Update
Hi everyone! Long time no see!
I’m just about to go into my 4th year of vet school (it’s gone so fast!!), entering clinics after Christmas. Scary and exciting 🤩
please adopt old dogs they just wanna live out their last few years warm and comfy on your couch and bed they arent very high maintenance and are filled with love and tired
Who wants to see more healthy pugs?
I’m sure you do!
This site has loads of information about breeding pugs back to a healthier standard, including information about the Retromops programs and the altdeutscher Mops (Old German pugs, which have a similar standard of health but a different breeding program- they don’t cross in other breeds and instead only use purebred pugs selected for healthier features). If you like pugs, this is the kind of breeding you need to support! The health testing is meticulous and all outcrossing is selected very carefully- the people doing this truly love pugs and are willing to put the breed’s health before the breed standard- which sacrifices the dogs’ ability to breathe and cool off for what are essentially arbitrary aesthetic decisions.
Both of these dogs are pugs; one is an Old German pug, the other is an FCI standard pug.
Anyways, go check out that link to Pug Dog Passion if you want to see some of the work that’s being done to improve the breed and make it functional!
I have this clip from Teen Wolf saved on my computer as physicalcomedy.mov because this is my all time favorite physical comedy bit.
Nothing gets me like Michael J. Fox trying to run down a very wet & slippery hallway.
itsavetlifeforme
After a year of rotations, OSCEs and 2 written exams (in addition to the last 4 years… ), I can officially say that I am a Veterinary Surgeon!
It’s very exciting times and I look to be relocating to a different part of the UK to start a small animal job!
I’m not sure of the future of this blog at this time but thank you so much for all your support over the years!
Best wishes,
Dr Lexi BVetMed MRCVS
(How fun to be able to sign that!)
Wooooo!! Congrats!!! <3
Vets/Ecologists/People with common sense: No one should let their cat out. Literally no one. There is no excuse under any circumstances
People: Cool! This doesn’t apply to me
Anonymous asked:
How do I know my things are safe? Like I just saw you talking about hair dryers and scented products and wood and so on- like everything. I don't know where to even begin
So I’m gonna write down as much as I can think of, if anyone else wants to chime in on household hazards feel free to!
Here’s a link to my list of safe/ unsafe fruits and veggies, it’s a constant work in progress and please don’t take it as a be-all-end-all list, always check multiple sources before feeding new things to your birds:
Common Household Hazards:
Teflon/ PTFE/ PFOA - when it enters their lungs it bursts the capillaries causing the lungs to fill with fluid - found in non-stick pans, hairdryers, new ovens, microwave popcorn bags, space heaters, irons, parchment paper, light bulbs. Basically anything that has to be repellant or withstand head has the potential to have teflon in it so always double check.
Aerosol sprays - irritate the lungs, cause inflammation, depending on what’s being sprayed may enter the bloodstream and cause toxicity poisoning, etc. - cooking spray, air freshener, body sprays, carpet cleaners, perfume, household cleaners, pesticides etc.
Artificial Scents - irritate the lungs, cause inflammation, depending on what’s being sprayed may enter the bloodstream and cause toxicity poisoning, etc. - Bath bombs, contaminated essential oils, air fresheners, wax melts, candles, most household cleaners, etc.
Candles - Combustion reaction causes O2+heat to be released, the excess released mixes with naturally occurring molecules in our environment (C, H, O) creating Carbon Monoxide and Carbon Dioxide as a result of the reaction. Birds will breathe in and process twice as much CO2 + CO as we will, when exposed to the chemicals they may have lung irritations, respiratory distress, carbon monoxide poisoning, tissue damage, death - ANY CANDLE, doesn’t matter if it’s beeswax, soy or an artificial perfume-filled one. The burning alone causes enough irritation and inflammation in their lungs to stop them from breathing
Glass - Birds need time to develop essential neuropathways needed to fly, see, react, and respond to a hazard, time needs to be taken to teach them that glass is an obstacle they cannot fly through or they may fly in to it and get seriously injured - Mirrors, windows
Moving Objects - Flailing moving things are difficult to avoid especially when panicked or scared, Birds may fly in to them and get injured - Ceiling fans, swinging doors
Heat - Birds can’t sweat to release heat, without proper ways to lower their body temperature they will overheat, heatstroke, lose consciousness, brain damage - cage in constant direct sunlight, room with poor ventilation, hot lightbulbs (feathers are very flammable so keep them out of reach and replace hot bulbs with low-heat fluorescent bulbs).
