Heartworm HorrorsMay 21, 2013 Monthly prevention is the easiest and least expensive approach to controlling heartworm disease in pets, yet lack of compliance to the recommended 12-month prevention regimen leads experts’ opinion as to why infections are on the rise. Mosquito-friendly environmental changes, movement of infected wild and domestic animals and persistence of vectors are other causes for a rise in diagnosed cases, according to the American Heartworm Society. “The revised AHS canine and feline heartworm guidelines reiterate the need for year-round prevention, even in northern states,” says Tom Nelson, DVM, the AHS heartworm guidelines symposium chair and a member of the Companion Animal Parasite Council (CAPC). He also owns the Animal Medical Center in Anniston, Ala. “The recommendations we make today for dogs and cats are the result of ongoing heartworm research discoveries. Heartworm damage is similar to damage caused by smoking, says Dr. Cristiano von Simson. “The amount of cigarettes a person smokes can affect the damage done to their body, just like the larger the infestation, the greater the damage.” “We once thought 12 months might not be necessary in cold winter months, and we also thought cats weren’t affected by the disease,” Nelson …
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Senior Anesthesia: Age Doesn’t Stop The Need For CareMay 21, 2013 While customized monitoring and drugs should be provided for every patient, those falling into the geriatric category—in the last 25 percent of their life expectancy—require extra precaution as underlying health conditions may be more prevalent. Veterinary specialists say senior patients in need of a procedure that requires anesthesia should not be passed off as too old to handle sedation or anesthesia based on age alone. Yet the misconception accounts for one of the top three concerns with using anesthesia. "Owners are reluctant to care for the engine because they assume the body will go bad and they fail to care for the body because they think the engine will go,” Harvey continues. "If nothing is being cared for, it will surely fall apart.”"When veterinarians and pet owners think age is an obstacle to necessary maintenance, it reminds me of mistakes made with older cars,” says Ralph Harvey, DVM, M.S., Dipl. ACVA, associate professor of anesthesiology at the University of Tennessee College of Veterinary Medicine in Knoxville and an AAHA anesthesia task force member. According to the recently released American Animal Hospital Association (AAHA) Anesthesia Guidelines for Dogs and Cats, pre-anesthetic patient assessment and preparation is key …
The Peculiar Politics Of Pet SterilizationMay 7, 2013 Along the way, however, I’ve become something of a magnet for people who espouse peculiar political viewpoints on the subject of pets. Though the bulk of my politically minded readers can most charitably be described as quirky, colorful, intelligent and pleasantly eccentric, the comment section on my posts has always been plagued by more than a few exasperating examples of the politically pet-obsessed. And nowhere has this become more evident recently than on the subject of the simple spay and castration. It doesn’t seem to matter whether we’re talking about when, whether, how or why; the subject still holds sway. Controversial Topics Of all the topics I tackle, only nutrition challenges the neuter theme for all the emotional investment it attracts. The only difference—and it’s a crucial one—is that sterilization seems increasingly likely to draw more debate-laced veterinary commentary than the fraught topic of nutrition, which appears to enjoy far greater veterinary consensus. Whether we’re talking about TNR in cats (which suffers from its own unique expanse of hazardous terrain), the no-kill controversy and the need for low-cost sterilization options (another minefield), or the wisdom, methodology and timing of canine sterilization, frothy commentary …
Dissing And Deconstructing The Terms 'Pet Parents' And 'Furkids'May 7, 2013 More than once a week I’ll find myself hurling the kind of motherly invectives I normally reserve for infants toward my 15-year-old son: "Use your words, Boy,” I’ll snarl as he skulks away in his ill-fitting Metallica T-shirt, launching a few questionably guttural inaudibles in my general direction. Teenagers are a breed unto their own, so he may perhaps be forgiven for the kind of vocalizations more commonly associated with ill-tempered felines and brachycephalic dogs. Unfortunately, no such excuses can be charitably applied to plenty of my otherwise normally even-tempered readers. I was recently treated with similar grumbling disdain when I happened to post a Facebook comment referencing a Vetstreet article (Jan. 23) on the pitfalls of "pet parenting.” Here’s a sample detailing the most eloquent of these tirades: "What stresses me out [about ‘pet parenting’]? Being called a ‘pet parent’; the idea of turning ownership into ‘guardianship’; the rising tide of the ‘furkid’ mentality; and the idea that I am judged by the oft-biased and sponsor-bought litmus tests of others as a pet owner by the way I handle, vet, feed and train my dog.” Ouch! And it’s not …
Not The Heartworms You Used To KnowMay 7, 2013 Heartworm is a very complex parasite, and so is the disease it causes, explained Wallace Graham, DVM, president of the American Heartworm Society. "Many practitioners think of heartworm in the same terms as they did 10 years ago, and there is so much more about the organism and the disease that we know now that we didn’t know then,” said Graham, who is also an associate veterinarian at VCA Oso Creek Animal Hospital in Corpus Christi, Texas. "This information has implications on the decisions we make concerning testing and treatment.” Living worms damage the pulmonary arterial walls, lungs and heart if left untreated, but so do dying and dead worms. Dying and dead worms lodge in the arteries, block blood flow, cause platelets to cluster, and elicit an inflammatory cascade that severely damages the cardiovascular and respiratory systems, leading to problems like thromboembolism, Graham said. And the chances of severe cardiovascular or respiratory response to treatment are directly related to the worm burden. Multimodal Attack To mitigate this damage, AHS recommends a multimodal approach to treating heartworms. The goal of treatment is to eliminate all stages of the …
