DOG HEALTH AND MEDICINE

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Newspapers from New York to England to India have now reported that kissing your dog can transmit gum disease. News anchors have broadcasted the same information. And Googling kissing dog gum disease yields no fewer than a dozen pages of site after site warning against sharing a peck with your pet. …

We can always use drugs to sedate a hospitalized patient whose anxiety is so extreme that it inhibits the dogs healing or makes it difficult to provide adequate nursing care, says Tufts veterinarian Claire Sharp, BVMS, who specializes in emergency and critical care medicine. But we prefer not to if we have a choice, she adds. The drugs do quite a good job and are relatively safe, but they render it harder to assess…

In too many cases, a dog is in pain from arthritis for quite a while before her owner recognizes that something is wrong. Thats because people tend to expect arthritic dogs to have an asymmetrical gait, such as a limp. But not all joint problems express themselves that way. Take, for example, the case of a dog whose elbow joints in both front legs hurt equally. Shes not going to favor one over the…

A lot of people feel conflicted. On one hand, they love a particular breed, or breeds. Maybe its the silky feel of an Irish Setters hair, or the sweet temperament of a Havanese, or the goofy readiness to play of a Lab or Golden Retriever. On the other hand, theyve come to understand that because the gene pool within a specific breed is fixed, or finite, purebred dogs keep passing down deleterious genes that compromise.

Following is a sampling of diseases that tend to occur relatively frequently in dogs of specific breeds. By asking the right questions of a breeder, and perhaps searching for some documentation on your own through the Orthopedic Foundation for Animals (OFA), you have a greater chance of being able to procure a dog of the breed you want without the attendant health problem. …

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Cathy Park of Worcester, Massachusetts, is more than a trooper. Shes a lifesaver. If she werent willing to inject her beloved dog Bunson with a needle every single day, he wouldnt be alive. The beautiful white Labrador Retriever has chronic kidney failure, and without the extra fluid she gets into him by way of a daily shot, he would have long ago succumbed to his disease. But here he is still, perkier than he had been for some time, enjoying car rides and lolling around the house.

The directive seems simple enough. Spay and neuter your pet dog by the age of 6 months or so, and not only will you be reducing the risk for various medical conditions, you will also be playing an important role in canine population control. For female dogs, the evidence for that line of thinking is clear and irrefutable. Dogs spayed before their first estrus, or heat, have only a 0.5 percent risk for developing cancer…

Along with appearing to increase the odds for bladder cancer, prostate cancer, bone cancer, and cancer that attacks the spleen, some research suggests that neutering also appears to raise the risk in dogs for rupture of the cranial cruciate ligament (similar to the anterior cruciate ligament in a persons knee).

If you told me last year that I would be giving my dog shots of fluid every day, I would have said you were crazy, comments Cathy Park of Worcester, Massachusetts. Im very needle phobic. But injecting her 10-year-old white Lab, Bunson, is exactly what Ms. Park does each evening.

Its an undertaking for people to get used to having syringes and needles at home, says Armelle de Laforcade, a veterinarian at the Foster Hospital for Small Animals at the Tufts Cummings School. You have to make sure to keep the needles away from small children, for instance. Thats a pretty reflexive safety measure for most parents. What households often have a harder time wrapping their heads around is safe needle disposal. People who inject medicine…