Puppy (and Dog) Pill Problems?

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Our friends at WebMD's Healthy Pets page have a newish article that every dog owner should read, "How to Give Medications to Dogs."  Believe it or not, many people give up on their dogs because of this very issue (or so I have been told by several vets and vet assistants).  In my case, I had a lot of problems in this area when it came to pills but, surprisingly, none at all when it came to injections.  Tony hated pills of any kind, and I was hard pressed to find new ways to get them into him.  His nose always told him when a pill was hiding in a bit of food, and the only solution was to put them in more and more exciting (i.e., normally forbidden) kinds of food.  This went on for a while until I discussed it with his vet, who told me that he was not getting any time-delayed pills and so I could crush them and add them to his nightly tablespoon of nonfat plain yogurt.  This worked great!

My brother Eric, who gave Tony to me, told me that I should have been sticking my fingers in Tony's mouth on a daily basis from the day he came to live with me in order to get him used to me doing that.  Unfortunately, he told me this three years too late.  By that time Tony had gotten pretty protective of his mouth, and even though his teeth were small, I was not eager enough to start putting my fingers in there.  Eric's a behavioral psychologist, and he has been known to get animals to do some pretty weird stuff on command, so I'm sure he's right about the mouth thing, and I KNOW that putting the pills in the mouth is the very best way to do it, but I started too late and was too chicken for that method.  My advice:  it's the same as Eric's.  When you get a new puppy, check its mouth out as often as possible.  It will probably pay off down the line.

The one quibble I have with WebMD's advice on injections is that two different vets told me NOT to use alcohol on Tony's skin before giving him his twice-daily insulin shots.  I really don't remember the reason they gave for this, but I do know that there was never a problem with his injection sites, no infections or even irritations.  So, as always, go by what your vet says (and if you don't like what the vet says, get a second opinion-- you'd do that for your own health, wouldn't you?).

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Blood Sugar Monitoring

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Got an email the other day about monitoring a dog's blood sugar.  I've mentioned before that my brother Eric monitored his dog's blood sugar, while I didn't.  Tony had regular blood sugar curves done, and they were always consistent after the first couple of months.  Eric's dog Lucky (always a bad choice for a dog name), however, was almost always out of control in that area.  Eric had several things going for him that I didn't:  at the time, he himself was diabetic (he isn't anymore, thanks to some pretty serious lifestyle changes), so he was hyperaware of everything connected with that; Lucky was a BIG Labrador retriever, which made it easier to draw the tiny bit of blood needed for the test (trying to do this without help to a Pomeranian ain't easy; you can't ever get the right grip); and, Eric is a behavioral psychologist with tons of experience with animals and many medical procedures.
At any rate, if it had been necessary to test Tony's sugar, I would have found a method of getting the blood, and it would have become routine in a hurry-- that's just the way it is.  If your vet tells you to do this, DO IT.  Like giving the insulin injections, you'll get better with practice over time, and you'll definitely get better control over your dog's diabetes.  There's a veterinarian's discussion of this at Pet Place; it's a basic explanation that should give you enough information to ask your vet the right questions.

Incidentally, there's something new and exciting in the monitoring pipeline for humans, which should eventually work itself into veterinary applications.  See the article below.

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Dogs with Flu, Cats and Ferrets, too!

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Yes, dogs get the flu!  By now you've probably heard or read the reports of pets getting H1N1 (the first one I saw was around Christmas).  It seems that they are catching it from their owners.  And, it's not just dogs.  Cats and ferrets have gotten H1N1, as well.
From what I've seen, there needs to be some educational efforts made about this danger.  We're being inundated with instructions on how to wash our hands and other common sense disease-prevention practices, but the information we really need is not being spread around.  When you wake up feeling crummy, how do you tell whether it's even serious enough to see a physician in the first place?  If you find out you actually have the flu, do you know how to protect your dog from it?  What symptoms should you watch for?

And that's not all.  I think most pet owners are familiar with the idea of zoonotic diseases-- that is, diseases humans can get from their pets.  Vets certainly have enough pamphlets on this in their offices.  But we don't think about the possibilities of infecting our pets, who just love to lick our hands whenever possible.  We also don't stay current with animal versions of everyday human illnesses, such as influenza that they can get that is not the same as any flu that hits humans.  To make a good start, I think that every pet owner should visit the Center for Disease Control's website on canine influenza, especially people whose pets are often in contact with other animals (my brother-in-law belongs to a group that meets regularly at our local dog park, for example, and it's a busy place).  There is a vaccine for canine influenza (this is the H3N8 strain).

When you have a pet with a chronic illness (a dog with diabetes, perhaps?), even mild infections can become serious in a hurry.  The best advice I was ever given came very soon after Tony was diagnosed with diabetes.  Oddly enough, it came from one of my students, who had a part-time job at an animal clinic.  She told me that after she had gotten a puppy, she picked the brains of everyone at the clinic on every topic that occurred to her.  One of the senior vet techs told her that she should set aside a little time each week to give the dog a little massage and "examination" to have a way to tell if something had changed.  From that point on, I did that, and caught several problems early on.  Of course I totally missed a few serious problems that either came on suddenly or were not really visible.

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