Successful dog breeding requires perfect timing. Bitches come to their breeding peak only about twice a year. So knowing when your bitch is ‘in season’ or ‘on heat’ is essential whether you’re mating her with a specially chosen dog, or artificially inseminating with semen.
When it comes to publicising pet care, cats and dogs get much more attention than smaller pets – especially when it comes to internal parasites and external parasites in pet rabbits. That’s why June sees another concerted effort by a partnership of animal charities and commercial sponsors to raise owners’ awareness of the health, hygiene and dietary needs of pet rabbits.
With more than 2 million uploads and almost 25 billion views, cat videos are by far and away the most popular and most shared subjects online. Yet around 3% of those cats may well test positive for Feline Leukaemia Virus (FeLV), and a similar number the Feline Immunodeficiency Virus (FIV).
Tracking the ‘Big Five’ usually means a safari for lion, elephant, buffalo, leopard and rhino in the wilds of Africa. Your vet can help you track-down the big five pet-parasites with Veterinary Diagnostics, Microscopy and Statspin Ovatube Parasite Detection System.
Ringworm is a dermophytic fungus that eats skin, hair, horn and claws in companion and commercial animals. Rapid veterinary diagnosis of dermophyte infection is the first step toward identifying, treating and eradicating fungal skin diseases.
Veterinary and Human health authorities worldwide are always on their guard against the possibility of animal diseases jumping the species barrier and infecting human populations. But what about the reverse? Is there a growing danger that the bacteria, viruses and parasites that cause human diseases might pose a health risk to companion, commercial and wild animal populations? Most animal pathogens reside only in specific species or related host species.
On 8 May 1980, the World Health Organisation declared the devastating human disease, smallpox, officially eradicated in every country of the world. Only one other disease has been similarly eradicated at the global level: the 2000-year-old disease of wild and domesticated cattle, Rinderpest.
Pet owners love their companions but don’t always do what’s best for the health and well-being of the animals that share their lives and homes. With a little understanding of behavioural economics, veterinary surgeons can use ‘nudge theory’ to change the behaviour of pet owners, keepers and breeders to the benefit of pets from lizards to llamas.
Produced annually since 2011, the PDSA’s 2016 Pet Animal Welfare (PAW) report offers a sobering view of public awareness of pet animal health, welfare and wellbeing issues in Great Britain. Working with pollsters YouGov, the UK animal charity questioned 4,252 dog, cat and rabbit owners and 701 veterinary professionals on their awareness and application of the Five Animal Welfare Needs as laid out in the 2006 Animal Welfare Act.
The seasonal message that a dog is for life has become a familiar warning. Yet the consequences of a puppy or kitten for Christmas are all too common in animal shelters and re-homing centres throughout the year that follows.
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