The nine most popular dog breeds (combined with Crosses) that have visited the practice in the last 12 months are
| Maltese | 8.0% |
| Staffordshire Bull Terrier | 7.7% |
| Jack Russell Terrier | 6.6% |
| Border Collie | 5.6% |
| Labrador Retriever | 4.9% |
| Kelpie | 4.8% |
| Shih Tzu | 3.1% |
| German Shepherd | 2.8% |
| Beagle | 2.2% |
The nine most popular cat breeds are
| Domestic Short Hair | 53.4% |
| Domestic Medium Hair | 9.0% |
| Domestic Long Hair | 7.6% |
| Burman/Birman | 8.8% |
| Ragdoll | 3.5% |
| Siamese | 2.6% |
| Persian | 2.2% |
| Burmese | 1.7% |
| Himalayan | 1.5% |
What is chemotherapy?
Cancer chemotherapy uses cytotoxic drugs to kill cancer cells. Unfortunately they also affects normal rapidly multiplying cells like those that line the gut and bone marrow cells that produce blood cells.
What is cancer?
Cancer is a disease of uncontrolled growth of cells. Cells are the basic structural units of the body. Normally they replicate to replace themselves as they age. In cancer a particular cell line multiplies in an inappropriate and uncontrolled manner.
What are cytotoxic drugs?
Many anti-cancer drugs are cytotoxic. Cytotoxic means “damaging to cells”. These drugs block cell growth and division and thus prevent cancer cells from multiplying. Cytotoxic drugs act only on rapidly dividing cells such as cancer cells but they can also harm normal body cells.
What side effects do cytotoxic drugs have?
Because cytotoxic drugs affect all rapidly dividing cells in the body, normal cells in blood-producing bone marrow, the gut, skin and reproductive organs are also affected.
Many animals on chemotherapy experience no side effects. However, they are more prone to infections, bleeding, vomiting, diarrhoea and loss of appetite.
Animals do not lose all their fur with chemotherapy drugs. Reproductive function is usually not relevant.
Some cytotoxic drugs cause liver, kidney or heart problems. The most serious side effect of chemotherapy is infection. We monitor for these problems with regular blood tests.
Am I at risk of exposure from these drugs?
Cytotoxic drugs are very potent and must be handled with care. We admit animals to hospital to administer most chemotherapy. Some are given by injection while other drugs are given as capsules or tablets.
Do not to handle urine or faeces after any chemotherapy session.
This information is of a general nature only, and must not be used as veterinary advice except where directed by your veterinarian. Hall Veterinary Surgery does not warrant the suitability of this information for specific cases. If your animal is unwell or you want to act on this information, please contact us on 6230 2223.
Last chance to bring your dog or cat in to Hall Vet Surgery for a free dental health check!
Book before 31st August and bring your pet in for a free dental check.
Learn how to keep your pet’s mouth and teeth clean and healthy.
Dental health is essential to overall health in our pets.
4 out of 5 pets live with dental disease, infection and pain but are very good at hiding it from us.
Make sure your pet is happy, healthy and pain free.
Phone 6230 2223 to make an appointment for a free dental check during Hall Vet Surgery’s dental month.
August is dental health month at Hall Vet Surgery! If you’ve not taken advantage of our offer below, please read on.
Bring your pet in for a free dental check this month and learn how to keep your pet’s mouth and teeth clean and healthy.
Dental health is essential to overall health in our pets.
4 out of 5 pets over 3 years old live with dental disease, infection and pain but are very good at hiding it from us. (Source: Dr. Anthony Caiafa. University of Melbourne, Veterinary Clinic and Hospital.)
So make sure your pet is happy, healthy and pain free, phone 6230 2223 to make an appointment for a free dental check during Hall Vet Surgery dental month.
Riley is an energetic Pointer cross who helped out with the baking once too often. A couple of hours after eating a whole batch of apricot rough muffins he started drinking every bowl of water in the house dry. His owner Jenny brought him in to see us when she found he’d vomited the water up all over the lounge.
Riley was very flat by the time we saw him. His gums were yellow and he was very dehydrated. The muffins contained what seemed like a list of very healthy ingredients but alarm bells rang when Jenny said that she’d used a sugar free sweetener containing xylitol instead of sugar.
While xylitol is quite safe for humans it is very toxic to dogs. It causes liver failure in dogs and is fatal if not treated intensively.
Xylitol is also found in many chewing gums and in Rescue Remedy pastilles. Wrigley’s list xylitol as an ingredient on the labels of their EXTRA Professional sugarfree chewing gums, Strongmint and Spearmint flavours. One to two sticks of one of these gums can make a small dog very ill. A whole packet might kill a Maltese terrier.
Riley spent a week in intensive care on a drip and with a combination of agents to support his liver. Next baking day he is banished to the back yard until all the muffins are eaten – by Jenny’s children!
