This patient presented for frequent visitations to the litter box. By feeding this diet the patient avoided surgery and her owner avoided a hefty bill by simply changing the diet. This case is the perfect example of "you are what you eat."
See the stones in the bladder? They look like a small cluster of grapes. Now you see them...... Now you don't! Where did they go? They dissolved. The first picture is the bladder of a cat who presented having urinary problems. We x-rayed the bladder and found the stones. By examining the urine under the microscope, we determined these stones were struvite stones. Struvite stones are often able to be dissolved by feeding a particular food, Hills s/d, which is an anacronym for "struvite diet." This food works by lowering the pH of the urine; an elevated pH is one of several reasons the stones may form.
This patient presented for frequent visitations to the litter box. By feeding this diet the patient avoided surgery and her owner avoided a hefty bill by simply changing the diet. This case is the perfect example of "you are what you eat."
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For the past 1o years, my dad and I have travelled to Augusta for the Cutting Horse Futurities. It is an annual father-daughter trip that I hope continues for many years to come. This year we took two extra attendants. Of course, where I go my baby girl goes, and if I was going to attend the horse show without having to feed a baby, change diapers and rock a crying baby, I had to take someone to tend to the baby. So I took a babysitter...in the form of a grandmother, AKA Bunny. Now my bestie friend lives in Columbia, South Carolina which is roughly an hour and a half from Augusta. Every year we meet up in Augusta and do a little shopping on Saturday before the show. This year, it was a little different. We didn't get too much shopping done. My bestie, Elizabeth, had a baby just six weeks after Wallace Anne was born. Her name is Isabelle, and since they too are going to be besties and college roommates, we thought they should meet at a very early age. It was love at first sight. I have never seen Wallace Anne so animated and vocal over another baby. She was throwing her hands up in the air, screaming and spitting with complete joy in her voice. At one point she reached out for Isabelle and pulled her to her. It looked like they were hugging. I kid you not, we had an audience watching this baby-baby interaction. Here are Wallace Anne and Isabelle meeting for the first time. Here are Wallace Anne and Isabelle hugging and speaking babynese. Now the dentist is all for Issie and Wally being college roommates. He definitely wants her to room with a good Southern girl with good parents, but he says Issie is just gonna have to be a Bulldog! Issie's mom was a Clemson Tiger, which the dentist says he would rather Wallace Anne not be, and Issie's daddy was a South Carolina Gamecock, which he just doesn't think he can stomach. So I guess we will have to start some imprinting on this little princess soon. From now on, every Christmas Issie will get and bright red Georgia Bulldog t-shirt!
Way too often I hear people tell me they half the heartworm pill to save on cost. Folks, let's make something clear. That aint a very good idea. You can effectively save money many other ways. May I suggest you give up the $6 Starbucks or skip out on a night of dinner and drinks one Friday night. Maybe carpool a few days to work to save on gas or choose to pass up those cute Steve Madden wedges you saw on sale at Dillard's last week. Short of providing food and water and having your dog vaccinated against Rabies, Heartworm prevention is THE MOST IMPORTANT THING! Period. The end. That's not up for discussion anymore. Let me explain why one should not divide the heartworm pill. Most heartworms pills, in order to be more user friendly, come in a flavored treat. The way flavored heartworm pills are made make this a big no no. First the flavor part of the pill is made, which is virtually the whole pill. Next the flavor pill travels down an assembly line and the actual heartworm prevention is injected into the pill. In doing this, the medication is not evenly distributed through the whole pill. Therefore, when you half the pill one portion may have all the medication and the other may have none. If you are giving half a pill each month, you have then left the dog unprotected for one month. So please, I beg of you. Be cheap another way. Roughly five and a half years ago, I met the dentist (also known as "husband"). The dentist had recently lost his beautiful yellow lab to the disease of old age and was considering purchasing another dog. On a barn call to one of the plantations in Mitchell County, my dad (who is also a veterinarian) was told by the manager of the plantation, they were looking to find a few dogs some homes because they just did not fit into their program. Knowing of the dentist's desire for another dog, he relayed the information on to us. A few days later the dentist comes home with a black lab in tow; the rest is history. The black lab's name is Ransom. I like to call him Handsome Ransom because he a gooood lookin' dog! He has been a part of our family for five years now and I just could not imagine what it would be like with out him. He is the most frustrating dog but at the same time he will make me laugh hysterically. He loves his new baby sister. Never has he entered her nursery. It seems as though he regards it as sacred ground and sits at doorway looking in. But all these years we never really knew who Ransom was. We knew he was a registered black lab and thought he was a bout eight years old, but that is it. We had even considered breeding him, but of course we wanted papers. Well, yesterday his identity was revealed. His registered name is Pekisko's Bear Down and Relax. He came from Canada and he will turn ten years old on February 3. I am so happy for our Ransom. I feel like we have finally discovered who he is. He has been a lost soul for so many years and now he has found himself...well, not really. He does not care. I'm really the only one who cares. I am the one who insisted we have his papers. He is still the