The first approach will be a dental cleaning. If the condition does not resolve quickly or returns, a partial or full-mouth extraction will likely be the next step. While this may seem extreme, 90% of cats show complete resolution of their symptoms. There is no cure for stomatitis and there are no medications or alternate treatments to aid with this condition.

If diagnosed, the cat should receive treatment as soon as possible. Left untreated, your cat’s pain will be severe and relentless, and their quality of life will be drastically impacted. After a treatment plan has been established, your veterinarian will walk you through the next steps and a recovery plan. Once the mouth has completely healed, you should see an immediate improvement in the attitude and appetite of your cat.

Has your cat quit using the litter box? Does she participate in destructive scratching? Maybe he yowls nonstop? These are three of the most common unwanted behaviors cat owners experience. Let’s take a look at possible causes and how you can address these issues:

Eliminating outside the litter box. Unfortunately, eliminating outside of the litter box is not an issue with a straightforward solution. There could be several reasons that this is happening, including:

• Issues with the box or litter themselves
• Dissatisfaction with the placement or number of boxes
• Environmental changes in or out of the home
• Undiagnosed medical conditions

Take time to think about the possible causes. Have you recently changed the litter box or has a new cat been introduced in the house? The cat may no longer feel there are enough litter boxes, or he could be stressed about the new change. Finding the cause will be a process of elimination. If none of these have occurred, there may be a recent medical condition contributing to this unwanted behavior. It is best to take the cat to the vet for a checkup and ensure he is not suffering from a medical situation.

This particular behavior may take time to figure out, but don’t ever scold your cat for eliminating outside of the litter box. Instead, be patient and persistent. Once you have identified what the cause is, it will be fairly easy to get the cat back on track with healthy litter box usage.

Destructive scratching. All cat owners know that cats love to scratch. It’s built into their DNA. So while you can’t prevent cats from scratching, there are steps you can take to help them learn the right things to scratch. First, make sure your cat has enough cat-scratching items. There is no shortage of products in stores, and you may have to test a few in order to determine what your cat enjoys. Second, make your furniture a deterrent. You can start off trying aluminum foil. Most cats hate aluminum foil and will avoid it. If your cat likes to scratch the edge of the sofa, try covering it in aluminum foil. Chances are he will avoid this area and will learn to leave it alone. There are also a lot of options on the market, from protectant tape and to scratch guards, that will help to protect your furniture, doors, and carpet. In addition, these products will act as a deterrent. Lastly, redirect your cat when you catch him in the act of scratching. Simply tell him no, pick him up gently, and place him on one of his scratching posts. When you see your cat using his appropriate scratching posts, reward him. With repetition and persistence, he will begin to gravitate towards his scratching posts.

An important note about destructive scratching: Declawing your cat should never be an option. Declawing is the amputation of bone in the paws that also removes the claws. What many owners don’t know is that declawing often creates irreversible and lifelong consequences that result in more issues than what you started with. Try working with a vet or a behaviorist if you are unable to resolve a scratching issue.

Yowling. Is your cat constantly yowling? More than likely, your cat simply wants attention. To tackle this problem, wait for your cat to stop yowling. During that moment of silence, immediately give your cat the attention she is craving. If she yowls again, walk away and only give her attention again when she is quiet. If the yowling is at night and you know all her needs have been taken care of, completely ignore the behavior. She will eventually learn that no amount of noise will get her more attention. Lastly, don’t discount a possible medical condition. If yowling is a new behavior and constant, she may be in pain. Check with the vet to ensure the yowling is not being caused by a medical condition.

If you’re a dog or cat person, you probably know what would happen if we left grooming entirely up to them. For dogs, they’d stink to high heavens. The more mud they could roll in, the better! Baths?! Heck no! As for cats, they quietly groom themselves (to the tune of 25 percent of their lives!) for a variety of reasons, including keeping their coat clean, regulating body temperature, and distributing beneficial oil across their skin. But whether we humans bathe our pets or our pets groom themselves, keeping them clean and well-groomed is key to their longevity.

