stormie

a lot less shitty fillers than most dry food you can buy! I don't know about that, it uses wheat - a lot of dogs have problems with wheat.

Wow! I don't think the vets I work at charge for the prescriptions we do up... obviously you pay for the original consult and diagnosis but we just do them up as repeats, obviously as long as the animal is still in the valid prescription timespan... We also have about an $18 dispensing fee but we have the ability to waiver or change it for our long termers... maybe this could be requested in the case we're discussing here? I think SnT was referring to her GP. Totally agree, too SnT! My vets are constantly on the phone talking to clients and discussing their pets health problems, giving advice over the phone with what essentially is almost another consult. And they do this for free. You wouldn't get free advice from most lawyers.

I didn't know about this . How common is it? I think its not mentioned because it's really not overly common at all in young bitches. I've never seen a young girl develop it in the 3 years i've been nursing (and that's a LOT of speys!) The benefits of desexing far out weigh the possible risks. Remember there is also a risk of the anaesthetic as well as the procedure, but again, the chances of this are not high enough to tell everyone they shouldn't do it. In saying that, I am waiting till my boys' growth plates have closed before I desex (and how I am counting down the months!!).

Andrew is fantastic - in fact the whole team there is wonderful. They come highly recommended from me!!

We only charge dispensing fees for prescription only medicines. That's insane for a worming pill!

Atopica is available in Australia. Yep, it's good, but remember, it's an immune suppressant.

I'd say most vets charge a dispensing fee. Covers the costs of the labels, printing, packaging, time etc. Sounds like a rort, i know, but it is someones time to make them up so I think it's valid. But, $18 is insane to me - ours is $7! You can shop around and maybe find a vet who's dispensing fee is less and ask for a script be sent to them, or maybe even ask if there's a human equivalent you can buy from a chemist, though i'm sure the pharmacist has a dispensing fee on their prices also. Also, maybe buy in bulk? Not sure about your vet, but most will only charge one dispensing fee per type of medication, so if you bought 1 or 5 packets of the same thing, there'd only be the one dispensing fee.

I'd add some probiotics to the diet as well - something like Inner Health Plus will do.

My understand from the VetPath guy from the Jean Dodds seminar was that there is a strain that up till now, has not been found in Australia, however he confirmed that they have seen cases of it. He said in most cases, dogs and puppies with high titres seemed to be ok, but pups and adults with med-low titres had been affected and that these cases would usually have been unaffected by the strains we are used to.

I was quoted $190 Maybe talk to your vet and see if they can organise for the blood samples to be sent direct to VetPath in WA? They'd have to open an account with them, but it's worth a shot to try. Otherwise the blood likely goes to their regular lab and then sent on via them to VetPath, which jacks the cost right up as the other labs add on their fee on top of the VetPath fee, if that makes sense!

I would have said that the diet the OP has said is great for a cat. Raw meat has taurine - chicken and other poultry meat has higher amounts than red meat, but I think it be unlikely this cat is suffering from taurine deficiency (also, cats don't cough with heart failure as commonly as dogs do). Many cats are actually sensitive to fish and seafood. Cats can suffer asthma which can cause a constant dry coughing. I think a trip to the vet is in order, as a cough does signify the cat isn't truly in good health.

You're free of all pain now, Wang-wang, and you were so brave and strong right through till the end. Run free big man - you're going to be missed so dearly.

Homoeopaths do not 'cure' any disease - if a homoeopath tells you they can - run a mile. If he's dealing with a homoeopath who specialises in homoeo-immunisation, he's probably quite correct. I don't understand. Let's say dog is suffering from parvo and a remedy is given; the dog recovers due to the remedy. Isn't that 'curing' the parvo? Don't homeopaths give remedies that treat, and hopefully cure, the sufferer from the disease? btw, I'm not sure my friend used the word cure. He did imply that puppies who had come down with parvo were treated homeopathically and got better, apparently without IV support. This didn't jive with everything I've heard about parvo, and if it were true, I'd think there'd be a rush to adopt the homeopathic treatment, or at least people talking about alternate treatments in this forum. If a dog had parvo and was on fluids, it may recover whether or not it was given a homeopathic remedy. I could put a dog on fluids in hospital with parvo and shower it with rose petals. If it recovers, does that mean the rose petals fixed it?