same testicle licking, cat poop eatin' dog. And we still love him just the same! I was up at Verizon this weekend getting my new iPhone 5, (whoop! whoop!) the dentist gave me for my birthday and Kristi, my client and Verizon rep, showed me the nifty new gadget they have come out with. It is a GPS collar for dogs. From the picture on the box, it looks like it is about the size of an underground fence collar, so not terribly large. Kristi was telling me about how it works and seemingly, you can set some parameters so that when your dog leaves the parameters you have set, it will send a text message to your smart phone. How cool is that? Also, you can track him. From what I understand, you can see exactly where he is headed and hurry to pick him up or send a neighbor over to check on him. This is a stellar concept! Where I see this coming in handy is with escape artists and older dogs with cognitive dysfunction, hearing loss or poor health who may wander off and not be able to get back home. The collar itself cost $100 and it is $8 a month for the service on your phone (special rates for multiple pets). At first thought this might sound expensive but when you weigh the price of your dog being picked up by animal control or even worse, being hit by a car and having a pricey vet bill, the fee is really minimal. So if you are interested, call my friend Kristi Bratcher up at Verizon on Westover. She's the only blonde in the building or just ask for her when you come in. I promise, she will take good care of you!! This is what a postivie heartworm test looks like....kind of reminds me of that pregnancy test I took about a year ago. On that pregnancy test, one line meant negative, two lines meant positive. On a heartoworm test, it's the same thing. One "dot" is negative; two is positive. So, quite obviously the test in the picture to the left is positive. When I see a postive heartworm dog, I get a bit frustrated. Heartworms are so easily and cheaply prevented, there really is no reason for a test to be positive. Heartworms are transmitted by mosquitoes, which are prevalent in the south and all it takes is one mosquito bite (just like all it took was one sperm). I don't know about everybody here in the Albany-Leesburg area, but I had mosquitoes at my house during Thanksgiving! This means year round prevention is necessary, because in a battle of dog vs. heartworm...the heartworms wins everytime!! Heartworms are treatable, of course it is expensive, so prevention is better for the dog and for your pocketbook! Here are the heartworm rules: 1. Have your dog tested. If he is negative begin him on the prevention. Test again in 6 months. 2. Give the pill on the same day of the month; give it every month and give it for the rest of the dog's life. 3. Make sure the dog does not spit out the pill nor does he vomit it up. 4. Have your dog tested once a year to make sure there is no prevention failure. 5. Purchase your prevention from a veterinarian. Rule #4 and #5 go hand in hand. If you purchase your pills from your veterinarian and one of your yearly tests come up positive, the makers of the heartworm pill will pay for your dog to be treated; we will make sure of it! If you purchase your prevention from an online or discount pharmacy, we don't got no dog in the fight...well we do...actually it's your dog, but we have no control over the fight. I guess a better way to say it is you just kicked us off your team. You are on your own! So we have these little pink and blue boxes up again. And I don't know why, but when folks come in and see them they say "is Dr. Haley pregnant again?" Oh my goodness gracious! Seriously?? I have a 5 month old! I want to respond "you must not regard me as a very intelligent person." Without a doubt, if I had a another child right now, I would have to build on an extra room and move my nanny into my house. If I had another child I don't think I would be able to be a veterinarian. But, none the less, that is not what this post is about. This post is about those blue and pink boxes back up at the front desk. Those boxes are for Dr. Shannon. Yes! Dr. Shannon is having ANOTHER baby. Yes, ANOTHER baby. This will be baby number three...Yippee!! So glad it's not me! Now, we will not have to wait until the birth of this bundle to find out the sex. Dr. Shannon will have an ultrasound out in a few weeks; she's not patient enough to hold out until the end. So hurry on in and cast your vote. The winner will win three nights worth of boarding and a bath all for free for just guessing the correct sex. This is a picture of the back legs of a very itchy, very unhappy doggy. What was the culprit? FLEAS! Yes, fleas I say. The dubious assumption that fleas are not here in the winter is wrong, wrong, wrong, and the proof is in the pudding on this little guy. You see, it never really gets cold enough to kill the fleas here in SOWEGA, therfore we recommend year round, monthly flea prevention. How do you tell if your dog (or cat) has fleas? You can see them! Just push the hair back along the dorsal midline or flip you pet over to look at the underside of the belly; usually in one of these two spots they can be seen. Secondly, a typical hair loss pattern develops on a dog with fleas. Alopecia along the back of the legs (such as in this picture) and at the base of the tail is most common. Third, your pet is probably scratching. Fleas are biting insects and cause a lot of pruritis, so if your pooch is licking, scratching, or chewing, then fleas are guilty until proven innocent. Flea prevention comes in a topical or pill form. At Leesburg Animal Hospital, if your flea and/or heartworm prevention is purchased from us, we have no problem administering it for you at no additional charge. So please, please, please don't make the mistake of trying to save a few dollars by not putting your pet on flea prevention. You will only pay more $$$ later in vet bills and exterminator bills! |
Dr. Haley Hydrick Clark
Dr. Haley Hydrick Clark graduated from the University of Georgia in 1998 with a degree in Animal Science and from Tuskegee University in 2002 with a degree in Veterinary Medicine. Archives
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