DOG HEALTH AND MEDICINE

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A single episode of vomiting is no big deal for a dog. It wont make her feel good, but it isnt likely to cause any harm. Repeated vomiting, however, can lead to serious dehydration and electrolyte imbalances that, if severe enough, can prove life-threatening and land a dog in the hospital for intravenous fluids and vigilant watch.

A not uncommon cause of vomiting in a dog is a sudden change of diet. Try never to change your dogs diet too fast. For instance, if youre switching kibble based on doctors orders or because of a change in your own feeding preferences, mix some of the new food with the old, gradually changing the proportion until more and more of the new food goes into your pets bowl. That will lessen the chances…

There are some cases in which the right response to vomiting is not to administer a medication to quell the nausea and get the throwing up to cease but to get to the root cause of the problem. That is, vomiting may be a sign of an obstruction in the stomach or small intestine that needs to be addressed promptly with surgery or, at the very least, an endoscope to see if the object blocking…

People who regularly walk a dog - and we assume that means almost everybody reading this sentence - are significantly less likely to have diabetes. Theyre also less likely to have high blood pressure and high cholesterol than their non-dog-walking counterparts and are less likely to smoke cigarettes, too. And theyre thinner. …

The Michigan State University research indicated that owners of dogs weighing more than 45 pounds were more likely to walk their pets than those whose dogs were smaller. Even owners of small dogs who did walk their pets averaged fewer minutes per week than owners of larger dogs. Because toy breeds and other small dogs need less walking to get their fill, owners of larger dogs fare a little better when it comes to the…

In Australias Perth and in San Diego, Portland, and Nashville here in the states, dogs owners all say the same thing: having a dog not only insures that they get some physical activity but also increases their chances of making more friends in their neighborhood. When surveyed by researchers at the University of Western Australia, some 2,700 adults in all four cities said they got to know people where they live because of their dog…

In dogs as in people, cancer does not generally start affecting lifestyle in all-of-a-sudden fashion. More often, signs of the disease progress gradually and can be rather insidious. There are 10 common warning signs that a dog may have cancer and should be taken to the veterinarian for a workup. …

Pantyhose, golf balls, socks, rocks, underwear, baby bottle nipples, peach pits, plastic gadgets, wood glue, magnets. No, its not leftover refuse found in a pile at the town dump. Its just some of the items swallowed by dogs and then retrieved from their GI tracts by Tufts veterinarians - on a regular basis! …

While contrary to popular belief, chicken bones are not likely to hurt your dog, other types can. The one kind of bone people should definitely keep dogs away from are large beef vertebrae, says Tufts veterinary surgeon John Berg, DVM. People get them from the butcher, he says. Theyre not long. Theyre roundish, with a lot of prominences on them. The issue is that when a dog chews one, he has an urge to swallow…

A dog would make a candidate for braces if he had whats known as a malocclusion causing trauma- his upper and lower teeth dont line up properly when he bites, which in turn causes trauma to various part of the mouth.

For some dogs, depending on the exact nature of their orthodontic problem, its possible to use invisible, removable retainers to realign their teeth rather than attach composite material to their upper canines for 2 to 3 months. Made by a company called PetAlign, theyre constructed for a dog after a veterinary dentist takes an impression, or mold, of his teeth. That way, the pressure they exert moves the teeth just where they are supposed to…