Posts from February, 2013

On his daily tour, Capt. Joe Dutra of Hornblower Cruises in California encountered what he called a “super mega-pod” of thousands of swimming dolphins that he estimated to be five miles wide and seven miles long. Dolphins’ social groups usually number no more than 200 individuals, but abundant resources could bring multiple pods together, said scientist Sarah Wilkin. “They were coming from all directions — you could see them from as far as the eye can see,” Dutra said. “I’ve seen a lot of stuff out here … but this is the biggest I’ve ever seen, ever.” KNSD-TV (San Diego)

Thousands of dolphins spanning across 7 miles of ocean were  sighted off the coast of San Diego on Thursday, a boat captain told NBC 7 San  Diego.

Capt. Joe Dutra of Hornblower Cruises said he saw a “super mega-pod” of common  dolphins Thursday around noon while he was on his daily tour. He said the pod  was more than 7 miles long and 5 miles wide.

Dutra said the boat tour followed the pod for more than an  hour and said he’s never seen anything like it.

“When you see something that is honestly truly beyond  belief,” the captain said.

Guests aboard the boat started screaming and pointing when  they first saw the school of adult and juvenile common dolphins. Dutra estimated  there were about 100,000 dolphins swimming in the area.

“They were coming from all directions, you could see them  from as far as the eye can see,” he said. “I’ve seen a lot of stuff out here… but this is the biggest I’ve ever seen, ever.” Whale and dolphin watching tours have done particularly well this year, with  dozens of animal sightings reported.

Marine mammal expert Sarah Wilkin said the reason the large  pod might be there is because there’s plenty of food in the area, including  sardines, herring and squid.

“They’re attracted to kind of the same thing, they might wind  up in the same place,” she said.

Though dolphins typically travel in groups of 200 or less,  Wilkin said “super-pods” are not unheard of.

“They’re definitely social animals, they stick together in  small groups,” she said. “But sometimes, the schools come together.”

Dutra, who’s been boating for decades, said he felt lucky to  enjoy such a rare phenomenon.

“You had to be there to experience it,” he said.  “It  was truly spectacular.”

Source:  https://www.nbcsandiego.com/news/local/Thousands-of-Dolphins-Spotted-Near-San-Diego-191455121.html#ixzz2LT1k1wdb

While there are lifestyle changes that can help alleviate arthritic pain in pets, such as soft beds, glucosamine supplements, proper exercise and weight management, veterinarian Marty Becker suggests owners get educated about the medications available to help treat chronic pain in pets. Veterinarians can provide medications that are safe and effective and tailored for each pet’s needs. The Sacramento Bee (Calif.) (free registration)

There are things you can do to treat your dog’s arthritis without using a prescription pain medication from your veterinarian, such as providing soft beds (warmed in the winter), glucosamine supplements and regular moderate exercise, and getting your pet down to a proper weight. But if these measures are not enough, you need to discuss effective prescription pain control with your veterinarian.

I know a little something about chronic pain, thanks to a chronic neurological condition, and I can tell you it’s a miserable way to spend a life. And yet so many pets are in such misery because their owners have “heard” that nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs) are deadly.

While no medication, however helpful, is without the potential for side effects (including very serious ones), the NSAIDs available from your veterinarian have high marks for safety as long as precautionary protocols are followed, including diagnostic tests to spot possible problems with internal organs.

Discuss all your options and all the precautions, and work with your veterinarian to ease your pet’s suffering while minimizing the potential for side effects. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has an excellent free publication on NSAIDs (tinyurl.com/petpainmeds), and I encourage you to download it.

– Dr. Marty Becker

By Robert Barnes,   Feb 19, 2013 10:20 PM EST  The Washington Post

The Supreme Court on Tuesday sided with a drug-sniffing German shepherd named Aldo in ruling that police do not have to extensively document a dog’s expertise to justify relying on the animal to search someone’s vehicle.

It takes more than a love of cats to care for them properly, according to veterinarian Lorie Huston. Prospective owners should think through the decision to add a cat to the family, and be prepared for a lifelong commitment to the animal’s care and health, Dr. Huston notes. Such a commitment includes meeting the cat’s basic needs but also providing enrichment, veterinary care and including the pet in planning for an emergency. PetMD.com

February is National Pet Dental Health Month, but pets’ oral health should be a year-round priority because dental disease can lead to systemic problems involving the liver, kidneys and heart, writes veterinarian Karen Dye. Fear of anesthesia is not a reason to forgo veterinary dental cleanings, Dr. Dye notes, because thorough lab tests before the procedure, appropriate anesthetic choices and monitoring during anesthesia all tailored to a specific breed and animal help ensure a pet’s safety. The Culpeper Star-Exponent (Va.)

