Catty Every Day Tips Archives | 1st Low Stress Handling Pet Groomer in SG

Health: 5 Indoor Activities You Can Do With Your Pets During the Wretched Haze

June 20, 2013 By Sunny Lim

Poor Fido must be wondering why we’ve been cutting down on walks. But Fido doesn’t care if there’s the haze, it just wants to play! Even with the haze it shouldn’t let it dampen your mood and deprive your pets from important stimulation. Try some of these indoor activities for pets, it’s a great way to build a strong bond between you and your pets.

Hide and Seek

Not only good during this period, it’s great way to expend energy for dogs with too much energy and for us who have too little.

How to play this game:

Throw a treat on the floor and issue the command ‘Find it!’ at the same time. Do this for a few times and just let Fido have fun picking up the treats.
Have Fido sit or stay while you allow it to observe you hide a treat where it can see and reach. Go back to your dog and encourage it to find the treat. Also repeat this for several times.
Finally, have Fido stay stationary while you hide treats in places varying in difficulty. Have your dog work as hard as it can and don’t be too eager to help when they can’t find the treats. Show them only when they seem to lose interest.

Teach new tricks

You have no excuses this time. Using the usual time used for walks, reinforce basic commands or teach them tricks that you’ve seen that Jack Russel perform on YouTube.

Toys and games

How can anyone miss this out? Simple and everybody has fun. Even watching them play is a real joy on its own. It’s tiring to keep throwing and throwing toys for them to fetch (I may seem perpetually tired, but another reason to keep fetching games short is because the sudden stopping action when they pick up the toys causes stress on their joints.)

If you have more than one dog, why not make them play tug-o-war? Or if you have some cash to spare, get them some new toys that you can stuff treats into. Not only is it stimulating and can be hours of fun, it’s able to distract them and mitigate symptoms of separation anxiety that causes them to bark/whine excessively and lick/scratch themselves.

Shiatsu

Yup, massage. A great skill to learn that’ll help dogs relax and improve their well-being. It’s also a great activity to soothe a fearful dog during a thunderstorm.

Grooming, spa treatments

Not because I’m a pet groomer, but because since you have the time, why not spend it grooming your pet? Not only does grooming keep your pet clean and healthy, it’s a time for bonding and getting your pet accustomed to the grooming process. Besides that, you can also prepare some DIY spa treatments to pamper your pet and at the same time treat skin ailments.

If you find any of the suggestions interesting, internet is really a great resource to find more information and solutions catered to your pet. But above all, stay safe and it won’t hurt staying indoors and keeping your activities minimal for a week (hopefully just a week). Sometimes less is indeed more.

Nutrition: How to evaluate the nutritional value of canned food

April 26, 2013 By Sunny Lim

Have you ever looked at the label of a can of pet food and wondered why the guaranteed analysis of their nutritional content is so different as compared to their dried counterparts?

For example, the protein level in canned food typically seldom exceeds 10% whereas dried food typically has 20-30% protein.

If so, is canned food less nutritious?

The answer is quite simple if we think about it. The main difference between wet food and dried is as the name implies, the moisture content. It’s just like a tablet of vitamin C into a glass of water. In its concentrated form (tablet), there’s 1000mg of vitamin C and even when it’s dissolved, the amount of vitamin C in the solution is still the same.

Therefore, to make meaningful comparison between wet and dried food, we have to remove their moisture content through calculations and compare them on a “dry matter basis”.

Calculations

Let’s say you want to calculate the protein level of a particular brand of canned food which looks like this:

Crude protein: 10%
Fat content: 8%
Moisture: 80%

If we were to remove all the moisture, we would be left with 20% dry matter (100% minus 80% moisture). To find the amount of protein (or any nutrient expressed as a percentage) the dry matter has, divide the amount of protein by the amount of dry matter, which in this case looks something like this:

10 (Protein level) / 20 (Dry matter) * 100% = 50%

So in this instance, the amount of protein (50%) in this particular brand of canned food actually has more protein than most brands of dried kibbles.

As for dried food, their moisture levels usually hovers around 10-15% and for kibbles with a guaranteed analysis of 28%, you will find that their protein level will be around 30% using the dry matter basis of calculation.