General Airborne Contaminants - their lungs are extremely efficient, the tiniest amount of contaminants will pass in to their bloodstream and wreak havoc in their bodies - kitchen fumes, car fumes, laundry fumes, bathroom fumes, bird dust etc. having a HEPA filter will help reduce the risk
Gram-Negative Bacteria - Healthy birds have the capacity to process very tiny amounts of this bacteria but exposing them to a lot of it will make them sick - Your mouth/ saliva, your nose, dog/ cat saliva, dog/cat fur, dog/cat nails, dog/cat nose
Electrical - Birds will chew anything they can get their beaks on, risks of electrocution are pretty straightforwards - power cords, cables, lamps, phone chargers, etc.
Their own size - Birds are curious creatures and often wander on the ground exploring, keep a close eye on them they can easy get stepped on or caught somewhere
Heavy Metals/ Galvanized Metals - being exposed to or chewing heavy metals may cause toxicity poisoning, neurological damage, or death - Jewelry, screws/ hardware, buttons on coats, metal furniture, any metal object that you don’t know the source of should be treated as a potential risk
Unsafe Wood - treated wood or toxic wood if ingested or often contacted may make a bird ill, toxicity, etc. - there’s lots of lists online for safe bushes and trees, watch that birds don’t chew furniture of unknown sources or use wood beads on toys if you don’t know it’s source.
Water Quality - Some places use heavier doses of cleaning chemicals (chlorine, etc.) to make water safe for us to drink, may have heavier mineral contents or Ph balances that can make birds ill, or be too much for them to process - read up on your location, if you’re uncertain use a filter or buy filtered water
Household plants - Some pollens may irritate the lungs, some birds do have allergies, many plants are toxic should they breathe in the pollen or ingest the plant - read up on safe household plants to have around birds, keep uncertain plants out of reach
*takes a fat sip of my tea* what a great day to remember that you cannot “detox” your body, nor do you need to!!! your liver works very hard to do that for you (your liver, coincidentally, does not need to be “detoxed” either).
also a fantastic time to remember that detox/weight loss teas are diuretics and are designed to shit yourself to a certain weight, activated charcoal is useless unless administered as poison control by a medical professional, and please get yourself vaccinated!!!
1000storyideas
Ambient sounds for writers
Find the right place to write your novel…
Nature
Places
Fictional places
Chloe’s room (Life is Strange)
Blackwell dorm (Life is Strange)
Two Whales Diner (Life is Strange)
Star Wars apartment (Star Wars)
Star Wars penthouse (Star Wars)
Tatooine (Star Wars)
Coruscant with rain (Star Wars)
Yoda’s hut with rain ( Star Wars)
Luke’s home (Star Wars)
Death Star hangar (Star wars)
Blade Runner city (Blade Runner)
Askaban prison (Harry Potter)
Hogwarts library with rain (Harry Potter)
Ravenclaw tower (Harry Potter)
Hufflepuff common room (Harry Potter)
Slytherin common room (Harry Potter)
Gryffindor common room (Harry Potter)
Hagrid’s hut (Harry Potter)
Hobbit-hole house (The Hobbit)
Founding Fathers Garden (Bioshock)
Things
Transportation
Historical
Sci-fi
Post-apocalyptic
Horror
World
Trips, rides and walkings
Beautiful
queerenbian
@icanneverbesatisfied @maybe-mikala I HAVE FOUND THE ULTIMATE RESOURCE
I LOVE YOU FOR THIS
queerenbian
HONESTLY I CAN DIE HAPPY NOW
sketchbookthingz
This helps if you’re drawing too!
The Harry Potter ones got me through my studying 🤓📚
Prevent Overheating:
- Air conditioning if temps are over 77° F (25° C).
- Oscillating fans if no air conditioning.
- Trim away excess fur — ‘puppy’ haircuts for fuzzy bunnies.
- Relocate bunny to a cooler part of the house. Keep out of sunlight.
- Mist bunny’s ears — evaporating water will help with cooling.
- Set up a fan to blow over a bowl of cold water or a wet sheet.