Q:  I know February is National Pet Dental Health Month, but I am worried about the risk of anesthesia.

A:  Anesthesia always involves some risk, but there are many precautions that can make anesthesia as safe as possible.  The risks of dental disease usually outweigh the risks of anesthesia.  Bacteria from dental disease can affect the whole body including the heart, liver and kidneys.

At my practice, we use only uses the safest, most modern anesthetic medications for any procedure.  Most of these drugs are used every day in human hospitals.  Your pet will benefit from the advanced safety of modern anesthesia.  State of the art computerized monitoring equipment is also used to keep every patient as safe as possible.  Your pet’s heart rate, EKG, respiration, blood oxygen saturation, and core body temperature will be constantly monitored during the procedure using the latest VetSpecs PC-VSM3 multi-parameter digital anesthetic monitor.

Tracheal intubation during general anesthesia maintains adequate ventilation.  The simple act of placing a tracheal tube will ensure your pet receives enough oxygen throughout the procedure, a key component in anesthesia safety.

Intravenous fluid therapy will help protect your pet’s kidneys from damage during anesthesia.  Healthy kidneys are vital to a long, happy life.  No human hospital would ever perform general anesthesia without IV fluids, yet many veterinary hospitals skip this important step.  The IV catheter placed to administer fluids can also be life-saving.  If minor abnormalities occur during the procedure, appropriate medications can be rapidly administered intravenously when a catheter is present.  With early detection from a computerized monitor, and speedy treatment through a catheter, our medical team can often keep small problems from turning into larger ones.

To protect against dangerously low body temperature, we use a high tech water circulating heating pad system.  This system will not burn the patient.  When we say as safe as possible, we mean it.

From the moment your pet is anesthetized until after he or she wakes up, a highly educated member of our medical team is by his or her side.  No anesthetized patient is ever left alone, not even for a second.  Our professional staff regularly attends continuing education courses on the newest, safest anesthetic techniques.  We will be there to hold your pet’s paw.

We use breed-specific profiling as well.  Certain breeds carry specific predispositions that should be addressed prior to anesthesia.  Examples include clotting disorders in Dobermans, heart murmurs in Maine Coon cats, and drug sensitivities in Greyhounds.  Brachycephalic breeds (bulldogs, pugs, Boston terriers, Pekingese) can have brachycephalic syndrome with increased respiratory effort with the potential for upper airway obstruction.  We avoid excessive sedation with brachycephalic breeds, administering pre-medications at half-dose.  We also pre-oxygenate brachycephalic breeds and use short-acting induction agents.  Appropriate sized tracheal tubes are selected and extubation does not occur until your pet is sitting up, vigorous, bright and alert.  Sighthounds (greyhounds, whippets, Borzoi, Salukis) have delayed metabolism, lower body fat percentage and are at risk for hypothermia.  These risks are kept very low since we use high tech monitoring equipment and warm water circulating heating pads.  Herding breeds (collies, shelties, Australian shepherds and border collies) can have a mutation resulting in accumulation of certain drugs in the cerebral spinal fluid, followed by excessive sedation and respiratory depression.  For these patients, we reduce certain medications by 25% and monitor carefully.

In conclusion, it is important to keep your pet healthy and dental health is a critical component of overall health and well being.  Modern protocols, like the ones at Clevengers Corner Veterinary Care, minimize anesthetic risk and maximize the benefit of a clean, healthy mouth.

Dr. Dye practices companion animal medicine and surgery at Clevengers Corner Veterinary Care.  She and Dr. Watts can be reached at (540)428-1000 or through ClevengersCorner.com.

During the past year, Jan Haderlie and Jonah, her 5-year-old Shetland Sheepdog, have been valuable partipants in Project Positive Assertive Cooperative Kids (P.A.C.K.) at the University of California -Irvine.  P.A.C.K.  is a federally funded, non-medication research study to examine whether adding therapy dogs in a 12-week cognitive-behavioral group therapy intervention is more effective than traditional cognitive-behavioral group therapy without therapy dogs in improving self-esteem, self-regulation and pro-social behaviors in 7- to 9-year-old children who have attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder.

The P.A.C.K. children have multiple opportunities to bond with Jan and Jonah during their twice-weekly sessions. At each session, children rotate among three stations. The children create arts and crafts projects at Jan and Jonah’s station. The children also have the opportunity to earn the privilege of having one-on-one time with Jan and Jonah during group therapy when they demonstrate on-task behaviors, such as attending to the speaker and making contributions during discussions.

