Bringing Home a Baby
Sara,who wrote this article, passed on her early-age affinity for animals to her son.
When I was asked to do a blog article about bringing a baby into a home with pets I balked at the idea. I have pets, 2 dogs and 4 cats and I had good intentions of following recommendations. I talked to the veterinarians, printed out various handouts, tried to read them and start enforcing them before Malcolm arrived. I meant well.
One of the concerns I read about was that the cats might try to sleep on the baby’s head. I had panicked about many things, not one of which was the cats trying to sleep on the baby’s face. Last minute, when my friend asked me what to get for us, I told her a cat tent! It is basically a mesh tent that fits in the crib so cats cannot jump on the baby. This is a fantastic idea, until you are dealing with a tiny person who wakes up as soon as you zip the tent closed and a cat whose sole mission in life is to get into said cat tent. I think that the cat has gotten zipped into the tent more then the baby. This also doesn’t work if your kid sleeps with you. Right now our cat tented crib is used for storage.
Daily life is/was a bit harder to navigate then I thought. After Malcolm was born the nurse gave me his tiny hat and told me to take it home so the animals could smell it. We were in the hospital for 2 days! When would that happen exactly? Tiny hat did come home with us and I think the pets sniffed it at some point. Probably right after Margarita, the chihuahua mix, licked Malcolm’s face.
See, Mom, no worries!
When I first got pregnant, I was really upset with the majority of the public outside of my veterinary world telling me, “You’ll see, once the baby comes your pets won’t be as important anymore.” I want to tell you right now that is not true, but the hierarchy in my house has definitely changed. It used to go pets, then people. That has shifted into baby, me, husband, pets. My patience with the animals particularly the dogs is far less then it was before. My dogs are naughty. Elsa and Margarita are both sweet loving dogs who happen to have a very love/hate relationship with each other. Upon bringing another life into our home the problem just magnified. They steal food, poop in the basement occasionally, herd, and especially Elsa the schipperke, bark at anything. They are my little drama queens.
Malcolm is now 11 months and walking. The current constant comment to both Malcolm and the animals is “gentle”. Malcolm is in love with the dogs. He wants to grab them and hug them, grab Margarita’s tail and feet. He is also very interested in cat tails, either grabbing or biting. The animals are quickly learning to get up high or run fast. I am quickly seeing that having a crate trained dog would be nice. The dog would have a nice spot to escape too, perhaps ‘out of sight, out of mind’ for Malcolm. Things are slowly getting better now that Malcolm can feed the dogs whatever he is eating.
When I first brought the baby home the dogs were concerned but fine, now however, the game is on!
April is a Popular Month…
There are a lot of observances happening this month. Stay tuned for more articles and information as we recognize that:
April is…
…Heartworm Prevention Month (Mosquito Season opens in much of the country)
…Pet First Aid Awareness Month (American Red Cross)
…ASPCA’s Prevention of Cruelty to Animals Month
Please share how you plan to participate in any of the above observances. Your ideas and plans might spark someone else’s creativity.
March is Poison Prevention Month – Part 2
So what do you do if you think your pet may have ingested or come into contact with a potentially harmful substance?
1. Stay calm!
2. If your pet is not showing any signs or symptoms of illness it is still a good idea to contact your veterinarian and discuss whether or not your pet should receive medical attention.
3. If your pet is showing any signs or symptoms of illness, you should take them to a veterinarian immediately.
One thing to remember is to please try to provide as much of the following information as possible when you contact the veterinary hospital or bring your pet in to the veterinary hospital:
1. What the ingested substance is ( including all active ingredients ).
2. Keep and bring any remaining packaging material that the agent was in.
3. Approximate amount that the pet ingested or was exposed to the agent.
4. Time ( or best approximation ) of ingestion/ exposure.
All of this information will serve to better help your veterinarian provide the best medical care and treatment course for your pet.