Treatments For Osteoarthritis In Pets Continue To EvolveApril 3, 2013 Twenty years ago, veterinarians' approaches to treating osteoarthritis pain in companion animals were, for lack of a better word, rudimentary. “We had so few tools and even less understanding of pain pathophysiology,” said Robin Downing, DVM, of The Downing Center for Animal Pain Management in Windsor, Colo. “We were still locked into thinking that dogs and cats experienced pain differently from humans.” Aspirin was the drug of choice back then, said Dr. Downing, as well as “‘bute' [phenylbutazone] with the occasional joint corticosteroid injection,” said Michael C. Petty, DVM, Dipl. American Academy of Pain Management, owner of the Animal Pain Center of Arbor Pointe Veterinary Hospital in Canton, Mich. Both practitioners pinpoint a significant breakthrough in veterinary medicine that began to shift veterinary practitioners' approaches to managing osteoarthritis pain. “When Pfizer Animal Health came out with Rimadyl, it changed the entire game,” said Dr. Petty, who is also the president of the International Veterinary Academy of Pain Management. “Not only did we have an amazing new product to treat OA, Pfizer did a great job in teaching veterinarians how to recognize the signs of OA in dogs.” The 1997 launch of the first …
What You Need to Know About Sexual Aggression In Neutered CatsJanuary 28, 2013Sexual behavior by cats is a pretty gnarly business. A male waits for his moment and then darts after the female, pouncing on her from behind, biting her in the neck and pinning her to the ground, while he intromits his barbed penis. As he withdraws, the backward-pointing spines on his penis lacerate the female's vagina, causing her to scream and roll away, and she may smack him if he doesn't get out of range quickly enough. All in all, a pretty unpleasant sounding experience though, surprisingly, the female will tolerate such ravishes multiple times from multiple suitors when she is at the peak of estrus. Most of us don't want this type of behavior going on in our homes, and neither do most pet owners want an intact male cat around for other reasons; notably, intact males are generally more aggressive, frequently engage in objectionable marking and mounting behavior, and have a constant eye for the door, particularly when a neighboring queen is in heat. That's why most cat owners who are not specialist cat breeders gladly accept neutering, in addition to birth control reasons. Mega Masculine Kitty As we all know, neutering is very successful in cats …
On Dishing Out The F-word And Dropping The O-bombDecember 20, 2012 Scanning my journals and trade magazines in search of news and notable literature, I came across a veterinarian-authored how-to piece explaining how we should approach the fraught topic of weight loss in pets. Go easy, the author urged, as pet owners are easily put off by language they may perceive as accusatory or judgmental. A veterinarian who charges into this subject without gentle preamble risks not only his client’s badly needed buy-in, he risks losing his client altogether. I might have read past this well-stated bit of advice except that it coincided with an email delivered by an indignant Miami Herald reader (I write a weekly pet advice column) who seemed to echo her sentiments: My veterinarian and I are on the outs. She’s been insisting for years that my cat is overweight and has now started using words like ‘fat’ and ‘obese’ to describe him. I’ve never denied that [my cat] can stand to lose a few pounds, but I think using that kind of language is just plain rude. Is this the kind of bedside manner being taught in vet school these days? Ouch, that stings! Yet we …
Obsessive Compulsive Disorder In AnimalsNovember 21, 2012 Since a publication by child psychiatrist Dr. Judith Rapoport, et al, in the Archives of General Psychiatry (1992), the term “compulsive disorder” has entered the veterinary lexicon. Before that, repetitive disorders of species were referred to as “stereotypies.” I’ve studied such behavior for nearly 30 years, the first 10 of which I believed I was studying stereotypies. My first observations were in horses engaging in “stall vices” like cribbing and weaving and stall walking. Later, I broadened my interest to include acral lick dermatitis and tail chasing in dogs and wool-sucking/pica and psychogenic alopecia in cats. I also had some interest in feather-picking in birds, chain chewing and bar biting in pigs and the plethora of repetitive disorders shown by zoo animals. I always believed the mechanism underlying these behaviors was essentially the same with, perhaps, certain species variations imposed on a common underlying theme. Early on, I was convinced that stereotypies were mediated by nature’s own morphine-like substances, the endorphins, as morphine antagonists blocked the behaviors I studied in horses and dogs. Dr. Rapoport’s 1992 article, however, changed the way we think about repetitive disorders and altered our approach to treatment. Rapoport showed …
Neuromodulation For ConstipationOctober 31, 2012 Cats and humans share a common problem: constipation. Sedentary lifestyles, suboptimal fluid and fiber intake, and uncontrollable stress all contribute to digestive difficulties. Neither drugs nor surgery alleviate the ailment entirely. Each poses risks of future morbidity and continued distress of one sort or another.1,2 Even something as seemingly harmless as an herbal enema can deliver damaging consequences. A recently published case report recounts how a “natural” enema nearly killed a patient by causing massive rectal hemorrhage.3 At least humans can usually control the cleanliness and quality of the bathrooms they seek, the food they eat and the water they drink. Cats cannot. No one enjoys a dirty, smelly latrine; similarly, cats dial down their interest in eliminating when faced with a putrid litter box already overflowing with feces. Cats have specific preferences for low, sometimes clear glass bowls without the odor or taste of other cats’ mouths in the water or on the sides of the container. Add in the worry of being watched or ambushed while defecating, pain in the pelvis or spine,4 and the cacophony of household noise and agitation,5 …