During reading time, the children pair up and read dog stories to each other and to Jonah. Jonah’s impeccable eye contact with the pages of the story amazes the children. One of the children’s favorite P.A.C.K. activities is giving basic commands to their four-legged friends, which demonstrates self-regulation and assertiveness by having a confident voice and a calm body. During this activity, they are also practicing pro-social behaviors by complimenting the dogs for following directions.

P.A.C.K. is extremely grateful to Jan, Jonah and the other Pet Partners teams participating in the project. For more information on the study, visit www.cdc.uci.edu.

Suzannah and Lacey have been an AHF Caring Creatures Pet Partner Team since 2012.

While most pets who fly the friendly skies arrive at their destination unscathed, there have been cases of injury and death in some, and this article provides some tips for owners to help ensure the safety of their animals during flight. Veterinarian Jay King suggests getting pets used to the crate they will fly in beforehand, and he says pets’ disposition and the weather should be taken into consideration before putting animals on a flight. The ASPCA recommends ensuring your animal is up to date on vaccinations and that the collar and crate are labeled appropriately. Freezing a dish of water ensures pets have water to drink when they’re ready for it. St. Louis Post-Dispatch/Along for the Ride blog

In November 2010, a French bulldog died sometime during a pair of Continental Airlines flights between St. Louis and Seattle.

During a necropsy of the 11/2-year-old dog at the Washington Animal Disease Diagnostic Laboratory, a “small amount of shredded newspaper” was found partially obstructing the opening of the dog’s larynx. The dog’s death was determined to be unrelated to the airline’s handling of the pet.

The cursory account is one of dozens that airlines have filed with the U.S. Department of Transportation in recent years in response to federal reporting rules.

First, it should be noted that the overwhelming majority of pets and other animals that travel by air suffer no serious consequences. Continental shipped 6,725 animals in November 2010 with only one incident.

Still, there are enough reports of animal injuries and deaths to gain some insights into these worst cases. During 2012, for instance, 58 animals were lost, injured or died, during air transportation. In 2011, there were 46. In 2010, the number was 57.

Dr. Jay King of the Watson Road Veterinary Clinic said that “99.9 percent of the time, it is noneventful” to fly with your pet. But there are steps you can take to prevent harm from coming to your family pet during a flight.

If your pet is flying in a crate, take the time for the animal to become familiar with it beforehand.

Drive the pet around town to get accustomed to the notion of travel. Tranquilizers may help your dog or cat handle the stress of air travel, King said, but they can also affect an animal’s ability to regulate its body temperature.

In one case, records show, an English bulldog died after its owner administered a dose of Xanax before a flight in late December from Orlando, Fla., to Seattle.

Recognize that some pets — just like some pet owners — are not comfortable with air travel. They can suffer panic attacks or separation anxiety, King said.

“They are in a weird situation,” King said. “They are put in a cargo hold. Their ears pop. Sometimes they will really freak out.”

Take weather into account, he said. If it is too hot or too cold, the airline may not let your pet fly if the animal is going to be shipped in the cargo hold.

Many of the reports filed during the last three years involved dogs that injured themselves while trying to chew their way out of transport crates. After one Alaska Airlines flight touched down in Seattle last December, ramp workers noticed that a dog’s mouth was stuck on the metal wires of the kennel door, according to one report. Workers had to cut a few of the wires to free the dog’s mouth.

The owners told the airline the dog suffers from “extreme separation anxiety,” and that they would be taking it to a veterinarian to check for any injuries to its mouth.

Many of the mishaps involved international flights, which King said can amount to “a nightmare” because of the extra steps required.

In June 2011, an 8-month-old chinchilla that was originally loaded onto a Delta Air Lines flight at Lambert-St. Louis International Airport was discovered dead at its ultimate destination, Moscow.

Delta officials reported that the chinchilla was “in good condition” at JFK International Airport in New York before it was loaded onto the final flight to Moscow. Once it got there, however, the chinchilla was dead. During a necropsy, the doctor determined that “to the best of our knowledge, cause of death was due to a septic gastroenteritis or acute heart failure from stress,” the report showed.

The American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals recommends against flying with your pet — unless it is going to fly with you in the cabin. If you must transport a pet as cargo on a commercial flight, here are some tips:

• Make sure all vaccinations are up to date and get a health certificate from your veterinarian within 10 days of the trip.
• Don’t forget to make sure your pet has a collar and an identification tag, and a microchip if possible. The collar should include information about your destination, in case the animal escapes.
• Choose a direct flight whenever possible.
• Pick a USDA-approved shipping crate, and write “live animal” in one-inch letters on the top and at least one side. Affix arrows to show the upright position of the crate.
• Freeze a small dish of water the night before the trip so it won’t spill while loading. It should be melted by the time your pet is thirsty. King says ice cubes work too.

