The Blog Pound's Greatest Hits

Here are this blog's most popular posts (according to search engines). I hope you'll find something helpful.

Wednesday, February 14, 2007 , terribly early in the morning

L-lysine for herpes infections in cats

Despite my best efforts, our previous batch of foster kittens brought feline herpesvirus type 1 (FHV-1) into our household.  I do attempt to quarantine all foster kittens downstairs, but I think Derek (who travels between downstairs and upstairs), must have been some sort of vector, because Frank, Tie, Scampi, Bing, and Jackson all came down with eye infections shortly after the foster kittens arrived.  Tie’s infection was especially bad, and he had full-blown conjunctivitis which required antibiotics.  I can’t say for sure that our cats didn’t have the dormant virus before the kittens arrived, but none of them had ever had an eye infection.

Since the first flare-up, the cats each periodically present with a gooey eye, or what we scientifically call, “winky eye”.  I did some reading about FHV-1, and discovered that the amino acid L-lysine is often recommended as both a treatment and a preventative.  It’s quite inexpensive, so I bought a pound of powdered L-lysine on eBay (it cost about $16), and I’ve started to mix it in with the wet cat food.  I was skeptical, but the treatment really does seem to work!  If this can keep eye problems at bay I’ll be happy to keep using it.  When I started giving it, Tie had just developed a runny, squinty eye, but after a couple of days of L-lysine it was gone.  Maybe it was a coincidence, but perhaps not.  It seems to have even helped Bing, who had a mild rhinitis.

I’m all about taking our pets to the vet whenever I think there’s anything wrong with them.  However, there are times when I know that something is a bit “off” - not bad enough to require veterinary attention, but not normal.  I’ll definitely take any cat to the vet immediately if I notice eye redness or any signs of discomfort, but for now I’m happy to keep trying the L-lysine to cut down on needless vet appointments.

If you happen to stumble upon this entry because you’re looking up information about L-lysine for cats, I want to suggest that you purchase it from California Veterinary Supply (do a search on their site for “Viralys").  They carry both a powder and gel version of L-lysine, and their prices are very competitive.  I bought the gel from them because people had raved about how much their cats liked it, but none of my cats were thrilled by it.  It’s flavoured with maple, and sort of looks like thick corn syrup.

Posted by Leigh-Ann on 02/14 at 04:53 AM
The Blog Pound's Greatest Hits • (6) Comments • Permalink

Tuesday, January 23, 2007 , evening

The cost of fostering kittens

I’m going to keep a running tally of the expenses involved in caring for two one newborn kitten, from day one until she’s about eight weeks old.  Some expenses, like a crate, towels, bottles, and a heating pad are things I already own, so this will just be a list of perishables and unexpected expenses.  I’ll update things like “bags of cotton balls” as I use them.

  • 4 bags of cotton balls (on sale for $1 each): $4
  • 1 tin of KMR powder: $17.99
  • 1 tin of KMR weaning powder ("2nd Step"): $8.69
  • vet visit for subq fluids and syringes: $17
  • 6 jars of meat baby food @ 79 cents: $4.74
  • 1 bottle of Johnson’s Buddies Instant-Foam Easy-Rinse Shampoo: this stuff is fabulous - I wish I’d discovered it sooner.  It’s a foaming shampoo in a very solid pump bottle.  Sit it on the edge of the sink, and you can dispense small amounts of gentle foam to quickly clean tiny butts: $3.79.
  • a small bag of Nutro kitten kibble, about 4 lbs.: $11.29
  • 72 x 5.5 oz. cans (three cases) of wet food, at approx. 89 cents per can if I’m lucky: $64.08
  • a small litterbox and a bag of something like Dr. Elsey’s Cat Attract litter for potty training: about $22.  I tend to send the litterbox home with the adoptive family.

