Dog Economics of Feeding

Now for the economics of dog feeding, disregarding for the moment the time and trouble that may be spent in the preparation of some foods, including the cost of feeding a pet.

If you buy a little snore food for the family to feed the dog, as so many do, it will cost you about six times as much as a good dehydrated dog food.

If you feed canned or semi moist food to your pet, it will cost about three times as much as a poorer kibble-type food to which even the cheapest meat is added.

By adding leftover cooking fat to a dehydrated food you will save even more and there is a better way to feed a dog. Such a diet provides three times as many calories per pound as meat so that only one third as much needs to be fed. Of course, the added water in-creases the bulk.

All these methods require only common sense and most dogs can be made to thrive without digestive disorders on combinations of these different types of food.

Dog Spaying

Most owners are not aware of the chain of events in a surgical procedure. The most common procedures, an ova rio-hysterectomy, known also as a spaying (not spading) operation. Having found the dog to be in satisfactory health for surgery, the veterinarian may administer drugs to sedate, prevent excess salivation,and empty the stomach to prevent vomiting during the operation but this is not always advisable. The dog is placed on a prep table where at rained assistant holds and cajoles it while the veterinarian administers short-acting anesthetic intravenously. An enforceable tube is inserted in the trachea (windpipe) and anesthesia is continued with gas and oxygen provided by a gas anesthesia machine. When the correct level of anesthesia is reached, the patient's fur is clipped on and around the surgical site. The area is scrubbed and the pet is taken into surgical theater. The surgeon, who is dressed in cap, mask, and clean garments (often called greens), scrubs his or her hands with a medicated soap, dries them, and dons a sterile surgical gown and sterile gloves.

Dog Teeth

There is no doubt that in many cases good and bad teeth are genetic.Some kinds of dogs, particularly the small breeds, lose many teeth by the time they are two years old. Others have healthy teeth all their lives. Frequently the owners of a two-year-old show dog with loose teeth that need to be extracted will not permit the procedure to be done until the dog has finished its show championship.

Tartar. The principal problem with teeth is the tartar, or plaque,that builds up on them. It is theorized that some dogs have saliva that encourages this tartar buildup. It is not unusual to find thick crusts of tartar larger than the teeth. In some dogs this may be removed in the veterinarian's office without an anesthetic. Other dogs will not permit such treatment and must be given a short-acting anesthetic in order to have their teeth cleaned. In any event the insides of the teeth may be cleaned only after anesthesia has been administered.

Some biscuits do help to clean a dog's teeth but only minimally so. Better is a raw beef rib bone into which the teeth sink - but bones may not be for your dog. Chewing the tags of meat and cartilage from beef soup bone will also help, but many dogs eat mushy food all their lives and have beautiful teeth with no tartar or guns disease.

Dog Surgery

In general, we can divide surgery into three categories: necessary, elective, and vanity.

Necessary surgery is surgery to save life or improve the quality of life. Automobile injuries to the soft tissue and fractures are examples. The surgical approach to eliminate cancer is also necessary and successful more often than not.

In days gone by and occasionally today seriously injured dog were and are unnecessarily destroyed by well-meaning unenlightened people - people who do not realize how effective a veterinarian can be. For the novice to assume an injured dog is hopelessly injured is a mi stake. Even we veterinarians surprise ourselves at times when a seemingly hopeless case recovers.

A three-pound adult Chihuahua ran out in front of a car that was traveling fifty miles an hour. The wheels straddled the dog but the undercarriage of the vehicle struck the little dog on top of its head, crushing the skull and indenting the head, forming a large depression. The owner rushed in with the unconscious dog, which appeared to be taking its last breath. This was a fatal injury, the owner left in tears as quickly as she had arrived. What appeared to be is that little can be done but to operate immediately. However, when we grasped the skin with an instrument at the deepest part of the depression and pulled, the fragments of the fracture had pinched the inner layer of skin between them so that when the skin was pulled with a surgical forceps the fractured skull returned to its normal position. The little dog recovered from unconsciousness in ten minutes, but the injury appeared to be so serious we waited for half an hour before phoning the distraught owner to come and get her dog. That Chihuahua lived another fourteen years to die at sixteen years of age of natural causes.

Dog Physical Exams

Any concerned person can and should do the simple, straight forward home examination. First, consider how the dog appears in general. Is it gaining or losing weight? Is its fluid and food intake and out put normal? Are there any personality changes? Does it limp, cough, sneeze excessively, or have halitosis? Have there been any changes since its health was last evaluated?

If everything appears normal you have passed the first hurdle. Next make a closer examination of the dog's eyes, cars, nose, and mouth. Do the whites of its eyes look normal and not inflamed? Do they squint or have an ocular discharge? Look in the ears: Are they clean with a minimum of brown waxy substance and with no excess hair? Smell them. Any unusual odor? Then examine the nose, lips, gums, tongue, throat, and teeth. Are the membranes a normal pink? Look at the teeth for plaque or tartar. Fan the hair and look for blemishes and parasite such as ticks, fleas, and lice. Lice look like motorized dandruff of the biting variety.

Next check the nails, pads, and between the digits.

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Dog Personality Guide

There can be little argument that personality traits are inherited as are coat, eye color, and scenting either with the nose close to the ground, as with hounds, or with head high, as with bird dogs. To breed dogs with good dispositions is one of the easier challenges for the breeder and yet there are perhaps ten casual mating's for each well-studied mating. With such odds of personality traits that are unacceptable. Strains of some breeds are bred by design to attack and guard dog. Unfortunately many of these puppies find their way into households where there is no one to train them and they grow up to be dangerous dog.

Because of the unfortunate but necessary experience of destroying unwanted dogs in pounds it is obvious that fully half of them are personality misfits; in other words, they are untrustworthy and will bite. This destruction of unwanted unfit dog is tragic but it does destroy genetic material that should not be reproduced.

Every breeding there should be an unbiased committee of three people, one of whom might be a veterinarian, to approve the male and female before a mating. Most dogs with personality problem scan should be spotted by strangers who can examine the dog in the absence of the owners.