Your pet is family, so take the extra time to ensure the flight ends happily.

Neutering dogs may impact the occurrence of disorders including hip dysplasia, cranial cruciate ligament tears, lymphosarcoma, mast cell tumors and hemangiosarcomas, according to a study led by veterinarian Benjamin Hart at the University of California, Davis, School of Veterinary Medicine. Researchers evaluated the medical records of 759 golden retrievers, male and female, finding that early and late sterilization were associated with an increased occurrence of certain disorders. However, Dr. Hart noted that disease vulnerability may vary among breeds, and any connection between neutering and health conditions is likely multifaceted. PhysOrg.com

The study, which examined the health records of 759 golden retrievers, found a surprising doubling of hip dysplasia among male dogs neutered before one year of age. This and other results will be published today (Feb. 13) in the online scientific journal PLOS ONE. “The study results indicate that dog owners and service-dog trainers should carefully consider when to have their male or female dogs neutered,” said lead investigator Benjamin Hart, a distinguished professor emeritus in the UC Davis School of Veterinary Medicine. “It is important to remember, however, that because different dog breeds have different vulnerabilities to various diseases, the effects of early and late neutering also may vary from breed to breed,” he said. While results of the new study are revealing, Hart said the relationship between neutering and disease-risk remains a complex issue. For example, the increased incidence of joint diseases among early-neutered dogs is likely a combination of the effect of neutering on the young dog’s growth plates as well as the increase in weight on the joints that is commonly seen in neutered dogs. Dog owners in the United States are overwhelmingly choosing to neuter their dogs, in large part to prevent pet overpopulation or avoid unwanted behaviors. In the U.S., surgical neutering—known as spaying in females—is usually done when the dog is less than one year old. In Europe, however, neutering is generally avoided by owners and trainers and not promoted by animal health authorities, Hart said. During the past decade, some studies have indicated that neutering can have several adverse health effects for certain dog breeds. Those studies examined individual diseases using data drawn from one breed or pooled from several breeds. Against that backdrop, Hart and colleagues launched their study, using a single hospital database. The study was designed to examine the effects of neutering on the risks of several diseases in the same breed, distinguishing between males and females and between early or late neutering and non-neutering.                                        google_protectAndRun(“render_ads.js::google_render_ad”, google_handleError, google_render_ad);     The researchers chose to focus on the golden retriever because it is one of the most popular breeds in the U.S. and Europe and is vulnerable to various cancers and joint disorders. The breed also is favored for work as a service dog. The research team reviewed the records of female and male golden retrievers, ranging in age from 1 to 8 years, that had been examined at UC Davis’ William R. Pritchard Veterinary Medical Teaching Hospital for two joint disorders and three cancers: hip dysplasia, cranial cruciate ligament tear, lymphosarcoma, hemangiosarcoma and mast cell tumor. The dogs were classified as intact (not neutered), neutered early (before 12 months age), or neutered late (at or after 12 months age). Joint disorders and cancers are of particular interest because neutering removes the male dog’s testes and the female’s ovaries, interrupting production of certain hormones that play key roles in important body processes such as closure of bone growth plates, and regulation of the estrous cycle in female dogs. The study revealed that, for all five diseases analyzed, the disease rates were significantly higher in both males and females that were neutered either early or late compared with intact (non-neutered) dogs. Specifically, early neutering was associated with an increase in the occurrence of hip dysplasia, cranial cruciate ligament tear and lymphosarcoma in males and of cranial cruciate ligament tear in females. Late neutering was associated with the subsequent occurrence of mast cell tumors and hemangiosarcoma in females. In most areas, the findings of this study were consistent with earlier studies, suggesting similar increases in disease risks. The new study, however, was the first to specifically report an increased risk of late neutering for mast cell tumors and hemangiosarcoma. Furthermore, the new study showed a surprising 100 percent increase, or doubling, of the incidence of hip dysplasia among early-neutered males. Earlier studies had reported a 17 percent increase among all neutered dogs compared to all non-neutered dogs, indicating the importance of the new study in making gender and age-of-neutering comparisons. More information: dx.plos.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0055937Journal reference: PLoS ONE Provided by UC Davis
Read more at: https://phys.org/news/2013-02-golden-neutering-affects-dog-health.html#jCp

Gracie is a 4 lb Yorkshire Terrier (“Yorkie”)!

Tammy and Gracie visit and participate in AHF events!

They’ve been a visiting Pet Partner Team since 2007.