healthy living for women + their families
Now that spring’s here, it’s a perfect time to get out and exercise – and having a canine companion will make it ever more enjoyable. But just as you follow safety measures for yourself, you need to know what will keep your dog from danger.
Here, from the ASPCA, are some tips:
Get your pet a check-up
As any pet owner can tell you, companion animals are part of your family. You love them, you take care of them, you play with them. Someday, though, the inevitable will come: your pet will become seriously ill and pass away. Most pets don’t die suddenly; they usually become ill and linger for a while. How can you make your companion’s last days good ones, and when is it time for him or her to go? The experts at the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (ASPCA) have some answers.
Beautiful Easter lilies can be deadly news for your cats, and the FDA is warning pet owners about the dangers.
The white, trumpet-shaped Easter lily, a popular gift and home decoration, symbolizes Easter and spring for many people. But you need to be careful about these blooms, including Tiger, Asiatic, Day and Japanese Show lilies.
While many people have an opinion on whether animals can help to improve wellbeing and care for patients in hospitals, does anyone really know whether there are benefits both for the patients and the animals themselves?
There’s a new clinical design to determine whether medicines designed for cats are actually doing the job.
In designing the new method, researchers from North Carolina State worked to overcome the “placebo effect” in a pain-management study of cats. Evaluating the effectiveness of a medicine is difficult when it comes to cats, who may not reveal the pain they are suffering and who also are resistant to taking medication.
Here, adapted with permission from an article by the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, are guidelines for protect your pets when it’s cold outside:
Obese cats could lose weight if their owners feed them smaller wet meals throughout the day, according to new research from the University of Illinois.
But those methods, which work for humans as well, may be hard to implement.
Nearly half of all Americans make New Year’s resolutions and of those, almost 40 percent are related to weight loss. This year, why not include pets in a weight management program to ensure they’re at a healthy, optimum weight? One type of tool veterinarians use to rate the body condition of dogs and cats is a scale one to nine, with a healthy pet being in the four to five range. When a pet is at a healthy weight, a pet parent should be able to feel the ribs, but not see them.