That said, higher levels of protein or fat is not an indication of quality and it all depends on what your pet needs. Pets who are overweight or suffering from kidney problems might worsen their condition if fed on a high protein or fatty diet. Secondly, nutritional analyses is just a reference and again, it does not reflect the quality of the food. Hair, nails, feathers etc. are all sources of protein. That’s why food vastly different in price may have exactly the same nutritional analysis. So don’t be fooled, be informed.

Pet Grooming: Cleaning your pets’ ears is not as dangerous as you think

April 21, 2013 By Sunny Lim

In my earlier post, I talked about how ear mite infestations are one of the most common ear problems affecting household pets in Singapore. However, no ear mite infestation can be cleared quickly without proper cleaning. This is because if there’s too much ear wax, it might interfere with the effectiveness of the medications. Although there are exceptions where some products do not need prior cleaning, or if there’s nothing wrong with your pets’ ears, regular ear cleaning is still an important part of your pets’ grooming routine to maintain proper ear health.

Ear anatomy of cats and dogs

However, I admit it’s terrifying for some, especially one who’s not aware of the anatomy of your pets’ ears. The difference between human ears to cats and dogs is that

unlike human’s ears, dogs and cats have ‘L’ shaped ear canals, which prevents us from reaching the ear drums if we just clean the observable part of the ear canal with cotton buds. A word of caution is that although it’s unlikely to damage the ear drums with cotton buds, it’s possible to push debris further down the ear canal with improper cleaning techniques.

Ear flushing

As you can see, if the ears are dirty, the debris may lodge itself in the horizontal portion of the ear canal where we can’t reach. Therefore to be able to clean the whole length of the ear canal and an effective method would be to flush the ear with surfactants to loosen the debris and have them shake it out.

*Disclaimer* It is not recommended to flush ears that are bleeding or badly inflammed. If your pets’ ears are oozing with pus, constantly tilting its head or they’re experiencing pain in their ears, seek medical attention immediately.*

First, liberally fill the ear canal with a liquid based (as opposed to oil based) ear cleaning solution and massage the base of the ear. Feel for cartilage and that would be their ear canal. Secondly, if you have a eye dropper, suck out the solution and repeat for 2-4 times in each ear, depending on how dirty the ears are. If you don’t have an eye dropper with you, then just let them shake the dirt out. What flushing does is that it removes the bulk of the debris so that we will not be pushing the dirt further down into the ear canal and on to the ear drums when we use cotton buds later on.

Why aren’t cotton buds called Q-tips here? Love the sound of it. Q-tips.

Next, moisten a cotton bud with ear solution and with an upward motion, clean all sides of the observable ear canal. Repeat until the ear is clear of dirt or almost there. Usually if the ear is really dirty, it’s almost impossible to thoroughly clean the ears, keeping in mind that there’s a lot of areas we can’t reach. If that’s the case, just clean as much as you can, around 4-5 times and continue tomorrow. The abrasion and ear shaking during ear cleaning causes further irritation and inflammation and will do more harm than good.

Finally, if your dog has floppy ears like Retrievers, Beagles, Spaniels, or if your dog has lots of hair inside the ear, like Poodles, Schnauzers or Shih Tzus remember to apply ear powder afterwards to keep them dry.

Health: Cat litter and lung diseases

March 12, 2013 By Sunny Lim

You might have heard from your friends that certain cat litters will cause respiratory problems in cats and humans. If you haven’t, this article might be helpful to you the next time you out doing grocery shopping.

No such thing as dust free cat sand

The most common type of cat litter found in the market and easily the most popular among cat owners has to be the clay type cat sand (the one that literally looks like sand). It’s inexpensive, clumps well – making it easy to scoop, absorbs moisture effectively resulting in less odour after the sand is soiled.

However, when you are clearing the litter box or when your kitty digs the litter, it kicks up dust particles which is breathed in and some of which consumed, when they lick their paws. You must be thinking that it’s no biggie especially when there’s already so much airborne pollutants.

The deadly particle

The problem however is that the main ingredient in cat litter, is Sodium Bentonite and some of which contains crystalline silica (this includes silica gel cat litter). Research has shown that prolonged exposure to crystalline silica dust may cause silicosis (a fatal lung disease) as well as bronchitis and tuberculosis. Secondly, Sodium Bentonite has the ability to soak up large amounts of moisture and expands in the process, that’s why it works so well as cat litter. Like how smoking clogs up the lungs, imagine what damage the dust would do if it absorbs the moisture and expands in the lungs.

