- How to calm your dogs during thunderstorms?
Thunderstorms are truly worrying for fur parents because most of the pets hate it and freaks out when they hear it. A client of mine has used the canine calming loop for her pup and it was absolutely astonishing as far as the ability to keep her pup much calmer. She was able to keep him chilled out during the whole 4th of July which was just astonishing. The other thing too is just calming and grounding yourself because if you stay in a place where you are worried that they are going to be freaked out or it’s going to be a horrible day, then that’s going to help feed into that fear.
There’s a couple of other things you could look at: One is how to build a thunderstorm proof crate. So, Ford built this crate essentially for pets that are petrified of thunder, fireworks and things of that nature. Unfortunately, I think it was just an engineer’s ruse or play so they haven’t actually built it but it’s a really cool thing. They’re capturing the sound, processing the sound waves and dampening them down so this is really cool. So, there you go there’s a new cottage industry for you. Additionally, I had a client that used Mutt Muffs which are designed for dogs that fly with their people. It’s not going to completely cancel out everything but it does evidently dampen the sounds considerably. For a lot of these folks that fly with their dogs, it’s made a big difference for them. Also, the dog seemed to be happy enough to wear them.
Now, as far as what you can do medicine wise, is giving some sort of an anti – anxiety medicine and often that would be something like klonopin, and trazodone; there were some dogs that we just had to use acepromazine on as well. The reason I say it’s important to have those other two medications on board is because acepromazine is a sedative. It is not an anxiety reliever whereas these other medications are – klonopin and trazadone. So, if you have those two on board, then you’re not just sedating the heck out of your dog so they can’t move because I think that really is cruel and ends up creating worse thunderstorm phobia. I hope that makes sense.
- Is Now Melatonin a good product?
If you look on its label, it indicates that it’s with a co – factor nutrient which generally means that it’s going to have something else in there. Now, if you look at the bottle what you got is niacin, B – 6, and then magnesium. If you’re giving 1 milligram of Now Melatonin, it should not be a problem. 3 to 6 milligrams of the magnesium dose are going to get up there to the point where it could potentially create some diarrhea issues so these are okay. 250 milligrams of magnesium for a large sized dog should not be an issue but you don’t want to find that out the hard way so assuming you have this and you haven’t opened it, frankly, I’d take it back and just get a plain one.
- Is Herbal Heartworm Blend effective?
I have never found these to be effective in the southeast. If you look at the American Heartworm Society map, it’ll show you where the heartworm incident is bad. The reason I’m saying this is because I just have not seen herbal remedies or homeopathic ones be sufficient to really treat heartworm. What I would suggest to you if you live in areas that have high endemic cases of heartworm disease is to give heartworm preventions and use plain Heartgard or Iverhart which actually tends to be easier to find with less stuff in it once every 60 days. A dose of Iverhart or Heartgard type product, the medication itself is gone within about 24 hours. What it is doing is backtracking to kill the heartworms for the last 60 days. What I would suggest is use it every 60 days for 24 hours after you have given the pill. Do give some milk thistle to help clear the liver, and it is one of those things that will be a good clean up for the heartworms and for the liver itself. I think that’s been an effective strategy at that dosing. The American Society is saying that is adequate. Everywhere that is red on the map is going to be a big problem.
- Is Ivermectin poisonous? And when was the worst case of heartworm incident?
I don’t understand where the idea that ivermectin is a poison and it’s going to kill your dog has come from. It’s been around now for 40 years. Honestly, if you think back to the days of having to give the heartworm pills daily, the amount of impact on your dog system is really small. I think what’s interesting to me are these transition maps. A map in 2007 had a worse heartworm case, and in a 2019 map the incidence actually backed down quite a bit. I think 2007 was during Katrina and this is where we exported dogs out from the gulf state along with the heartworms. So, that’s what I know on this one.
I have seen sentinel to cause some immune mediated disease and then also autoimmune hemolytic anemia so you might consider just using IR interceptor. So, sentinel is an interceptor. It seems that the combination of the milbemycin and a dewormer is what created the problems so you might consider inceptors as far as heartworm prevention.
Ladies, that is what I have for you this week. I think our shipping nightmare is finally over. We have a company that we’re working with now that seems to be getting it out on the double. The only downside is we cannot ship internationally, but that may come later. Until next week. Take good care and we will see you. Give everybody a big hug and a kiss for me. Thank you so much!