The latter food expenses may seem a bit excessive, but with kittens you have to plan for waste.  While weaning, there will be a lot of food which gets walked in and slopped on the walls, but not eaten.  Also, depending on how long a foster parent keeps a kitten prior to adoption, the kitten will be eating solid food for at least three weeks, and perhaps even seven weeks, so you will go through a surprising amount of food.

There are other expenses which are difficult to calculate because they’re mixed in with products we already buy and use on a daily basis.  For example, when I foster, I use much more liquid soap, laundry detergent, and bleach than I normally would.  I tend to buy a lot of cheap little toys so I can send them home with the kittens when they’re adopted, but my cats play with them too.  I’ve also made some new purchases of things like the Doggles Comfort Pals Cat, and some new towels, but I’ll be using those again for other litters, and won’t count them now.  It’s still my dream to buy my Pet Intensive Care Unit, too.  It will be a large outlay upfront, but I think it will really come in handy.

Last but not least, there are veterinary expenses.  In my sample list, I had to take a kitten in for sub-q fluids, and that cost $17.  Once a kitten reaches the age of 8 weeks it needs vaccinations, and then it needs another set of them at 12 weeks.  When the kitten weighs at least four pounds it can be spayed or neutered. 

In conclusion, the cost of raising one foster kitten me about $145, and the average cost comes down a bit with more kittens sharing one litterbox.  I guess I could save with homemade food recipes and reusable washcloths instead of cotton balls, but raising them takes up so much time already, there’s no way I could add in more work.  After having done this a few times I’m starting to get it down to a science, and perhaps with efficiency will come monetary savings.

Writing this entry reminded me of a local man who didn’t get his cat spayed, but allowed her to roam outside.  Not surprisingly, the cat ended up giving birth to nine kittens.  The man called the vet’s office because he wanted the kittens taken away—he didn’t want his cat raising kittens in his house.  He didn’t offer to donate a penny, but expected some stranger would fix his mess by hand-feeding nine kittens for weeks and paying all their expenses, just because he couldn’t be bothered having his cat fixed.  Using the calculations above, his refusal to spay his cat at a $77 dollar clinic was going to cost some foster parent about $1000.  Luckily, he was eventually convinced to let the mother cat raise the kittens, but the guy was still a jerk.

Posted by Leigh-Ann on 01/23 at 09:22 PM
The Litterbox • The Blog Pound's Greatest Hits • (3) Comments • Permalink

Tuesday, January 16, 2007 , the wee hours

Charities to help with emergency veterinary medical expenses

In the comments in another post, someone asked if there were any charities to help seniors and others on fixed incomes with emergency veterinary bills.  I know of a few, so I thought this was a good chance to list them.  My entry will not be all-inclusive, as I know I’ll miss a few, so feel free to suggest groups I’ve missed by leaving a comment or sending me an email.

  • The first one that comes to mind for me is United Animal Nations.  They have a program called Lifeline Grants.  Their typical grant is $100, but it’s a place to start.
  • The AAHA has a program called the Helping Pets Fund.  Their grants are given directly to the animal hospital providing the care so the money goes directly to the bill, and applications are approved in as little as 24 hours.  You can apply as an individual, but the payout will go to the vet.
  • Angels4Animals.org is located in California, but they will provide grants to applicants in other states.  I don’t see an application form on their website, so you’ll probably have to call or email them.
  • I love whomever started this program, The Feline Veterinary Emergency Assistance Program.
  • Feline Outreach is another charity specifically organized to aid pets and their owners.  An application for assistance is on the website.
  • Here’s another feline-oriented charity, Cats in Crisis.  It’s nice that so many people have dedicated their time to trying to help.
  • Help-a-pet is located in Illinois, and specifically tries to help the elderly, disabled, and the working poor.
  • IMOM.org is an organization which has been around for a long time, but which is currently undergoing changes.  They aren’t accepting applications right now, but check them out when they come back online.
  • The Pet Fund is a lovely organization in Sacramento, who provides financial aid to pet owners whose pets need life-saving medical treatment.
  • I’m not sure if this organization still exists, as I can’t reach their website: Shakespeare Animal Fund.  You can check the link yourself, but I can’t guarantee the website is still around.