From Applied Animal Behaviour Science via the RSPCA’s Science Updates Issue 33.
Dogs are trained by their owners using a variety of techniques.
Although the use of reward-oriented training protocols has increased in popularity in recent years, many owners still report using different kinds of punishment, especially for specific, unwanted behaviours, such as stealing an object.
However, there have been few empirical studies on how an owner’s training style affects a dog’s temperament and later ability to learn new tasks.
The authors of this paper surveyed around 50 dog owners in the UK, to ask them about the methods used when training common tasks such as toilet training, sitting on command and walking to heel. The owners were then interviewed in their own homes, and their interactions with their dog were video recorded, especially while training the dog to perform a novel task (touching an object with its nose). The researchers found that dogs owned by subjects who reported using a higher proportion of punishment were less likely to interact with a stranger, and those dogs whose owners favoured physical punishment tended to be less playful.
Dogs whose owners reported using more rewards tended to perform better in the novel training task. Ability at this novel task was also higher in dogs belonging to owners who were seen to be more playful and who employed a patient approach to training. The authors conclude that, for dog owners, the use of reward-based training appears to be the most beneficial for the dog’s welfare, since it is linked to enhanced learning and a balanced and healthy dog-owner relationship.
Rooney, N.J. & Cowan, S. (2011) Training methods and owner–dog interactions: Links with dog behaviour and learning ability, Applied Animal Behaviour Science, 132: 169-177.
August is dental month at Hall Vet Surgery.
Bring your pet in for a free dental check this month and learn how to improve dental health.
Phone us a few days ahead to make an appointment.
Dental health is essential to overall health in our pets as well as ourselves. Dogs and cats hide pain from us. Often they have just got used to a level of dental pain that would cripple us on the first day!
Make sure your pet is happy, healthy and pain free . Phone for an appointment during Hall Vet Surgery dental month.
Pups should be have their final vaccination for distemper, hepatitis and parvovirus at 14-16 weeks according to the latest recommendations from the World Small Animal Veterinary Association.
High levels of protection from the dam may interfere with the pup’s own immunity up to the age of 14 weeks, according to recent research. As we cannot be sure of any individual’s level of protection we recommend that all pups have a last vaccination after 14 weeks.
We have changed our puppy vaccination protocol to 3 vaccinations: at 6-8 weeks, 10-12 weeks and 14-16 weeks.
Some breeds, such as Rottweilers, are late developing immunity to parvovirus, and we have always recommended a third needle for them.
There has been some excitement in science circles recently about how dogs and cats drink.
In the November 2010 edition of Science, Pedro Reis et al. of MIT released an article showing high-speed camera observations of a domestic cat lapping water. Their claim is that the lapping mechanism is more about the column of water which follows the cat’s tongue, rather than the small amount scooped up by the (backwardly flexed) tip of the cat’s tongue. You can watch the videos and draw your own conclusions.
Miffed at aspersions cast upon dogs by the MIT researchers, A. W. Crompton and Catherine Musinsky from Harvard published in the Royal Society’s Biology Letters a letter, How dogs lap, complete with x-ray video, which showed the same mechanism in dogs.
Having viewed both sets of videos (cats and dogs), I’m still not convinced that they are actually taking up much of that column of water, and I conclude that the majority of what is lapped is still that scooped up – very deftly – by the backward pointing tip of their tongues. We invite you to watch the videos and draw your own conclusions.
A review of the new report is on ABC Science Online.
Seizures are not uncommon in dogs but rare in cats. Seizures are also known as convulsions or fits.
Seizures consist of three stages:
Despite the dramatic signs of a seizure, the dog feels no pain, only bewilderment.
Dogs do not swallow their tongues. Do not put your fingers in your seizuring dog’s mouth as you will get bitten.
All you can do is to prevent your seizuring dog from falling or hurting himself.
As long as he is on the floor or ground and away from steps or drops, there is little chance of harm occurring.
Epilepsy for no detectable reason is the most common type of seizure. Some toxins such as lead, hallucinogens or snail bait cause seizures. Blows to the head and, in older dogs, brain tumours also result in seizures.
What tests can we do to find the cause?
We start with a full general examination and a neurological examination. Blood and urine tests help rule out metabolic causes for brain dysfunction.
If all tests are normal and there is no exposure to poison or recent trauma, we may consider further tests including a cerebrospinal fluid examination, MRI or CT scans.
How do we prevent future seizures?
If there are no more seizures in the next few weeks, treatment is not given. If the seizures become frequent, last longer than 5 minutes each time or occur in clusters then we start anticonvulsant therapy. Usually Phenobarbitone (also known as Phenomav or Phenobarb) is the first drug we try. Potassium bromide (also known as Bromide or KBr) is added in if Phenobarbitone is not as effective as hoped or is not tolerated well.
