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  North Hoffman Veterinary Clinic

NEws/BLog

Mystery Canine Respiratory Illness
To date we have not seen any unusual cases or respiratory illness in any of our patients.  We are monitoring the situation and will post updates of any reliable information that we can find.
You can find the latest update from the University of Illinois School of Veterinary Medicine on the current situation and steps you can take to protect your pet at the link HERE.
Heartworm- Prevent it so you don't have to treat it!

A common question I get is whether or not it is really necessary to give dogs heartworm preventative.  Usually the owner is concerned about overmedicating their dog.   This simple answer is: Yes.  It really is necessary to prevent heartworm.

How likely is your dog to get heartworm if they aren't on preventative?  In Cook County they track the prevalence of heartworm in coyotes, and the prevalence is about 41%.  Coyotes of course are not on heartworm preventative.  So if your dog isn't on heartworm preventative, you might imagine that there is about a 41% chance they could contract it.  Of course most dogs don't spend 24 hours a day outside like coyotes do.  But mosquitoes find their way into houses too.  I have diagnosed dogs who allegedly are seldom and only briefly outside with heartworm disease.

Let me describe what happens if you don't use the preventative.  Heartworm is transmitted via mosquito bites.  From the transmittable larval stage it takes about 6 months to develop to the adult stage.  It is the adult stage that we are able to test for.  So if your dog tests positive for heartworm, it already has adult heartworms living in its pulmonary artery.  Hearworms are in the nematode family, the same family as earthworms, and they are large enough to see with the naked eye.
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They are also large enough to damage the heart and cause heart failure.

At that point, we have to kill the adult heartworms, and using heartworm preventative will not isn't enough.  First we treat the
dog with a month antibiotics to weaken the heartworms.   Then we can give the medication that will kill the heartworms.  This medication contains arsenic and must be injected deep into the muscles that run along the spine.  As you can imagine, these injections are painful.  A series of 2 or 3 injections is required.

Once that is complete, the heartworms should die, but they don't just disappear.  Now your dog has dead heartworms in their heart, which isn't much better than live ones.  As the dog's immune system slowly breaks these dead worms down and  removes them, there is a risk that these small bits will cause a blood clot in the lungs which can be fatal.  In order to prevent that from occurring, we recommend continued cage rest with minimal activity until the dog is rested as negative for heartworms, usually 4-6 months after the treatment has been concluded.  So cage rest for about a 5-9 month period altogether.

The moral of the story here is: it's much better to prevent heartworm disease with a monthly medication of some kind, than it is to have to get rid of these worms after the fact.
Raw Food Diets

Raw food diets have become more and more popular over the last several years.  Pet owners are either feeding their pets diets entirely consisting of raw foods, or often supplementing more conventional diets with raw animal products as treats.

The question is:  Are these raw diets beneficial for your pet?

There is, as of right now, no scientific study that shows that feeding raw diets will benefit your pet in any way compared to regular pet foods.  There is no study that shows that raw diets will lead to improved health or longer life for your pets.

There are a number of studies and case studies, however, that have shown that there are some health risks associated with feeding raw diets.  Using a raw diet exclusively or even feeding raw diets as treats, can potentially cause an imbalance in the diet (for example, too much fat).  More importantly, raw foods have an increased risk of being contaminated with harmful organisms such as Salmonella.  These harmful bacteria can cause vomiting, diarrhea, or even death in your pets.  And they also pose a risk to the human members of the family who have handled the raw foods, or who have handled the pets after they became ill, or in some cases, just carriers of Salmonella or one of the other pathogens associated with raw foods.

For more information, check out this link to the Tufts University vet school's nutrition department:
​ ​http://vetnutrition.tufts.edu/2016/01/raw-diets-a-healthy-choice-or-a-raw-deal/



Is your dog (or cat) itchy?

8/1/2016

2 Comments

 
Late summer through fall is a time of year when allergies are very common in pets.  The combination of warm, moist air, more time spent outdoors, time spent swimming, and the presence of lots of grass and pollen and mold in the air, all conspire to make our pets itchy.  Whereas humans tend to sneeze, have runny noses and itchy eyes, dogs tend to have itchy skin, ears, feet and bottoms when they have allergies.
The first step you can take to keep your pets from having an allergy flare up is to make sure they are on an effective flea and tick preventative.  Dogs and cats are very allergic to fleas, and it makes them very itchy!  So keep the fleas off of them!
More frequent bathing during allergy season can also help keep itchiness at bay.  As long as your pet doesn't have any sores, you can use a good all purpose dog shampoo and bathe as often as a couple times a week.  Make sure you use room temperature water (hot water tends to irritate their skin), rinse the shampoo out completely, and dry them off thoroughly.
If your pet is noticeably itchy for more than a day or two, if sores are beginning to develop, or if they are beginning to smell bad, you need to take them to the vet.  Allergies very often lead to skin infections.  If your pet has a skin infection, it will not go away on its own.  It needs to be treated medically.  If it is not treated, your pet will continue to be miserable, and they may even pose a threat to your health.  Although it isn't common, dogs can sometimes spread their skin infections to the humans in their home, especially if the person has an immune system that is not functioning well or if they have skin problems of their own, a burn for example.
Every pet that comes to our clinic will have their skin, ears and nails examined for infections.  We will then prescribe medication (oral or topical) to treat whatever infections we find.  If the pet is still itchy after taking care of the infection, we may prescribe additional medications to reduce their itchiness.
Pets with mild season itchiness in most cases can be treated with one medication or another for a few weeks to keep them comfortable during itchy season.  Pets with more severe or long standing allergies may benefit from additional testing to find out precisely to what they are allergic.
If your dog (or cat) is itchy, don't let them be miserable.  We can help them! Call today for an appointment:
847-934-5530

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2 Comments

    Author

    Dr. Jon Jacobson DVM

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