If you live in Canada, the only charity I can think of is the Farley Foundation, but I’m sure there are many others.  If you live in the UK, check out the recommended listings on PetLoversOnline.co.uk.  There are also a number of breed-specific programs, and it would take too much time to list them all here.  Just do a search engine check for terms like, “help with vet bills for cocker spaniel” (for example), and hopefully something will turn up.

Before a crisis happens, consider applying for something like Care Credit.  It’s a special line of credit just for medical/dental/veterinary expenses, and if you apply before you need it, you’ll now how much of a calamity you can afford!  They have some pretty good financing programs, too.  Of course, there’s also pet health insurance.  It’s not something that works for us, but it may be a great thing for folks with fewer pets.

Posted by Leigh-Ann on 01/16 at 02:49 AM
The Blog Pound's Greatest Hits • (6) Comments • Permalink

Monday, October 03, 2005 , early evening

Canine Cutaneous Histiocytoma

One of the benefits of being a pet owner is that you get to learn a lot of big new words.  Today’s word is “histiocytoma”, which is what Dante has growing on his ear.  A growth sprung up seemingly overnight about two weeks ago, and although I’ve kept an eye on it ever since, it never changes size or colour.  At first it almost looked like a blister, but when I pressed on it I could tell that it was definitely solid.  Because I’d hate to disappoint, here’s a photo I took of it, with my hand as a size reference.  Please note that while Dante’s ears look dirty, they’re actually spotless—he has odd allergic reactions on his ear flaps and because of that they’ve got some discoloured spots:

image

I made a preliminary diagnosis of histiocytoma after doing some Internet research to reassure myself before Dante’s actual visit to the vet.  I just wanted to see if I could get a general idea as to whether this was a “bad” lump, but I was lucky enough to find quite a few websites with great photos which exactly matched Dante’s problem.  Dante also matched all the symptoms I’d read, in that a histiocytoma tends to spring up very suddenly, it doesn’t tend to be painful, etc.  So, that helped me feel better about his prognosis when we did go to see the vet this morning.  I think our vet might think I’m a bit nutty, because when she asked why we’d brought Dante in for an appointment, I didn’t know what to say except, “I think he’s got a histiocytoma on his right ear”.  I mean, I could have just said he had a “lump”, but then I figured I’d be wasting the vet’s time as she explained stuff to me about how the lump is treated.  I always manage to waste her time anyway by tossing out odd hypotheticals and asking every possible question one could ask about a situation, anyway, so I hope I helped save her a few seconds.  The vet said she could do a needle aspiration of the lump, but she worried that the sample might not be very good, and that the ear could end up bleeding uncontrollably.  So, Dante is going in on Thursday morning to have his lump removed from his ear, and then the sample will be sent to the lab to confirm that it isn’t some sort of malignancy.  While he’s under anaesthesia, the vet is also going to “cap” Dante’s broken right canine tooth, because it’s never properly healed over since he first broke in back in January.  It should have healed within a couple of weeks, but the pulp of the tooth has always remained pink.  It doesn’t seem to bother him at all (we wouldn’t even know he had a broken tooth except we noticed it in a moment of boredom while waiting in the vet’s exam room with Dante 10 months ago), but it’s best to have it fixed so we can try to avoid infection.  We don’t need no stinkin’ infections.