Furthermore, ingesting Bentonite and silica dust may cause them to accumulate in the intestines over time. Because of their ability to absorb, it may cause malabsorption of nutrients, as well as blockages.

Cleaner alternatives

Fortunately, there are plenty of alternatives available including:

Recycled paper
Pine pellets
Corn cob granules

Although they are more expensive, but like I always say, it might save you vet bills and heartaches in time to come. Besides, they are from environmentally friendly sources, biodegradable and can be flushed down the toilet in small quantities.

Alternatively, why not shred some news paper and sprinkle some baking soda? Works too! (Not baking powder. You can get one big box of Arm & Hammer baking soda around $4-6. Really cheap and you can use them for a ton of other applications! You can find them either in the baking section or laundry detergent section.)

But the best solution would be investing in a litter tray with a sieve, like the one from PeeWee. Because with a separate sieve, most of the cat’s urine would pass through straight to the collecting tray at the bottom. Rest of the urine would be absorbed by the litter which would break down and also fall into the collecting tray when the cat scratches the litter.

Giving a little more for a healthier cat

However, just like how healthy food seldom tastes great, ‘cleaner’ alternatives does have their disadvantages. You might find that some of the brands are not being able to clump or smells faster. But all of these disadvantages will be offset if you used a cat litter tray with a separate sieve. There’s a few clumping paper litter that seems to be highly recommended but still not yet available in Singapore, so I’ll have to keep a look out for that. But from experience, it’s just a matter of spending a minute more to pick up the soiled litter more carefully (Just use a scoop without holes, that would help a lot) or investing in a new litter box. No big deal. We can’t be thinking about ourselves all the time can we?

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Finally if you find this article useful, please share it! And if you are looking for pet groomers or pet care advice and of course pet grooming advice, please feel free to contact us!

Diseases: Dealing with diarrhoea

January 16, 2013 By Sunny Lim

Just the day I came back from Malaysia, I got the runs immediately the morning after. But from all the good food I had, it was well worth it.

That reminded about my Maltese which I adopted. She was never in the pink of health and she has bouts of diarrhoea or rather soft stools very often. However even with a healthy pet, they can get diarrhoea from a sudden change in diet, food intolerance, stress and intestinal parasites.

Soft stools caused but dietary intolerances usually go away pretty quickly if the stomach is given enough rest, but remember, If the diarrhoea persists for more than a week or is followed by any or a combination of the following symptoms, please seek medical advice from a vet immediately:

Black tarry stools
Blood/mucous in the stool
Foamy stools
Abdominal pain
Accompanied with frequent vomiting
Marked lethargy

Otherwise, here are some suggestions that may help your pet alleviate their symptoms after two days.

Keep a tube of probiotic product for animals in your fridge. Choose those that contains clay which helps to harden their stool.
If you don’t have probiotics with you, you can feed small dogs a teaspoon of plain yoghurt twice daily and a tablespoon for big dogs. It doesn’t work as effectively as the probiotic supplement, but what the hell, it’s a healthy treat!
Fast your pet for a meal and in the evening, feed it something light and in small portions. E.g. Cooked oats, rice, vegetables, pumpkin, sweet potato, chicken breasts, fibrous fruits like banana or guava. Save the broth for them to drink to help replenish their fluids.
To test if your pet is properly hydrated, pull on the skin on their neck and if the skin retracts back quickly, then they’re okay.
To be safe however, you might want to mix isotonic beverages into their drinking water or better, get electrolyte sachets from the pharmacy if you have one near you.
To make your own electrolyte supplement, you may stir some raw honey and pink rock salt/unrefined sea salt (those that aren’t pure white) into their drinking water.
If your pet refuses to drink, get a syringe without the needle, fill it with the solution you choose to feed, place the syringe between the space between the cheeks and teeth and feed the solution slowly. OR simply, add wet food or water to their diet. As a rule of thumb, a dog should be getting 60ml of fluid per kilogram body weight per day and cats half that amount.

Finally if your pet constantly has problems with soft stool due to poor digestion, may I suggest that you try this brand of pet food K9 Natural. From my own experience and from many others, pets fed on K9 Natural experienced very good absorption resulting in very little, firm stools. I really like that because I know that my pets are being fed with what they need and very little is turned to waste.

Again, if you have any feedback or if you have any tips that you’d like to share, please write us a comment! Good luck and may your pet be healthy always.

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