Let’s start with the basics: brushing. With long-haired dogs and cats, brushing is especially important. If your pet gets matted fur occasionally, it’s easily managed with a few snips or a gentle brushing. But extensive matting can, at the least, cause discomfort and infections, and can even lead to painful sores. The best way to prevent mats, which can hide parasites like fleas, is frequent brushing. If it’s shedding season (typically during a change in the season when they go from a thin coat to a thick coat and vice versa), you should brush more often. Brush in the direction the fur grows, and brush a dog’s coat from the bottom up – start at the feet and work your way up the legs to the torso and so on. Long or curly coats should be brushed frequently. If you aren’t sure what brush is best for your pet, talk to your vet or the friendly folks at your neighborhood pet store. There are so many options, including undercoat rakes, rotating pin combs, slicker brushes, rubber curry combs, de-shedding brushes, shedding blade brushes, and more. If you find brushing to be a challenge depending on your pet’s coat, look at after-bath detangling conditioners to help break up the fur.

Speaking of baths, all cats and dogs are different so there’s not one easy answer as to how often you should bathe them. A good rule of thumb is once a month for dogs or, frankly, when they need it. Is their fur getting more oily and a little stinky? Did they take a run through a muddy creek? These are all good reasons! And the same rule goes for cats even though they are far more conscientious about their own cleanliness. If your cat is doing a great job at maintaining their own fur, you don’t need to bathe them. Sometimes, baths cause stress that isn’t worth it! But no matter what you decide about timing, make sure you don’t forget the ears! While you should avoid getting water in your pet’s ears, make sure to check for dark wax or excess moisture that could be a sign of infection. If you don’t see signs of infection that prompt a vet visit, there are over-the-counter pet-safe ear cleaners that you can use at home.

Bathing also gives you an opportunity to really take a close look at your pet’s coat. Look carefully for fleas, hot spots, petechiae (a sign of internal bleeding), skin allergy symptoms, and more. All of these issues should be reviewed by a vet.

Grooming your pets includes more than just brushing and bathing. Pet owners also need to keep an eye on their nails. Dogs that are regularly walked on pavement sometimes take care of their own nails as the pavement serves as a natural nail file. But don’t forget those dew claws! They don’t come into contact with the pavement so they tend to grown unchecked. As for cats, keep their nails trimmed so they aren’t sharpening them on the curtains and sofa! Your local pet store also has a myriad of options to keep nails in tip-top shape, such as trimmers, clippers, and grinders. If your pet’s nails are light, you can see the “quick” and know to avoid cutting too close. But if your pet’s nails are dark, it can be a guessing game that may make a vet or grooming appointment worthwhile so that you avoid hurting your pet.

Grooming your pet is a great way to spend time together, but more importantly, it’s an excellent tool to keep them healthy and happy!

We all want to keep our beloved pets happy and healthy, so we offer them good food, comfortable places to sleep, and a huge supply of our love. But on top of this, we can improve our pets’ lives by neutering them before they start to reproduce. Here are the best reasons why spaying females and neutering males is essential.

When you neuter your pet, you are reducing their risks of health issues. Intact male dogs and cats can develop testicular cancer and diseases of the prostate gland. Non-spayed females can develop potentially fatal infections, cysts, and cancers of the ovaries, uterus, and breasts. Not suffering from these conditions will allow your pet to enjoy a much happier – and longer– life. A University of Georgia study of more than 70,000 animals found that, compared to the lives of non-neutered animals, the life expectancy of neutered male dogs was 14% longer and of spayed female dogs was 26% longer.

Neutering your pets can also eliminate the production of hormones that encourage intact animals to roam in search of a mate. Free-roaming dogs and cats are at high risk for injuries resulting from vehicles and other animals.

Neutering can enhance your pet’s life by helping them to feel more relaxed. An intact dog or cat may be aggressive to other animals, vocalize loudly for a mate, and spray urine to mark territory outside and inside the owner’s home. When your dog or cat isn’t worried about finding a mate, they can remain calm and focus their attention and affection on their human family.

You will save money by neutering your pet because you won’t incur the expense of caring for litters of accidental puppies and kittens. The expense of veterinary care before and after pregnancy is much higher than the cost of spaying or neutering your pet. Neutering also costs less than the price you may pay if your non-neutered pet roams in search of a mate, fights with other animals, or destroys property.

Perhaps you’ve heard that neutering an animal will make it fat, but that idea is a myth! If your neutered pet continues to eat appropriate amounts and exercise daily, they will not gain weight from the surgery. Overfeeding and lack of exercise may pack on the pounds, but neutering alone does not increase your pet’s weight.

So make sure your pet has the best chance of a good life by having them neutered or spayed, ideally when they are young. Then you can look forward to enjoying many rewarding years with your dog or cat!