photo credit: Peter Gawthrop

Spring is here, the weather is warm and we’re all itching to start planting in our gardens or working on the landscaping. As you plan your yard, keep in mind that many common plants are toxic to dogs and cats. You will either want to limit their access to such plants or skip planting them all together. Ones I see in Malibu frequently include aloe, citrus trees, sago palms, birds of paradise, silver dollars and oleander.

Check out the ASPCA’s great resource of poisonous plants which includes scientific names as well as pictures. It’s a great resource!

My dogs have gotten pretty smart. I give them supplements daily and have used a variety of techniques to get them to swallow their pills. Marshmallows, peanut butter, cheese, cold cuts, cream cheese, yogurt, hot dogs and commercial pill pockets. Each was either messy, expensive, or both. Finally I found a recipe for making my own pill pockets that was cheap, easy and tidy.

I forgot what the original proportions were – I just want something I can throw together without thinking too much. So I took one whole “tube” of liverwurst, one whole package of cream cheese, and three approximate handfuls of shredded wheat and mixed it all together in a bowl. Stick it in the fridge overnight and it turns into this putty that’s easy to scoop and form around pills. The taste is irresistible to every dog I’ve tried it on. Store in the refrigerator for up to 2 weeks.

I can get around 4 packages’ worth of commercial pill pockets from one batch — doing the math, that’s basically $1.95 vs. $7.26 if you were to buy a pack of Greenie’s Pill Pockets — minus the unknown qualities of the ingredients.

Image via Wikipedia

I’ll never forget the summer where my sister and I found a stray dog after the 4th of July. We were out of elementary school for the summer and had nothing better to do. We figured the golden retriever needed some food and water before we set out to find his home. We fished out the small bag of dog food meant for our miniature dachshund and kept refilling the bowl as soon as he was done with the last. Convinced this dog had been starved for some time, we ended up feeding him nearly the whole bag.

After 2 days of going door to door, we were about to give up. No one had said the dog was theirs, nor did they know who he belonged to. It was to our surprise that on the 3rd day, a nice man came by asking if we had seen his dog. Sure enough, the dog was his! We exclaimed, “boy your dog eats A LOT!” so he gave us $5 each to cover the kibble. Now that I think back about it, that dog must have had some terrible diarrhea…

Unfortunately due to the fireworks, many dogs panic and run off. Some dig under fences, jump over them, or chew their way through. Here are some tips to prevent your pet from running off, or flipping out.

1. Keep your pet inside. Cats can become the victim of pranks and dogs are capable of amazing break-out feats. Not to mention, being left alone outside with all the noise and visuals will cause him to stress out and damage your property and fence, not to mention harm himself in doing so.
2. Let your pet stay home for the fireworks show. The noise of both fireworks and the crowd may scare him, and you might be trying to hold on to him, consoling him or be busy controlling him instead of enjoying the show.
3. Keep the radio or TV on so it helps drown out the noise of explosions
4. Use a feel-good pheromone diffuser or spray, or use a wrap to help calm your dog without using drugs. For cats, Feliway is a good choice and for dogs the thunder shirt or anxiety wrap may help.
5. Make sure your pets have their current and legible ID tags on them (or pet sitters: have YOUR info on their tag)
6. Don’t upset their tummy any further by offering them table scraps or treats that they normally don’t get
7. If you’re hosting a BBQ or party, make sure alcohol and food is kept out of their reach
8. As a last resort, you may want to ask your vet about a sedative. Be careful of this, as the side effects can be pretty severe. For instance, do not use Ace Promazine on bulldogs as it may cause heart failure.

Image by boughtbooks via Flickr

Because one can never have enough projects… I’ve decided to hatch some chickens from eggs. I’ll be posting their progress with pictures on this blog, so follow along if you’d like. Before this I had to do a bit of research. Was I allowed to have chickens on my property? How many? What about roosters? Did I have a good spot and enough space for a coop? Did I have the necessary skills to build a coop? Do I have the time to devote to caring for the chickens? These are all questions you must ask yourself before embarking on this type of project. Luckily for me, I’ve already got the zoning ok, and the coop built.

Next thing to decide, what type of chicken did I want to keep? Usually people keep chickens either for their eggs or for their meat. There are breeds of chickens that have been bred to be good at one or the other, you have your layer chickens and your broilers. Eggs are what I’m after so that narrowed down the field some. I like the idea of colorful eggs, and there are chickens that lay blue, green, chocolate brown, and all shades in between.