I think the vet would have prescribed the cortisone for its anti inflammatory properties. Cortisone IS an anti inflammatory at low doses (generally anything up to about 1mg/kg is anti inflammatory, any higher is immuno suppressive), and is mostly used in veterinary medicine for it's anti inflammatory properties. Cortisone works differently to non-steroidal anti inflamms, too, so its not just a matter of giving those instead. Obviously cortisone is not a drug you want to be using long term, but at low doses, dogs and cats can and do cope well on it long term. Giving a routine course of it is unlikely to cause negative side effects. So often dogs have reactions to things that results in an ongoing cycle, where the skin/area is inflamed and becomes itchy, so they lick and chew it, making it more inflamed and therefore more itchy. A simple course of cortisone can break the cycle and allow the area to heal and not be a problem any further. I think the symptoms are something you should discuss with your vet. They sound very much like symptoms of pain.

I haven't heard anything about treating parvo homeopathically, but to hear someone say its not as bad as it's made out to be, is quite shocking! It is a truly awful disease!!!

Thanks!! Will give that a try!! Itching dogs are the worst. In Orbits worst moments, we would be up almost every hour in the night, just with constant scratching. Poor little guy would be crying as he itched. Thankfully things are much better at the moment, only needing cortisone every 7 days or so, and a low dose at that. I am washing him every evening though, to get the pollens off, and using Alpha Kerry Oil to keep his skin from getting too dry. The aim is to send blood/serum off next friday!!!! YAY!!!

Shoelace - I have a question, how on earth did you manage to go the 6weeks without cortisone/antihistamines etc in the lead up to the test? At the moment we are on a roll and have just made it a week, and thankfully with his prior maintenance dose we only have to go two weeks, but there's no way we could have made it 6 weeks without him literally tearing himself apart!!

I don't think there's much to do in the way of treating the actual CDA, but things you can do to help is use mild shampoos and be gentle while bathing and grooming to reduce the amount of hair loss and breakage. Managing skin infections is important too. I did just find this though, might be worth asking your vet to look into??

This is interesting. I just did some googling and see that most common raw meats (chicken, lamb, beef) are on average, about 20% protein, with offals being about 30%. Hills and Euk adult maint. diets are both around 20% protein also, and supermarket brands are slightly lower. So, would this mean that a food like Orijen, which is 42%, is potentially going to cause behavioural and aggression problems?

Nature Vet do say that some dogs may experience gastrointestinal upsets when first starting, similar to that of switching diets. Maybe try reducing the amount, or even go down to maintenance levels and see if that helps?

Howdy, One of our clients has recently moved to Qld and are about to start looking for a new vet. They have asked us for a recommendation but unfortunately we don't know any vets up in Qld on a personal basis. Was hoping someone might have some good recommendations I could pass on to them? They're in the Ashgrove area. Thanks!

Do you know which test you had done? The one we are doing is relatively new to australia and costs about $400. The sydney dermatologists were at the launch and agreed it was definately the cream of the crop of blood tests.

I'd recommend a referral to a specialist. They can do scopes, ultrasounds etc and get a much better idea of what's going on inside. Hope she is ok :p

Looks like pollens for us too. We've done the food trials, parasite eliminations, medicated washes, antibiotics etc. We're going to do the latest blood test rather than the skin test (I can get it cost price and results are on par with skin testing with this test) but we still need to without cortisone for a couple of weeks before we can test, so we're just working towards that at the moment. Not easy, but we'll get there! We've got our dose down quite low, which is good because it means the withholding period is much shorter, but its not easy going without for two weeks! But I'm confident we'll get there...

Thats great news!! :p I'm on the way to testing with Orbit soon so we'll be doing the desensitising injections soon also! Are under the guidance of Beth? I know there is someone on here who has had fantastic results with them, but I can't for the life of me remember who it was :p