Histiocytomas are quite common on the inside flap of the ear (the pinna), on the head and neck, and on the top of the foot.  I found some great websites about these types of round skin tumors while I was researching, and I definitely appreciate how reassuring they were.  If you have interest in finding out more about this, here are the sites I checked out:

Posted by Leigh-Ann on 10/03 at 07:32 PM
The Blog Pound's Greatest Hits • (3) Comments • Permalink

Monday, July 04, 2005 , lunch time

Dogs, Fireworks, and Thunderstorms: a non-authoritative guide to saving your sanity

My nine year-old German shepherd, Eli, is afraid of thunder and fireworks.  This problem didn’t seem to manifest itself until she was around 6 years old, and it’s become worse with every passing year.  During one particularly bad storm season, we went through a phase where she was even afraid of the sound of raindrops, just by association.  During her phobic attacks, she paces, whines, tries to hide, climbs things she shouldn’t, pulls stuff off countertops, and clings to me so closely that I sometimes trip because she’s literally standing on my shoes.  She wants to be able to hide in a small area so I’ll often put her in the laundry room with the door closed, the exhaust fan on, and even a radio plugged in, but if she’s too worked up she’ll lose bladder control.  Even if the pile of clothes in the laundry room is dirty, you still don’t really want your dog peeing on it.  Sometimes she’ll calm down if I lie on the couch and get her to lie on top of me, but, she weighs 103 pounds and it’s not the best solution.

I’ve noticed that some people have found my blog with searches related to dogs and fear of loud noises, so I thought I’d write up this little post about how we’re working to solve the problem.  I know I’ve spent hours searching Google for things like “Xanax dosage for dogs” and all I find is spam, so I hope this entry will be easy to find and helpful to someone.  It’s almost the end of the 4th of July weekend (WOOT!), but there are plenty of thunderstorms in the future, and there’s always December 31st.

If you’ve got a dog who’s afraid of thunderstorms and/or fireworks, my first suggestion is that you try buying a few Farnam Comfort Zone with D.A.P. Plug-In for Dogs and placing them around your house (one is supposed to be able to treat a 600 sq. ft. area).  They won’t fix the problem, but they might help take some of the edge off the problem.  Since plugging them in a week ago, Eli has shown improved ability to tolerate daytime firecracker noise, so I’d say that’s about a 10% to 20% improvement.  I’ve linked to Petsmart.com because their online price is great, but be forewarned that if you try to buy the plugins in the actual Petsmart retail store, you’ll pay almost $20 more!  Print out the webpage and take it into the store with you, and they’ll price-match.

As for meds, we had zero luck with the old standard, acepromazine.  Even at a high dose, ace just made Eli look stoned, with droopy, runny eyes, and a bit of drooling.  She was wobbly when she walked, but didn’t seem anything close to “calm”.  Luckily, we have a vet who’s willing to try different things, and she was very receptive to our requests to try Valium (diazepam) and finally Xanax (alprazolam).  The Valium was given at a dose of 10mg initially, and there was no reaction (although it did seem to stop Eli from losing control of her bladder).  We then consulted with the vet and upped the dose to 30mg, but again, the reaction was negligible.  I actually found that the optimal dose of diazepam for Eli was 20mg (every 8 hours), but we still weren’t getting full and complete abatement of her anxiety symptoms.  We then moved to Xanax, which was prescribed at the incredible dose of 8mg every 4 hours.  That just floored me, as the one time I was prescribed Xanax by a doctor I was given just .25mg, but it’s been pretty obvious that dogs and people react to benzos differently!  The 8mg of Xanax has been the most effective med yet, although Eli’s still in no state to be left home alone.  She still whines and paces, but doesn’t seem quite as “upset” as she used to.  She also recovers from her anxiety much more quickly after the big, bad noises have ceased.  Despite the fact dosing is every 4 hours, the alprazolam seems to have an effect for about 8 hours.  It makes her extremely wobbly on her feet, and she’s almost fallen down the stairs a couple of times, so I’d only recommend giving these meds to your dog if you can be around to supervise.  As today is the actual “4th of July”, I might try to up her dose to 10mg, as Plumb’s Veterinary Drug Handbook lists the suggested “storm phobia” dose as .2mg/kg up to .4mg/kg.  That’s another thing to remember—there’s a huge dosing range for these drugs, so if one dose doesn’t work, ask your vet if you can increase it.  Never be afraid to ask!

