Health

This has become a nation of fat people – and fat dogs. Once again our dogs are mirroring us, no matter how bad that picture looks. It has been estimated that (depending on the survey and the way “obese” and “overweight” are defined) from about 25 percent to more than half of dogs seen by veterinarians are overweight or obese, and many practitioners feel that even these numbers grossly underestimate the true extent of the problem.

For some time, biologists have been aware of and studied an organism called Wolbachia that lives symbiotically inside heartworms. But recently, study of this microscopic creature has given researchers new ideas about how to combat its host (the heartworm) to benefit its host, the dog. Wolbachia is a genus of rickettsial organisms, a microorganism positioned somewhere between viruses and true bacteria. Like viruses, they grow only in living cells, but like bacteria, they…

American BioSciences
Blauvelt

Ten years ago, my dog Piglet woke me in the middle of the night, trembling violently and utterly terrified. It took me hours to track the source of her panic to a barely audible high-pitched beep that sounded once every two minutes, coming from a smoke alarm’s low battery indicator. Behavior-altering drugs can help dogs with phobias or anxiety disorders but you have to learn which ones work best in each case.

The adrenals are small glands located just forward of the kidneys. They are so small, in fact, they were virtually ignored by early anatomists for centuries. Although small in size, they are extremely important in the overall hormonal balance of the body and its ability to maintain homeostasis.

The pancreas is an elongated gland, light tan or pinkish in color, nestled alongside the small intestine and adjacent to the stomach. The organ is composed of two functionally separate types of glandular tissue, each which performs a vital and disparate role in the dog's body.

holistic

He’s fearless. Reckless. Senseless? Or perhaps my Australian Cattle Dog, Cedar, is just accident-prone. Yesterday he slammed head first into a door jam during rough play with my Shepherd-mix, Willow. Today he did a nose dive off a five-foot embankment in pursuit of his favorite all-natural dog toy: a pine cone. As always, he retrieved the cone, chewed it into a slobbery clump of fibrous goo, and dropped it at my feet. On his trot back I noticed he was limping, holding his front leg off the ground.

As the sole practitioner of a small animal practice encompassing massage, acupressure, homeopathy, and custom-blended flower essences, I'm always looking for products that may be effective for my clients' animals. The most obvious, positive, long-lasting results I have seen have come from the use of acupressure, massage, and homeopathy. Yet when I heard from a third client about a product called DGP" (short for "Dog Gone Pain")

which resemble cartoonish eyeballs

Treatment for a heartworm infection is critical, but it's not without risk. By being prepared for what can happen, you should be able to bring your dog through safely. Whether or not you choose to use conventional heartworm preventatives, there is always the possibility that you may one day find yourself with a heartworm-positive dog, and be faced with the decision of how to treat her.

What could be better than curing your dog's cancer? That's easy! How about avoiding the illness in the first place? No one has done any clinical trials or statistical studies that prove you can prevent cancer in at-risk dogs. But common sense and clinical experience make a strong case for avoiding anything that exposes an animal to known carcinogens or weakens the immune system