Of course, the best way to prevent accidental poisoning of your pets is to prevent your pet from having access to the agents and knowing which items can pose a threat to them. Some helpful tips include keeping harmful agents in cabinets that are secure and/ or above a height that your pet can not reach, use trash cans with locking lids and keeping compost piles enclosed or protected from access by you pets. Always read and follow the directions on the labels regarding lawn and garden products as well as flea and tick products. Do not give your pet any medications unless approved or recommended by your veterinarian. Keep toxic plants out of your home and yard or at least out of reach from your pets.
There are two Animal Poison Control helplines, one through the ASPCA, 1-888-426-4435, and one via the PetPoison Helpline, 1-800-213-6680. Charges may apply for either service, so have a credit card handy.
Heather B., CVT
Recognizing February as Pet Dental Health Month
You may have seen signs around advertising that February is Pet Dental Health Month. At North Portland Veterinary Hospital, we honor Pet Dental Month all year long. When you bring in your pet for their wellness check-up, our doctors assess their dental health. Sometimes we recommend an anesthetic dental cleaning, sometimes we simply talk to you about what you can do at home to improve your pet’s dental health. If an anesthetic dental cleaning is recommended, we give you a coupon for $50 off that procedure if it is performed in the next 3 months. We even are able to make payment arrangements in most cases. These deals are available all year long, you just have to follow your veterinarian’s recommendations!
Dental health is important!
Bacteria in the mouth is part of what makes bites so dangerous.
Bacteria build up turns to plaque and than to calculus. Each stage is more difficult to remove from teeth than the last.
Did you know that your pet can get cavities?
Gum inflammation (any chronic inflammation) can lead to heart disease.
Did you know that the best thing that you can do for your pets teeth is to brush them every day?!
(Please don’t sting me up, I’m just the messenger!) We know that this is a hard task to accomplish. Developing good habits takes time, yes. But overall, you should be able to reach a point where brushing your pets teeth takes less time than brushing your own.
Need help getting started?
Give us a call, we can schedule appointments with the technicians for demos, or with your veterinarian for an oral check up. We also have goodie bags that take you through the steps to brush on your own.
Or you could check out these links:
The American Veterinary Medical Association has a great video on brushing. Cornell University also has a great video on Brushing Cat Teeth, and how to get your cat to like it!
GPS Pet Tag — On Groupon Now!
Groupon deals are something we talk about “behind the scenes.” You know, the “what did you do this weekend?” chatter that co-workers share at the water cooler, coffee pot, or while drawing up vaccines. This Groupon deal I thought would probab
ly interest some of our readers, so I’m linking to it here.
One of the most common questions asked when talking about microchips is, “Isn’t that like GPS tracking or something? What’s next ‘chipping people?” And the answer to that is “Nope. A microchip is a permanent identification tag.”
Well now there is a company that is making tracking devices for your pets to wear (note, this is not something that can be inserted, like a microchip). In fact, it looks just like any other pet tag.
And our friends at Groupon have brought the price down substantially. Woohoo!
Please let us know if you have ordered one, already have one, and what you think about this pet recovery method.
Oh, and the Groupon deal is only good through January 25th.
Diary of A Fat Cat: Labwork Surprise!
Moment of truth
. Time to take Puck in for his annual torture session, er, um, I mean, car trip. Actually he isn’t bad in the car. Puck is a well traveled cat, he’s moved with me from Washington to California and then back up to Oregon. You could say he’s been down this road (and that one) before. His least favorite part is being stuck in a kennel all day while I work — he hides under blankies and pretends he is an empty kennel.
Since Puck is still dropping weight, and he just became a senior kitty, I decided to run labs on him. The labs are designed to be a diagnostic tool to evaluate overall health including organ function and metabolism. I wasn’t expecting any problems to show up, after all his continued weight loss was due to dieting.
Imagine my surprise when the lab work came back showing that he had crystals in his urine. The kind that can create urinary blockages in male cats, or turn into bladder stones — ouch!