Long story short, if you’ve tried acepromazine for noise phobia and it doesn’t work, ask your vet to prescribe Valium or Xanax instead.  If one doesn’t work, try the other.  If your vet refuses to prescribe anything other than acepromazine, you might want to try to find another vet who’s more sympathetic.  There’s no reason for you or your dog to suffer through fireworks and thunderstorms, and no reason a vet can’t prescribe the proper medication.  Your vet probably won’t have diazepam or alprazolam in stock, and you’ll have to get a written prescription to fill at a local pharmacy.

I hope this is a bit helpful, and perhaps encouraging for someone who has a dog who suffers from fear of loud noises.  These meds may not allow you to leave your dog home alone, unsupervised, but they’ll make your time home together a bit more tolerable.  Don’t forget to do one “test run” before you actually need to medication your dog for a legitimate reason, as these meds sometimes have an opposite effect and can make your dog hyper instead of calming it down.  Alprazolam, for example, seems to remove all inhibitions from my Anatolian shepherd and he reverts to “naughty puppy stage”, so be forewarned.

Posted by Leigh-Ann on 07/04 at 01:58 PM
The Blog Pound's Greatest Hits • (6) Comments • Permalink

Monday, April 04, 2005 , evening

Dremel for trimming pet nails and beaks

I’ve got one more product I’ve been wanting to write about for ages, even though it’s not quite as entertaining as Panic Mouse.  Really, nothing is, so we’ll just have to appreciate the Dremel Minimite Cordless Dremel Tool for being inexpensive and very efficient.  I used to trim my dog, cat, and bird nails with clippers, but the small dogs can be antsy (I’m looking at you, Cricket), and the bigger dogs have such thick nails that they can be hard to cut.  With the birds, it’s difficult to keep them still, and I always do nail trims with a container of KwikStop around for emergencies because a nick is inevitable.  I know our vet uses a Dremel for trimming, so I decided to invest in one.  I thought I could just buy any old Dremel, but it turns out that the really expensive ones are actually too powerful for nail and beak use, because their high RPMs generate too much heat.  Dremel actually manufactures a special model, the Dremel 761-01 Pet Nail Grooming Kit, specifically for pet use, but I did some research and found that it only runs on AA batteries, and that it requires a special tool to change the bits.  I didn’t really like those restrictions, and found that the Dremel Minimite Cordless Dremel Tool was just $5 more expensive, and it had tool-free bit changing, and also came with a rechargeable base which just plugs into the wall when not in use.  You can buy extra batteries if you feel you want spares on hand, but so far I haven’t had any trouble with my battery running down.  The RPMs are nearly identical in both—6000/12000 and 5000/10000—and the 5000 RPM setting has provided ample power for the trimmings I’ve done.  I even did some quick cleanups of two overgrown beaks and it was quick and easy, and no blood!  The pets are very pro-Dremel and don’t care if they ever see regular clippers again, so consider picking one up if you do your own pet grooming.  Don’t forget—biggest isn’t necessarily better, so be sure to buy something which won’t overheat during use.  Good luck!

image

UPDATE:  Amazon.com no longer carries the Dremel Pet Nail Grooming Kit, and they also don’t carry the Dremel Cordless 750D, which is the product I originally reviewed, bought, and which I currently use.  However, you can still purchase a very similar model (Cordless Dremel Minimite), via Amazon.com’s third-party sellers.  If you don’t mind a corded model, try the Dremel 395D Variable-Speed MultiPro Tool… just remember to use the low speeds for pet nail trims.  It comes with free shipping, too.

Posted by Leigh-Ann on 04/04 at 09:36 PM
Stuff you should have • The Blog Pound's Greatest Hits • (2) Comments • Permalink
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