Senior Summer!

One of my favorite questions is: "how old is my pet in human years?" Interestingly that answer differs with the species and breed being discussed. A 10 year old chihuahua is a great deal younger than a ten year old mastiff. There are charts here in the hospital that will tell you that your ten year old cat is 56 years old while your 75 pound German Shepherd is 66 years old.

To make things simple we in the veterinary profession have created the phrase, "senior at seven" as a basic guideline to help us remember when we need to begin discussing senior care.

Senior citizens make up the vast majority of both the general pet population and the population here at Ventana. The good news about this is that it means that we are all doing something right.

Preventive care is what has allowed us all to reap the benefits of our pets' longer lives. Luckily as your pets have aged, and as the pet population too has aged, the veterinary community has adapted to to help this new population stay even healthier longer.

One of our senior citizens, Joy, resting after a hard day

Senior pets benefit from a holistic approach to care. Just as we have found that all things are interconnected in human medicine, it is the same with our pets.

Senior pets can suffer the same issues that humans. We see increased issues with joint mobility, weight gain, diabetes, thyroid issues, heart problems and the like. The good news is that many of these issues can be addressed if caught early enough.

Because pets age faster than humans, it behooves us to have them seen more often than yearly. A lot can happen in five years if you are in your sixties. We recommend twice yearly exams. This helps us better monitor fast changing issues such as dental health, weight and behavior.

Many things seen as a 'normal' sign of aging are not. Getting "slow" usually means getting sore. Changing behavior can be caused by early cognitive dysfunction, sight issues, hearing issues or pain. Drinking more or eating smaller meals can also be signs of illness.

While knowing the signs of illness are important, so too is well-checks with your veterinarian. We are better able to assess heart function, weight changes, dental health and feel the abdomen for abnormalities.

If you ask any one of us what we do for our own pets as they age you will receive the same answer - we all do annual blood panels on our senior pets. Even though all of our pets live with educated (one would hope!) veterinary professionals, we have all learned two valuable things over the years: 1) we cannot see what is going on inside our pets - no matter how good we are, and 2) vigilance pays off.

Everyone has a story about a perfectly healthy pet who came in for a routine exam or blood work and we found something that would have otherwise missed. We all like these stories, especially (obviously) if they have happy endings
. We hate seeing pets who have become symptomatic with disease and we catch things too late to help, or too far along to easily turn around.

We all love our pets or we wouldn't be in this profession. This is why often you will get the most candid answers when you ask us what we ourselves do with our own pets. At Ventana Animal Hospital, we consider that our gold standard. We offer nothing to you that we ourselves would not want offered to our own pets, and we will never offer you lesser care than we ourselves provide our own pets.

What are your summer plans?

If you're gonna ride a motorcycle, you've gotta wear shades!

Summer is a great time to head for the hills — literally. It gets stupid hot in Tucson in June. With many hotel chains becoming pet friendly, RVing, and camping options, taking your pet with you is a great option.

Pets (especially dogs) love cars, the open road and adventures that might include the opportunity to chase a squirrel up a tree. To ensure your trip goes smoothly we would like to offer up the following tips:

Make sure your pet is fully vaccinated — boarding kennels need bordetella (kennel cough) vaccines to be up to date — usually given within the past six months. Airlines will want to see proof of rabies. If you are traveling back east where there are unfamiliar diseases such as Leptospirosis and Lyme you may want to consider getting these vaccines before you leave (we carry Lyme but not lepto). If you have any questions about where these diseases lurk, you can consult the CAPC for Lyme info as for leptospirosis, the information is spotty and you should discuss it with a veterinary staff member who works in the location you are visiting.

Parts of Tucson have nasty tick populations. The Northeast side and Tanque Verde Valley seems to be largely immune to this, with very sporadic tick issues. Other parts of town, the valley and the state have varying problems with ticks. Because of this we recommend applying tick and flea control to your pet before they travel. If you are uncertain what you need you can call any one of our staff members at 520-299-1146 and they will be happy to help you out. Though high quality flea and tick products can only be sold through a veterinarian, they are not a prescription item. If you suddenly find you need such a product, any veterinary facility will be able to help you choose the appropriate product for your pet.

This guy was having a blast chasing sticks at Lake Superior last summer

Microchip your pet. Pets get lost, they slip collars — sadly in southern Arizona in a roll-over accident on I-10 someone lost 2 dogs — their posters were all over as a grim reminder that unexpected things happen. If you have a microchip in your pet have a veterinary staff member check it periodically to ensure that it has not migrated and that it is still readable. Make sure all contact information is up to date. If you don't have your pet microchipped we strongly suggest that you get it done.

