Carbohydrates in the Nutrition of the Dog

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Carbohydrates are so named because it was originally thought they were complexes of carbon (carbo) and water (hydrate). Carbohydrates are actually composed of combinations of simple sugars and glucose is the most important subunit. More complex carbohydrates can be described as mono-, di-, tri-, oligo-, and poly-saccharides depending upon the number of simple sugars that are incorporated into a longer chain. Polysaccharides are groups containing more than two simple sugars. There is no known minimum dietary requirement for carbohydrates in dogs. They are however, an efficient and cost-effective dietary energy source. Continue reading →

Animal Allergies

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Allergies to animals can be triggered by breathing (respiratory allergy) or touching (skin allergy).

The most common animal allergy is to cats. People are allergic to the cat’s saliva and dander, not their fur.
When cats lick their fur, they coat the fur with saliva. The saliva dries, breaks off in little pieces (especially when someone pets the cat) and floats into the air, where people breathe it. It makes no difference whether the cat is long-haired or short-haired. It’s possible to be allergic to only one breed of cat. Continue reading →

The Treatment of Trauma in Pet Animals Post 1

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The Treatment of Trauma in Pet Animals:
What Constitutes Trauma?

Consideration of trauma in animals, whether physical or emotional, provides the practitioner with familiar conditions as well as challenging differences from human patients. Animals experience many of the same sorts of physical trauma as do people (albeit from different causes), and close attention to the types of injuries and resulting signs will often yield familiar prescriptions. Treatment of emotional trauma in animals is not so clear, and this paper will attempt to address animal behaviors that provide clues to a history of emotional trauma. More importantly, a discussion of over-interpretation of animal behaviors may assist the practitioner in assessing the traumatized animal without straying from the appropriate remedy. Continue reading →