DOG HEALTH AND MEDICINE

Let’s say “you have a 5-year-old female mixed breed dog who has been happy and healthy since she was a puppy. She has always been very friendly and loved to be petted. Recently she has wanted less interaction with her family and occasionally gets a little snappy when she no longer wants to be petted.”

Q: As someone who has had dogs for many years, I know the list of foods that are bad for them: chocolate, onions, garlic, grapes, and raisins. But just how bad are they? Can a dog really get sick eating even just a small amount of these items?

The survival rate for dogs in the hospital who stop breathing and undergo CPR (cardiopulmonary resuscitation) is low. Fewer than 6 percent make it out alive. In an effort to improve the odds, researchers participating in an initiative known as RECOVER— Reassessment Campaign on Veterinary Resuscitation—combed through almost 1,400 studies to ascertain which methods work best.

Most dogs are easy enough to get a pill into, even on a regular basis if need be. You simply make a “meatball” out of some wet dog food or something else soft, like deli meat or cheese, and your dog will end up reminding you about his medication after a while. You just have to make sure with the veterinarian that whatever food you use to wrap the pill doesn’t contain ingredients that are bad for the condition you’re treating.

A lot of people believe that a cool, moist nose is a sign of good health in a dog and a warm dry one means something’s wrong. But that’s not the case.

Q: My son realized that his 8-year-old golden retriever lost vision in one of her eyes. She was diagnosed with something the doctor called pigmentary uveitis. The veterinary ophthalmologist indicated that the pressure in her eye was very high, causing pain, and recommended removing the eye. My son followed the recommendation, but what can be done to prevent this wonderful dog from getting pigmentary uveitis in her other eye?  

One thing new research makes clear. If your dog has swallowed a non-food item and is showing signs of not feeling well—vomiting, lethargy, lack of appetite, diarrhea, inability to void solid waste—you should not delay getting him to the veterinarian’s office. Investigators went through the records of dogs who had been taken to the hospital because they had ingested a foreign body and were treated with conservative medical management rather than surgery. The result: those dogs who were brought in more than one day after their symptoms started were not as likely to have successful outcomes. They more frequently ended up needing an operation.

Ingestion of a single penny minted after 1982 is enough to kill a dog weighing fewer than 50 pounds. That’s because pennies minted after that year have a copper coating but are almost 98 percent zinc, which is highly toxic to dogs. Lest you think zinc poisoning is uncommon, the Animal Poison Control Center (888-426-4435) reports more than 4,000 cases of zinc toxicity every year. Pennies are usually the cause. But dogs, being the indiscriminate eaters they are, also swallow other zinc-containing items, including batteries, staples, nuts and bolts, zippers, board game pieces, jewelry….

If your dog keeps shaking her head, take her to the vet. She could be afflicted with anything from an ear infection to a neurological issue. But if she does full-body shakeouts, there’s nothing to be concerned about. It’s just her way of regrouping or transitioning from one activity to another.

Your dog has started drinking more water and begun urinating in the house. You take her to the veterinarian for a workup and discover she has Cushing’s disease. The doctor prescribes the appropriate medication and you administer it faithfully, but your dog continues to urinate indoors, which she has not done since she was a puppy. Was the disease misdiagnosed? Is she on the wrong medication, or the wrong dose?

Stainless steel, glass, ceramic, plastic—does it really matter which material you choose for your dog’s food bowl? Yes. Here’s why.