Basic training and commands. I sat at a rest stop up near ShowLow last year and watched a puppy flail on the end of a (15 foot long flexi) leash like a carp before slipping her harness and sprinting across the parking lot, her elderly owners shuffling after her fruitlessly calling her name. The plates on the RV they were in? New York. Some kind soul was able to snatch up the puppy before she did herself damage, but that certainly served as a scary lesson. Apparently the puppy had never worn a harness before. She also had no recall to speak of. If your pet cannot walk on a leash and does not come when called do not take him on a road trip until he can do both with confidence.

Lastly, for everyone's safety ensure that your pet travels well in the car — not on your lap - preferably in a crate or harnessed to a seatbelt. Pets in cars cause distracted driving. Distracted driving kills people. This is a simple equation with an even simpler solution. If your pet is crate trained take her in the crate, if she is not but rides well in the back seat harness her to the back seatbelt.

Traveling with your pet is both fun and rewarding. Pets get to share your adventures and have their own. They get to explore new places, experience new things and meet new people. Dogs who travel tend to be well-behaved, more relaxed and all around better pets.

Even in Arizona's high country, water may be tough to find on hikes.

Enjoy your summer, whether you are through hiking the Appalachian Trail, RVing the Great American Parks, or driving up Mount Lemmon, we wish you and your dog a safe and happy summer.

Best Regards:
Liane Ehrich
Ventana Animal Hospital
Tucson, AZ
520-299-1146
www.ventanaanimalhospital.com
Liane@ventanaanimalhospital.com

Cats have teeth too

Remember when your pets didn't have teeth? We all remember when cats and dogs went to the vet annually like clockwork, got vaccinated, got a free rubdown by their veterinarian and were sent out the door with a recommendation to be seen again next year.

Times have changed. Veterirnarians have upped their game, and pets are the better for it. Also, It turns out that pets do, indeed, have teeth. And those teeth get dirty, infected and broken just like ours do. It also turns out that if we are proactive we can keep them healthier in the long run.

With one caveat, and sadly that caveat is cats. Yes cats do get tartar; they do get infections, and if they do enough in-home acrobatics they may even break a tooth now and again. Cats also get cavities. Unlike our cavities which our dentist likes to cruelly and unfairly pin on our candy and soda addictions, cats' cavities seem to be caused by bad genetics and some viral diseases.

Seem to be, because we (the veterinary profession) has yet to completely nail down the cause(s). We know genetics plays some roll because Asian cats (Siamese, Burmese, etc..) are notoriously prone to these cavities.

Which, whoops, brings us to the real name of kitty cat cavities, which is not kitty cat cavities, even though that sounds awesome, and I would have named it that, but I'm not a veterinarian. Veterinarians when given half a chance to give something a complicated name will jump at it, so: Feline Oral Resorptive Lesions (FORLs)

Resorptive because unlike our own cavities these ouchy guys start down below the gum line when the body begins destroying the tooth from the roots. Often all we see on exam is redness at the gum line.

However, if you've ever lost a filling, you know that these things hurt. Which brings us to regular veterinary visits (you know I was going there). We can't diagnose what we don't see, and guess what, your cat isn't going to yowl, scream or starve itself to show you it has a painful mouth.

At every visit we look in your cat's mouth. We do this not merely to annoy the cat (though that is an added bonus) but to look at the teeth and assess the gums.

Red gums equals pain, and both of us know that no pet should ever be in pain if we can help it. So, once again, if you cat has not seen a vet, any vet, in a while, make an appointment now. Your cat will thank you for it - well not really, but she will be healthier for it.

Our Winner! Maya Martin

Remember if you want your cat's photo in our blog, please post to our Facebook page. The kitty with the most likes by next Tuesday WINS!

How cats benefit from regular veterinary care

And the winner is: Jamie Dyan Carpenter's cat Gracie. Thank you everyone for posting your kitty pictures. The contest will restart now, so get those pictures posted and collect those likes, and remember, if you haven't liked Ventana Animal Hospital yet, please do!

As we have already mentioned repeatedly, April is Cat Health Awareness Month. Cats need veterinary care too, and though many cats are dearly loved by their pet parents, these same cats are receiving inferior veterinary care to dogs, often in the same household.

We at Ventana are working hard to make veterinary visits more relaxing (like Gracie up there) for our feline patients.

As was brought up in our last blog post, inferior cat care is often due to misperceptions made by owners, and it is our duty as pet care professionals to help everyone understand the importance of regular pet care. 

