General Dog Care Archives | 1st Low Stress Handling Pet Groomer in SG

Heat Stroke: Prevention, Symptoms and Treatment

July 14, 2013 By Sunny Lim

Last month’s news about how a dog died while being left unattended in a vehicle serves as a reminder to all of us of how your pet can be a victim of heatstroke and complacency. Especially in Singapore where the whether is constantly hot throughout the year, it’s easy for accidents like these to happen to anybody.

We humans have a more efficient way of dispersing body heat through perspiration and what we are able to tolerate might not be necessary so for our fur friends. Just imagine the horror of wearing a fur coat and just dispersing heat from your tongue and paws.

Admittedly, it’s terribly hard to know if poochy is overheating. Take my dogs for instance, the moment I take out their leash to take them out for a walk and their pupils dilate, heart palpitate and pant like they’re back from the walk. But as most good owners would agree, common sense and being meticulous would definitely prevent tragedy from happening.

Make sure that:

You don’t leave any pets in an unattended vehicle in the afternoon even with the windows wind down and under a shade.
They have access to cool, clean water at all times.
Your pets have access to shade.
They are not muzzled for extended period of time when outdoor. If need be, loosen the muzzle.
Refrain from strenuous activities during the morning and afternoon.
You give them sufficient rest in between activities. It’s easy to forget that while everybody’s having fun.
Older pets or pets with health condition should be given exercise during cooler periods of the day.

What’s dangerous about getting a heatstroke is that it is difficult to assess an early stage heatstroke and when your pet starts showing signs of symptoms, the body is already in a critical stage. A dog’s normal body temperature is around 38-39 degrees Celsius. If their body temperature reaches 41 degrees Celsius and up, the overheating will cause irreversible damage to the organs.

Symptoms of heatstroke:

Excessive panting and salivating
Disorientation
Bright red gums and tongue. Gums will turn pale as shock sets in.
Vomiting
Diarrhea
Weakness

If you notice signs of heatstroke, treat your pet immediately. The precious minutes before it reaches the vet can make a difference between life and death.

Treatment:

Move to a shady area.
Spray your dog down with cool water. Do not use cold water as this will constrict blood vessels, slow down blood flow, reducing heat dissipation from the body and can even cause shock to the system from the sudden change in body temperature.
Wet towels, shirts and place them in between their groin and neck. Constantly wipe their paws and ears with a cool, wet towel. These areas accumulate and dissipate heat the most.
Allow the dog to drink cool water bit by bit. Do not force feed, do not allow your dog to gulp nor should ice cold water be fed.
If the condition seems to be improving, dry them with a towel to prevent their temperature from falling further and seek veterinary assistance immediately. It’s easy for pets to suffer from shock even when your pet might seem fine.

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.

Diseases: How to quickly cure an ear mite infestation

April 10, 2013 By Sunny Lim

When your pet have been scratching their ears or shaking their head relentlessly, it may not be because they can’t get to the itch (Or maybe that’s the reason. I would go nuts if my fingers became stumps and couldn’t reach where the itch is.) but rather, it may be a case of ear mite infestation, dermatitis, fungal or bacterial infection. Imagine an itch that NEVER goes away. Today I’ll talk a little on the more common ear problem: Ear mite infestations and how you can get rid of it quickly.

What are ear mites?

Ear mites are biting insects that are almost naked to the human eye which lives on the bodies of animals, even humans, and feeds by sucking blood in the ear canal. They are most active and tends to multiply faster in warm and humid places especially when the immune system of the host is impaired. The result of the feeding would cause dark brown ear wax, severe itching and inflammation or redness of the ear. Left unchecked, it may lead to nasty ear infections.

How to test for ear mites

1. Smear some ear wax on a black surface and spot for white specks, the size of a pin head, moving around.
2. You can also try smearing some ear wax on a paper towel and apply a few drops of hydrogen peroxide on to it. If some of it smudges and turns reddish brown, it’s a sign of dried blood, indicating that ear mites are feeding.

Unfortunate, but it ain’t all that bad

What differs from animals and humans is that get ear mites infestations rather easily, especially if the ears are not kept dry or when they come in physical contact with other animals with ear mites. The worse part is that ear mites don’t go away by themselves, torturing your pets with constant itching and secondary infections.

However from personal experience, it’s a problem easily treated at the onset of spotting the symptoms.

So when you find that your pets ears are getting dirty and a tad red from inflammation, do try some of these tips to see if it clears up:

Ear mites don’t just stay inside the ear. Hence you may discover that even though the ear might clear up after a few days of treatment, you’ll find that the redness and brown debris would sometimes soon find it’s way back. If that’s the case, you might want to try treating the rest of the body with an anti-parasitic spray or spot on treatment. Look for ingredients like moxidectin, selamectin or ivermectin, but if you already have flea and ticks spray at home, you can try that as well.
Get a bottle of ear mite treatment or a.k.a ear canker drops for the shop. After cleaning your pet’s ears, apply it twice daily and the ear should clear up in 7-14 days. Some ear cleaning solution like Earriffic has properties to treat ear mites and they are a great compliment to ear canker drops.
The next thing you should have in your house is a bottle of ear powder. Pet groomers use it to help them remove hairs inside dogs’ ears (which should be an important part of your weekly grooming schedule at home), but apart from that, ear powder keeps your pets’ ears dry, which prevents bacterial growth. Also, most ear powder contains boric acid which acts as an antiseptic and insecticide, working together to treat ear mite infestations. Use it after baths or daily when the ear drops has dried.
If you have multiple pets at home, treat all of them, because ear mites spreads easily through physical contact.

When to seek medical attention

If your pets’ ears shows no sign of improvement after 2 weeks.
The condition worsens after 2 weeks.
Green or yellow discharge/pus in the ear canal, a sign indicating a serious infection.

Prevention

Be it bacterial infection or ear mite infestation it’s caused by excess moisture in the ear and poor immune system. As a preventive measure, always clean your pets’ ears with a ear cleaner after their bath and/or dry their ears thoroughly, especially floppy eared breeds. If they refuse to let you dry their ears with a hair dryer, use ear powder instead. It’s okay to apply liberally as they will shake off the excess.

—

If you like this article, why not share me share it? Also, please let me know if you have any questions about grooming, health, behavior that you may want me to answer.

How To Find Us