Brentwood Country Animal Hospital

Dr. Kate Lawton

Over the past several months there have been a few studies that look at the many effects of neutering our pets. It has been common practice in the United States to neuter cats and dogs by six months of age to reduce both overpopulation and the risk of undesirable behaviors.

Since establishing spay/neuter programs, we have seen a huge improvement in overpopulation. During the 1980s over 17 million pets were euthanized annually; currently, 4-6 million pets enter shelters annually with only half resulting in euthanasia.

Dr. Julie Hunt

According to the Association for Prevention of Pet Obesity (APOP), just over 50% of both cats and dogs in the US are overweight or obese. Obesity is defined as weighing greater than 30% above normal body condition. Surprisingly, only 22% of dog owners and 15% of cat owners realize their own pet is overweight despite being aware of the risks of obesity. One of our biggest goals as veterinarians is to convince owners that obesity is a health issue in pets.

What are the causes of obesity in our pets? The obvious causes are overfeeding and lack of exercise, both of which are exclusively under the owner’s control. Thyroid conditions can cause weight gain and are easily treatable. Spaying and neutering our pets can contribute to weight gain by slowing metabolism, but by simply being aware and watching food intake after neutering, weight gain is preventable. Overall, the biggest causes of pet obesity are completely under the owner’s control. Pet owners are enabling the obesity epidemic!

Dr. Jody Kaufman

We have been offering a vaccination for Canine Influenza for the last year and a half, recommending it for animals that might be at risk. We should understand the history, distribution, and clinical significance of the disease before defining what “at risk” means.

Canine Influenza was first recognized about eight years ago after a group of racing Greyhounds in Florida became ill (many fatally) with a severe and extremely contagious pneumonia. It has since shown up sporadically in several areas in the country, especially where there is a lot of contact among dogs. The reports that made us prick up our ears were of outbreaks in states that suggested that the virus was working its way north. There have since been cases in New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, among other states.

Dr. Kate Lawton

With the craziness of the holiday season comes a variety of ways you could find yourself spending an evening sitting in an emergency veterinary hospital with your pet. To help prevent any yuletide casualties, here is a compilation of some of the most common mishaps of the holidays.

Dr. Julie Hunt

Most dog owners are aware of heartworm disease and have been instructed to give a heartworm preventative pill to their dog once monthly. You also probably know that heartworm is passed from dog to dog through the bite of a mosquito. So how do the preventatives work? And why do we recommend heartworm prevention year round, even here in New England, where mosquitoes do not live in the dead of winter?

Let’s review the heartworm parasite life cycle. Adult heartworms live in the arteries that go from the heart to the lungs (pulmonary arteries). Adult heartworms reach many inches in length and if the infection is heavy, they start to “back up” into the heart chambers. Symptoms occur when the worms cause inflammation within the lungs, causing your dog to cough. As the worms start plugging up the heart, heart failure develops. Once settled within the pulmonary arteries, the adult male and female heartworms mate and produce baby heartworms (called microfilaria) which circulate within the infected dog’s blood stream. When a mosquito bites an infected dog, it ingests the microfilaria contained within the blood meal. The microfilaria develops inside the mosquito until it becomes a larval stage capable of being transmitted back to a dog. When the mosquito bites another dog, it passes the larval stage of the heartworm into the skin. From there, the larval heartworm develops into a mature worm and migrates to its favorite place, the pulmonary arteries, where the life cycle begins all over again. It is important to understand that microfilaria cannot mature within the dog. The mosquito is the only place microfilaria can develop into a larval stage capable of infecting another dog. Therefore mosquitoes are essential for transmitting heartworm from dog to dog.

Dr. Kate Lawton

With the start of school comes the second wave of ticks and if the spring was any indicator, it’s going to be a doozy. While ticks are quite disgusting on their own, they can also transmit a myriad of diseases to your dog. You are probably most familiar with Lyme disease, but Anaplasmosis, Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever, Babesiosis, and Ehrlichiosis are a few of the other tick borne diseases that can affect our furry friends.

Lyme disease is transmitted by the beloved little deer tick (Ixodes scapularis). The deer tick must attach and feed on the dog for greater than 24 hours in order to transmit the bacteria (Borrelia burgdorferi) that cause Lyme disease. Despite the odds, the majority of our canine patients test positive at some point in their lives. The good news is that most dogs that are infected never show any clinical signs; for the not so lucky few, clinical signs include fever, lethargy, and joint pain and in a small subset of patients it can go as far as causing kidney failure and death. This is why we often recommend checking a urine sample if your dog tests positive for exposure. Also, while your dog can bring ticks into the house which can subsequently crawl onto family members, please note that your dog cannot give you Lyme disease or any other tick-borne disease mentioned in this article.

Dr. Jody Kaufman

As the summer starts winding down, fleas start ramping up their assault. Years ago it was a never-ending battle to control them. People would spray, dip, bomb the house, and repeat the cycle all over again until winter came to the rescue. Then, almost twenty years ago, everything changed with the arrival of the spot-on medications. Advantage and Frontline were the first. It seemed like a miracle! For the first time, dogs and cats weren't plagued for months once they encountered fleas.

Then last summer something changed. We normally see one or two animals a week in the late summer who are suffering from fleas, and they are usually pets who have not been on a prevention program. We started seeing 5-6 each day, many whose owners had been diligent in their attempts to control the situation.

Dr. Julie Hunt

So many of us take prescription or over the counter medications that we forget just how powerful and potentially deadly they can be if taken incorrectly. So imagine the consequences of your pet getting into those same medications. Since pets weigh less and have different physiology from humans, they are many times more likely to suffer an accidental poisoning if given (or stealing!) your medications.

On average, almost half of Pet Poison Hotline calls are about pets swallowing human medications. Naturally, this happens more often in dogs since they are notorious for sniffing out any and all aromatic food- like items. With the advent of chewable, tasty human and pet medicines, this problem is only getting worse and cats are not exempt.

Let’s discuss the most common human drug categories that cause pet poisoning and some tips to prevent accidental ingestions.

Dr. Jody Kaufman

We are always finding out new things about medications, diseases, and treatments. It can be tricky to sift through all the available information, even without being confused by the clutter and misinformation that crowds the Internet.

Evidence of heartworm resistance to the common heartworm preventives (including Heartgard, Triheart, Interceptor, Sentinel, and Revolution) has been filtering through the veterinary literature for the last couple of years. The bulk of cases have clustered around the Mississippi River Valley, where heartworm disease is rampant. Not all dogs on the preventive develop heartworm infection, but it has become clear that the medications may not always be 100% effective.

Dr. Julie Hunt

Recently there has been increased interest in feeding pets a raw food diet. Advocates of raw food diets claim the benefits include longer lifespan, better dental health, and improvement in skin and gastrointestinal conditions. However, most support for feeding raw diets comes from testimonials. No clinical studies have been done comparing long-term feeding of raw diets vs. cooked commercial foods.