Alaina, our in-house cat care specialist has compiled a series of blog posts to help us all out (as I confess fully to my own dog bias - having exactly zero cats).

Annual visits to the veterinarian can be stressful to both beloved cat and loving owner, but neglecting these visits can lead to missed opportunities to catch a little problem before it becomes a big one. There is a misconception that these visits are merely for the cat to “get their shots.” The purpose of the annual exam is not to vaccinate your cat; rather it is to do a head to toe examination to assess their health.

During this visit our doctors will check teeth for tartar and gums for gingivitis. We will examine his eyes and ears. The doctors will listen to your cat’s heart and lungs and then palpate his abdomen to check for any pain or abnormalities. During the exam you will be able to address any concerns you may have, in fact we encourage you to make a list of any questions you have to bring to the appointment with you. After the physical exam is complete the doctor will administer any vaccines that may be due. 

Alaina Rhodes

Okay, I admit, Christina Jones' cats Oscar and Bombadill did not actually win the contest. But, for dog people, orange cats are a close to dogs as cats get, so I have a weakness for them.

Have a fantastic week. Stop by and see us at the SAHBA Home and Garden Show this weekend. Please, if you have not already, Like us on Facebook so that your cats too can become famous, check out our web page and most importantly, if we have not seen one of your cats recently, please bring her in. You can follow this link to make an appointment today.

Heartworm Prevention month

For those of you who may not be aware, Dr. Burrows, who lives in the Tanque Verde Valley got West Nile last fall. It took a bit of chasing to diagnose it, and when they finally did, all they could tell her to do was wait it out. Luckily for Dr. Burrows other than feeling pretty punky for a few weeks and having a bizarre tingling in her fingers that lingered for a month or so, the symptoms were very mild.

Which brings us to heartworms; heartworms do not affect people or they would be far more frightening than West Nile. They affect cats and dogs, and as the name suggests these worms migrate and live out their lives in the arteries around the heart.

What links these two diseases is the mosquito. Mosquitos account for more human deaths worldwide than any other animal. Arizona, with its dry climate is home to 46 varieties of mosquito according to the Arizona Department of Health. Mosquitos, the things that we, as Arizonans, take great pains to claim that we do not have are very much a part of our world. And as Dr. Burrows shows, not only do we have them, but they are carrying dangerous illnesses. (and yes, she picked up West Nile here)

No one wants to see their pets get sick, and every decision that we as pet owners take is a part of a balancing act between cost (not neccessarily financial) and benefits. We elect to put our dogs on tick prevention in the off chance that they may come into contact with a tick carrying a debilitating or fatal disease, or we deem the annoyance of tick products, their cost, their unsavory feel in our pet's coat, their toxicity no matter how small, too high and use them sparingly during travel.

This is a cost/benefit analysis and we, as pet owners do it every day. However, the only way this equation works is through education.

So, what we want pet owners in Southern Arizona to know, and what we strive to reinforce every day, is that the tightrope between cost and benefit that we have been walking for some time when it comes to heartworms has swung and that the danger of this disease, its rising prevalence in our coyote population, the increased interstate travel of your neighbors (and yourself) have all made the risk of doing nothing too high.

No one, not even veterinarians talked about heartworms in Southern Arizona even 15 years ago. But part of the belief that something isn't here is not looking for it. It was the advent of easier heartworm tests that saw an upswing in positives across Pima County. After Katrina and the dispersal of heartworm positive Katrina dogs into area shelters, veterinarians who hadn't already, felt a need to step up monitoring and prevention efforts.

Sadly, the numbers indicate that at least two or three of the dogs in our practice are, at this very moment, positive for heartworm. Perhaps they have no symptoms, or they have an occasional cough, or they are slightly more lethargic and the owners have put it off on age. We want to find these pets and help them feel better, and more importantly, we want them to stop carrying this deadly parasite in their blood.

The hearts represent all of the dogs who have come in so far this March who are protected against heartworms

We urge you, if you haven't already, to come in, have a heartworm test done and put your dogs on heartworm prevention.

Heartworm disease is devastating. It is expensive and awful to treat, while being largely inexpensive (around a $120 a year for a 100# dog) to prevent. The prevention that we use, Heartgard Plus also prevents against roundworms and hookworms.

Have we seen your cat lately?

Cats account for over 50% of the pet population, however, nationwide they account for fewer than 30% of vet visits. Why is that?

Actually, The answer is complex, but two recent events will help explain both the reasons why cats rarely see the vet (especially in Tucson where all of our cats are indoors) and why they really should be seen more often.

I have been in the veterinary industry for over a decade, and so, I would hope that at least some of my constant carping about poor pet care would have rubbed off on my family.