In the end, I settled on a mixture of Black Copper Marans, Blue Copper Marans, Ameraucana and “Olive Eggers” (a cross between the Ameraucana and Maran). I’ve also got some Seramas, a type of miniature chicken from Malaysia, just for fun. Sometimes fertilized eggs are the only way to get these uncommon breeds, and that’s pretty much the case here.

All but the Seramas are coming from a breeder in Illinois. The Seramas are from my mom’s flock, and they are adorable! The next post will be about selecting and setting up an incubator.

As of March 5, 2011 Paws, Claws and Hooves of Malibu, CA is closing their doors. Hillary Branoff, owner of PCH is moving to Nevada City to practice Ayurvedic Body Therapies, something she went to school for and we wish her the very best in her new endeavor! In her letter sent out to clients of PCH, she said:

“Out of consideration of your pet care needs, I’ve taken the time to discuss the situation with several potential replacements and I’ve selected Malibu Pet Care to receive my recommendation. I’ve taken the liberty to pass on your contact info to Jackie Bass, the proprietor, and you can expect to hear from her shortly about the possibility to care for your pets. You are now able to pay with credit cards! Coincidentally 3 of 4 PCH staff members are all leaving at the same time so it wasn’t an option to have them continue with our pets. Malibu Pet Care has all of the same insurance and has been in business even longer than PCH!”

We at Malibu Pet Care welcome our new clients to our growing family and look forward to serving their needs!

There are few things I look forward to in the mail, and one of those things is the Centinela Feed newsletter. I don’t know of any other place that offers discount coupons for premo food and treats, but they give out plenty every month. As an added bonus, they also hold low cost vaccination clinics, which they list on the back of every issue. Who doesn’t like to save a few bucks? Head over there now and sign up! Click here to visit their website

Thanks so much to Lili Chin for illustrating Amelie and Jolie!

Amelie is always smiling!

If you have a French Bulldog, then you know what I mean when I say, “If it’s not one thing, it’s another!” With allergy season finally over with, I thought it was going to be finally easy sailing from here until Spring. No so! The other night I was working on some photos when I heard soft grunting behind me. I turned around and saw Amelie peeing on the carpet – and if that wasn’t bad enough, there was blood in her urine.

Immediately I call the vet – I knew Amelie was grunting because she was in pain, and with blood there was a possibility she had stones, or a painful infection that could spread (if it didn’t already) up into her kidneys. After doing a urine test, it was determined she had a bladder infection.

Urinary Tract Infections are common in Frenchies with inverted vulvas. Of course, inverted vulvas are common in frenchies! Amelie has one, and it requires that I clean it out after she pees. Here I was happy I didn’t have a frenchie with a tail in the way of her bum, which some frenchies have, and requires that you wipe it clean after they poo or things get REAL nasty. Oh the joys, right?

Armed with antibiotics and pain meds, we were only partly ready for recovery. Dogs with UTIs need to drink plenty of fluids and urinate often to flush the bladder of bacteria. Having your dog holding their pee for too long concentrates the urine and can lead to bladder infections. (Should I put in a shameless plug for why hiring a dog walker is a good idea? They do tend to drink and pee a lot on their walks!)

Amelie doesn’t like to drink water, because after her larynx surgery it tends to go up her nose instead of down her throat. So I’ve been diluting low sodium chicken broth and pouring it over her food, as well as feeding her 3-4 times a day instead of twice. She still gets 2/3 cups of food total per day, I just feed smaller portions. Keeping her weight down helps with the inverted vulva situation, too, by not burying it further with fat folds. Sorry for the visual…

Now that she’s drinking plenty of fluids, she also needs to be given more opportunities to potty so more frequent walks are in order. The pain meds tend to make dogs drowsy, so they may not be so inclined to get up and go as often as they need to.

One last bit to help things out is to get her some cranberry supplement. It will acidify her urine and help kill bacteria by not letting it attach to the walls of the bladder. I use the human grade supplement as my vet told me it was the proper concentration. When Jolie was having chronic bladder infections, giving her the supplement regularly stopped them from happening… so I know it works.

Poor little Amelie. Luckily she’ll be feeling sprightly again soon!

Indoor cats need mental stimulation to avoid destructive behavior. One way you can do this is with food puzzles. Food puzzles are objects that contain pieces of kibble (or small hard treats) that dispense when they are played with. The most basic of these involve a ball with a hole in it just big enough for a piece of kibble to fall out. There are products on the market that you can buy, but you can also make your own easily. Here’s a website with some suggestions with items you may already have around the house.