Struvite crystal formation has nothing to do with weight loss. But the easy solution for dealing with urinary crystals is to increase the patient’s water consumption. And the easiest was to do that is to change to canned food.
Guess what kind of food is best for weight loss? You betcha, any type of canned food! Canned food has not only higher water, but lower calories, higher protein, and is more satisfying for carnivores. Now we just have to convince Puck that canned food is food. He likes it about as a kid likes Brussels sprouts or lima beans. I have to feed him something (not eating is a serious problem in hefty kitties) while he turns his nose up at the mushy stinky foodstuffs before him. We decide that Royal Canin’s prescription diet, Urinary SO, is the one to try. Except he has to eat 3 times what I’ve been feeding him to get the same amount of calories.
Stay tuned … there’s more to this story!
Cara (and Puck)
On The 7 O’Clock Mews
This past Thursday, there was excitement aplenty at North 
Portland Veterinary Hospital.
Just after 7 am, some kittens found themselves in the road just down the street from our office. Initially thought to have been thrown from a moving vehicle, the latest developments indicate that the kittens may have been stowaways. Oregon Humane Society is investigating.
One of these kittens found her way to us for treatment and fostering, we call her “Penny On The Block.” News crews from Channels 2, 8, and 12 came by to get the scoop, interviewing Kim F. our camera-ready CVT and getting footage of Penny. Kitten abandonment and abuse rarely make headlines, but we suddenly found ourselves at the epicenter of a public interest piece.
Immediately after the story aired, the phone started ringing off the hook. People wanted to know more information about the vehicle, some desperately wanted to adopt the grey and white survivor, and others just wanted understand how this could happen.
Regardless of how the litter of kittens came to be in the middle of Peninsular, they bring home the message that there is a huge surplus pet population in Portland. The sad reality is that animals are abandoned everyday, in fields and parks, at empty houses, schools, and veterinary hospitals. If you’d like to help:
- Have your pets spayed and neutered. Encourage friends and family members to do the same for their pets.
- Call Oregon Humane Society, or other rescue organizations, and ask to volunteer with their group and become a foster parent to other abandoned or injured pets. They need lots of help.
- Support groups like Feral Cat Coalition, who provide spay and neuter services for feral or stray cats.
- When you witness a case of abuse or neglect, call the Oregon Humane Society and file a report with their officer.
Diary of a Fat Cat
I know how tough it is to get weight off a cat or dog, I’ve had both.
As a kid, Sandy, our golden retriever grew wider and flatter – going from sleek athlete to ottoman – as he aged and his walks decreased. I was pretty young then, and don’t recall what or if we did anything about his weight.
Now I have a cat, Puck, who has been challenging me his entire life with his weight. When he was 3 (and 17 pounds!), my friends started teasing me about his weight, and soon he was diagnosed with Feline Asthma. I was concerned about how to treat his asthma successfully and not increase his chances of developing diabetes (and that’s a story for another day).
For the last 6 years, I have been trying to “manage” his weight. I didn’t manage it well at first, I changed from regular cat food to “diet” cat food and he gained weight. Then it managed me, feeding 3 cats their own food with two cooks in the kitchen and a difference in opinion about what a “snack” was. His weight fluctuated a lot in that time period, and it was stressful for all involved. And in the last year I finally got a good handle on how to make it work. Part of our system is: Puck tells me when it is dinner time, and I let him tell me all about it, and then he has to work for his supper.
“So what changed to make weight loss possible?” you ask.
In the last year I went to the North American Veterinary Conference and attended numerous seminars, mainly on nutrition and behavior. While I was at the conference, I started developing a way to help Puck and other overweight pets through coaching, consistency, follow through, with sound nutrition and activities. The end result? North Portland’s Weight Management Program. It’s geared to set you (and your pet) up for success, by tailoring our recommendations to fit your life.
Puck is calling, it’s time for dinner!
Cara