Alas, my own sister who just acquired a kitten called to ask if her kitten, now that she has had all her shots will ever need to see the vet again. 'Really?!' I thought, "you've got to be kidding me!? Have not heard one word I've been saying?' Then because I assumed my sister couldn't hear the ranting in my head, I decided to share it with her. She was impressed with my passion if not my actual words, which in the end amounted to a, "Yes!!"

Then my own mother, whose evil cat finally succumbed at age 21 after years of hyperthyroidism and slowly escalating kidney numbers, explained to me how her year and half old cat didn't need a rabies shot because it was indoors. This time I didn't rant, I sighed, after all if the people closest to the veterinary profession don't understand that their own beloved cats should receive regular veterinary care maybe it wasn't their fault but mine - or in the case of the profession - ours.

After all, we are the messengers and if the message isn't getting out it certainly rests on our shoulders to investigate why.

Of course, in the case of my own family I was able to explain that cats are prone to painful dental disease and that only regular visits will uncover this, and that I personally know of two cases where indoor animals were exposed to rabies and subsequently euthanized because of overdue vaccinations (one was a case of a bunch of indoor cats exposed to a rabid bat that got into the house, the other was a Labrador chased through the doggie door by a rabid skunk).

And so, maybe one on one conversations are the way to go. So, that is where we will have to start, with each pet owner, on the phone or in person, with the simple question, "have we seen your cat lately?" We hope that this will trigger a discussion that will ultimately lead to better cat care by the very people who care most for them, their owners.

We at Ventana Animal Hospital are making a concerted effort to speak better to cat owners, to address their concerns and treat their cats. We have a skilled cat guru in the person of Alaina Rhodes a Certified Veterinary Technician, she, working in concert with cat specialists and our doctors, will be driving some of the changes that cat owners will be seeing in how their cats are handled in our practice, our renewed focus on cat owner concerns and a better feel for cat needs.

Alaina, who wrote several of the blog posts you will see in the coming weeks has dedicated her professional career to feline care. She has worked with the Heritage Shelter as an interim director and knows first hand what happens when we, the veterinarians entrusted with their care fail to speak out for cats. Cats are often relinquished because of easily solvable urinary issues and avoidable behavioral misunderstandings.

We take feline care seriously and are striving to express that with renewed enthusiasm to our clients. We our launching our initiative with a cat-focus month. We will have two cat adoptions during the month of April, we are partnering with Boeringer-Ingelheim to provide staff education, and we will be having cat focused contests both within the hospital and out in our community. Our neighbor, Risky Business and the vaccine manufacturer Boerhinger-Ingelheim have both generously donated towards our raffle with the proceeds benefiting Tucson Two Tails Feline Rescue. I hope you will join us in our renewed efforts to provide proper veterinary care to the cats within our community.

The first contest starts right here. As you may have noticed, this post contains no photos. This is because I personally have no cats, so, if you would like to have your cat's photo included in our upcoming blog posts, please post them on Facebook, and the photos with the most likes win. It's that simple!

Tucson Cold Wet Noses

Last Saturday we hosted the local rescue group, Cold Wet Noses at our hospital. Usually stationed at PetSmart, Cold Wet Noses brought out a dozen dogs and a couple of cats and set up in our largest exam room.

Please give me a home. I'm an Aussie, that makes me great!

In spite of the low gray clouds and persistent drizzle, many people came into the hospital looking for a new forever friend.

A 100% volunteer program that fosters dogs and cats, Cold Wet Noses helps unwanted dogs and cats find new and loving families. Cold Wet Noses currently has 130 dogs in need of forever homes. You can see pictures of pets up for adoption at www.Tucsoncoldwetnoses.com.

I want someone to throw a ball for me and take me for walks

During the month of February Ventana Animal Hospital is holding a raffle to benefit Cold Wet Noses. Please stop in and buy a few raffle tickets, the prizes were kindly donated by Patterson Veterinary (a veterinary supply company - thanks Todd!) and PetSmart. We have $70 dollars in gift certificates up for grabs, and 100% of the proceeds go to helping Cold Wet Noses provide homes for these dogs and cats.

Additionally, Cold Wet Noses is always looking for foster homes, so if you can provide a home for a while, please contact them. They can only rescue as many pets as they can place in foster care, so every little bit helps.

I can keep your feet warm.

Thank you to Ronnie who put this whole thing together, and to all of our clients who were so understanding of a slightly more crowded than usual parking lot and reception area.

All photos were stolen from the Cold Wet Noses website, and are dogs in need of forever homes.