- Place frozen water bottles near bunny.
- Freeze ceramic tiles for 15 minutes for bunny to lie on.
- Wrap a frozen 2L bottle with a towel as a bolster to lean against.
- Add ice to bunny’s water crock.
Recognize the signs of heat exhaustion:
- Fast, shallow breathing.
- Wetness around the nose.
- Listlessness.
- Hot ears.
- Tossing head back while breathing rapidly from open mouth.
These symptoms indicate an emergency. Take immediate action! Relocate to a cool place, keep out of sun, dampen ears with cool water, give cold water to drink, and call an experienced exotics veterinarian for further instructions.
by Amy Ramnaraine House Rabbit Society Educator, Minnesota https://rabbit.org/keep-your-rabbit-cool-in-the-summer/
This little teeny tiny was dumped at our clinic so flat I thought that she had already passed while they were trying to shove her over the counter to me. She was very hypothermic, hypoglycemic, hypotensive and dehydrated. In addition to all of this - she only weighs 280 grams!
I managed to get a catheter in that tiny leg- you can see that her hind leg is smaller than my finger! And I have small hands! It definitely was one of those things that boosts up your self esteem, especially as no one else was able to get a vein on her.
So I happily owned it and was proud of myself for a few minutes! Especially considering how cold, dehydrated and hypotensive she was. I always advise my trainees to be proud of their skills, progression and small little victories like this! We are a skilled profession and it’s good to take pride in what we do and how we’ve helped an animal.
Sometimes it’s the little things like this that can give you a 10 minute boost when you’re having a shitty day in clinic!
Life update
Hi guys! I haven’t been on here in a while!
I’ve just finished my last ever pre-clinical placement at a wildlife hospital and learned all about wildlife and rehabilitation. It was awesome!
I use instagram every day, posting vet school things, quizzes, general educational posts, my @ is @anaspiringvet.
Does anyone else have an IG? I want to follow you all :D
What we colloquially call “seed ticks” are actually the two juvenile forms (“larvae” and “nymphs”) of larger ticks. They are extremely small, but a bite from one can cause big problems! They can still carry diseases like Lyme and Ehrlichia, and due to their tiny size they are easily overlooked by even the most diligent pet owners, particularly in long-coated animals. For this reason, we recommend all dogs and cats be on a quality tick-preventative year-round, and that dogs be screened for common tick-borne diseases annually (unfortunately there aren’t any affordable in-house screening tests for tick-borne diseases in cats yet). Your local vet can advise you on which preventative products work best in your area.
I caught this one crawling one me after walking a dog out on the clinic lawn. And we hadn’t even gone near the woods or tall grass!
Interesting cat spey yesterday: young adult stray, history unknown. Not only the pyometra (an infection in the uterus, which we don’t see as commonly in cats compared to dogs) but this little lady only had one uterine horn and ovary! Seemed clinically well but no pre-GA bloodwork due to her being a trap and release stray.
AUGH?
Found while taking taking radiography after attempting to plate a very badly broken front limb. I’ve not actually seen broken sternebrae before.
Recognising silent acute pain in animals - assorted species grimace scales:
- Development of the Horse Grimace Scale (HGS) as a Pain Assessment Tool in Horses Undergoing Routine Castration
- The composition and initial evaluation of a grimace scale in ferrets after surgical implantation of a telemetry probe
- The Assessment of Facial Expressions in Piglets Undergoing Tail Docking and Castration: Toward the Development of the Piglet Grimace Scale
- The Sheep Grimace Scale as an indicator of post-operative distress and pain in laboratory sheep and the Coding and quantification of a facial expression for pain in lambs
- Mouse - How to be a pain management advocate for exotic and zoo animals (full text available - includes additional species)
- The Rat Grimace Scale: A partially automated method for quantifying pain in the laboratory rat via facial expressions
- Evaluation of EMLA Cream for Preventing Pain during Tattooing of Rabbits: Changes in Physiological, Behavioural and Facial Expression Responses
- Pain evaluation in dairy cattle
Pain is subtle - we cannot depend on vocalisations or extreme abnormal behaviour to determine if an animal is on pain - animals can cover up pain while going about their daily life. Grimace scales have been found to be reliable indicators of pain (full text available)
Unfortunately, I could not find a clear visual grimace scale for dogs, cats or birds :(
Which is a shame, because perhaps I could have recognised my own dog’s discomfort for the acute pain it was sooner:
(left: dog in pain. See eyes, tension, cheeks, whiskers, ears compared to the multiple species grimace charts above. right: tired but not in pain dog)
Perhaps my new books that arrived today might have some on dogs at least. There’s this visual blog post of a stressed dog at the vet - stress in the absence of a trigger looks very much like pain.
