Well, we made it through Christmas and now 2007 is just 2 days away! Are you going to make any New Year ™s resolutions this year? Maybe you could make some resolutions for your pets. People often decide to lose weight, and most frequently fall short on these plans. Why don ™t you resolve to [...]
We hope you are having a wonderful Christmas eve. As you settle in tonight, finished with all the hustle and bustle, I hope you will have a chance to think about what Christmas is all about - and the role the animals played. Tomorrow is a huge birthday party for Jesus Christ. I think my [...]
What could be more wonderful than a cuddly puppy or kitten waiting under the tree on Christmas morning? While this can bring a lot of joy to the entire family during the holidays, it is important to keep in mind that this is a commitment of time, money and love for up to 20 years! [...]
We ™ve been taking an anatomical tour of the body this year, and have pretty well run out of organs to learn about. However, I feel we still need to look at both pain and behavior issues. Pain control has been a relatively ignored aspect of animal medicine until the last decade or so. All [...]
Since blood is so important to the health of our pets, you can imagine that a lot can go wrong with this system. When blood is drawn from your pet, a blood smear is made so that we can analyze individual cells under the microscope as seen here. Each cell type can be quantified and [...]
As we wind up our tour of the animal body, we need to discuss blood and its components. I like to think of the vascular system (arteries, veins and capillaries) as the highways of the body, and the blood cells as little trucks carrying supplies and garbage to and from the body ™s cells. Blood [...]
We reviewed normal endocrinology, or hormonal function, last week. Things can really go awry when the hormones get out of whack. Dogs are quite susceptible to low thyroid problems. this can lead to hair loss, weight gain, lethargy and even neurologic issues such as seizures. Cats tend to get high thyroid levels and become more [...]
Endocrinology is the study of the hormonal systems in the body. A hormone can be briefly defined a substance or chemical that is produced in one place and then transported elsewhere to exert its action. Most of us are familiar with reproductive hormones such as estrogen and testosterone. These are produced in the ovaries and [...]
Last week we saw that the nervous system is basically a set of electrical wires, and we can compare many of its diseases to electrical shorts or misfires. Since the brain and spinal cord are housed in bony compartments, these organs have no room to move or even swell. Anything that presses on the brain, [...]
As we are near the end of our anatomical tour, we have arrived at the central control station. The Central Nervous System consists of the brain and spinal cord. You can think of the spinal cord as one of those huge cables full of hundreds of insulated wires. Information that comes from the rest of [...]