Here is a small comparative cats, with the link going into more detail. Not a scale but better than nothing:
Bonus round - you can get free A3 posters on recognising pain for Rabbits, Mice and Rats from the National Centre for the Replacement, Refinement and Reduction of Animals in Research. My rabbit specialist vet has the rabbit one!
Being able to recognise pain in our patients is really important! We often use the modified Glasgow pain score which I will find a link for when I’m not on mobile. I know metacam definitely does a cat grimace poster. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a dog one though.
Easter is coming up! And it’s a terrible time for pet store bunnies!
Rabbits are marketed as “easy”, short-lived, starter pets, especially during the Easter holidays, but that couldn’t be farther from the truth! A healthy, well cared for bunny can live just as long as the average cat or dog- 10-12 years!
What’s more, they have more complex needs than a cat or a dog. Rabbits are prey animals and do not behave or show affection in the same way as predators like cats and dogs; they don’t deal well with being outside-only animals; they can get sad if they’re on their own and don’t receive enough attention; and if they’re bought as a male and female couple, they can start reproducing from as early as 5-6 months of age, and they can carry multiple litters at the same time!
They have a specialised diet (NOT carrots!), need a specialised living area (unless you want all your things to get chewed up!), and they need specialised vets! Caring for them costs as much as caring for a dog!
They’re a big responsibility!
WHY you shouldn’t feed these 10 foods to your dog
Dogs might think they’re human, but their physiology is not like ours. Humans might eat a wide variety of foods with little concern, but there are some very common human foods which you should not feed to your canine companion. You’ve probably seen the foods on this list before, but this is WHY these foods should not be fed to dogs.
Chocolate, Theobromine and Caffeine:
Everybody’s heard that chocolate is bad for dogs, and it’s true. Chocolate contains a compound called Theobromine. Theobromine is a type of compound called a methylxanthine, and another methylxanthine you might be more familiar with is caffeine. We know quite a lot about these compounds, as humans use them both medicinally and recreationally. The long version is that they all inhibit phosphodiesterase and antagonise adenosine receptors. The short version is that they increase muscle activity, including the heart, and stimulate the central nervous system.
This presents as dogs that have fast and irregular heart rates, high body temperatures and increased muscle activity that can progress to seizures.
It takes a reasonable amount of chocolate to poison a dog. One M&M isn’t going to do it. For a 35kg dog it’s going to take at least 3500mg of theobromine, which is about 5kg of typical milk chocolate. But only 1.2kg of dark chocolate or 600g of cooking chocolate, which is possible.
A 10kg dog needs much less. 1.5kg of milk chocolate would do it, which is only about 3 large Easter Bunnies, or 300g of dark chocolate, which is one packet from the cooking isle.
Chocolate is super tasty, dogs will absolutely gorge themselves on all chocolate available, so it’s not too difficult to poison smaller dogs with it.
And even if you get the dog through the toxicity, the high fat content of chocolate can go on to cause other gastrointestinal problems.
Onions & Garlic:
Yes, I said onions AND garlic. All allium species contain the same potentially toxic compounds, whether raw or cooked. That goes for spring onions too, it’s just really difficult to convince a dog to eat enough of them to be poisoned. These plants cause a Heinz body anaemia by inducing oxidative damage to the surface of the red blood cells, and for some reason breeds of Japanese origin like the Akita and Shiba Inu seem particularly prone to this toxicity.
It usually takes 10 to 15g per kg of body weight to poison a dog, but those breeds can be affected by as little as 5g per kilo. So for a big, 35kg dog, that’s about three medium sized onions.
Poisoning can happen all in one go, or it can happen by eating small amounts over a longer period of time, which is why it’s infuriating to see garlic being suggested as a natural remedy for things.
Bad cases will have to be treated with a blood transfusion as there is no direct antidote. And for interest, there are other things that can cause Heinz body anaemia too, like zinc.