Pet Talk October

Great fall to you all!

Thank you one and all, who helped make our 24^th Annual Cat Castration Clinic a great success.  We neutered 197 male cats that morning.  Thanks again!

Neutering the guys helps decrease the cat population some but in order to have a significant effect on the number of feral cats affecting our environment we really need to spay our females.  Call the clinic with questions in regards to our pro bono spay programs.  In only takes a very few number of male cats to produce dozens and dozens of kittens, subsequently spaying the females can drastically decrease our feral cat numbers.  Call today 608-723-6366.

We are posting a Satisfaction Survey on our website.  Please visit us at www.lancastervetclinic.com scroll to the bottom of our home page and take the survey.

Monday, October 31^st is Halloween.  We will all be sporting a costume.  Anyone entering the clinic dressed up or having their PET toting a costume will get at least a 10% discount on all purchases!  Please come in and enjoy the festivities. 

Check out “Ask the Expert” on www.swnews4u.com with any questions in regards to your pets. It is a quick, easy way to get some answers for all your animal questions. 

Thank you, Southwest Wisconsin, for making our jobs a joy each and every day.   Have a nice week.

Cari

On  Saturday, October 8th 2011 we will castrate all male cats brought to the clinic from 7:00am to Noon!  Vaccinations, declaws and deworming will be available at discounted prices.  Please bring your cats in carriers and plan on waiting for them.  Your cats will be asleep when you take them home.   All are weclome, you do not have to be a client of Lancaster Veterinary Clinic.

Meet Heidi. Hiedi is a 5 month old pygmy goat belonging to Denise and Danny Miller. She had an intestinal problem that caused her to get severely dehydrated. When she first came into the clinic she could barely lift her head. Six hours later these pictures were taken. We gave her IV fluids and other medications and she came around beautifully. So great that she chewed through her IV lines and we had to put the cone on.
Heidi is doing great! We dehorned and vaccinated her and her sisters the other day. When I dehorn these little guys I use a potent nerve block and leave follow up pain medications. I always make sure they will nurse or eat after the procedure because that indicates the nerve block worked. As always, a younger animal recovers from surgery more quickly and these gals were hopping around well that afternoon, after a nap.
If you have, or are interested in getting, pygmy goats, do some research. They are inquisitive creatures that like to get into things. They are prolific eaters and will clean out a pasture or yard very, very well, if you can keep them in it. We recommend vaccinating them with a Clostridial vaccine to help prevent tetanus, and other Clostridial diseases. We recommend dehorning your pet goats and regular deworming
is always needed to keep these guys healthy. If you have any questions in regards to goats and husbandry of goats as pets or production animals give us a call, 723-6366.608-723-6366
June 2009.

Heidi after treatment

Hello to all,

This is my first memorial and hope that you enjoy it.  I want to commemorate a special dog to be our first memorial on our new website.  Lynyrd Schult was euthanized on May 8, 2009 after a battle with urinary bladder cancer.  He was a neutered male yellow Labrador Retriever dog.  He was a big teddy bear.   We will remember Lynyrd as being a wonderful dog that tolerated everything we did to him with grace and dignity.  He would come into the clinic, give us a wag then find one of his two favorite spots and lay down.  He loved to lay in the exam room, in front of the chairs.  He also loved the surgery room under the window.  When we knew he was staying for awhile we just put a blanket down in one of those two places and there he stayed.  He would acknowledge us when we went by and raised his head a bit if we brought in another animal, but he never moved.

We used to say, “He thinks he is hiding,”  and “If he doesn’t move, we won’t see him.”  We loved Lynyrd and feel blessed to have been his doctors and nurses.  We know that he is waiting at the Rainbow Bridge for Wanda, Larry, Ace and Pooch, (along with all his cats) I can’t wait to see him again someday.  I will be able to pick this guy out from all my patients, he was one of a kind.

Take care and please enter your own memorials and testimonials!  We love to hear from you all.  If you want to enter a picture you can email it to us at contact@lancastervetclinic.com put your name, the pet’s name and any other info you want and we will attach it to your memorial.

Cari

Think spring and it will come.  I write this on a dreary, wet, cold day and say to myself, “Where are the May flowers?”  I digress however and will jump right into this month’s subject.  This month is a public service announcement to let you know about a few dogs we have at the pound that need good homes.  As you know, we keep the dogs for 1 week then try to take them to the Dubuque Humane Society to give them a second chance.  We do this on donations from you in the community, so thank you one and all that have put some cash in our jar.  Also, thanks has to go out to Amanda Simpson and her family.  They do all of the traveling to Dubuque on their own time and with their own gas.  If you see one of these folks, make sure to say thank you!
So you have found our webpage if you are reading this online so congrats and enjoy.

Cari

Good spring everyone.  It is coming, it will happen.  Along with spring comes all the parasites that have been waiting patiently for the snow to melt. 
Tick, fleas, and mosquitoes to name a few.  Today some great tidbits on ticks.
Did you know that they estimate four types of ticks in the USA? 
Did you know that these ticks can transmit organisms that lead to Lyme disease, Ehrlichia, Rocky Mountain spotted fever and tick paralysis through their bites?
Did you know that ticks require a blood meal during each life stage?
Did you know that they have three life stages?
Did you know that some ticks can lay between 3,000 to 6,000 eggs per batch? 
Did you know that some ticks can lay multiple batches a year?
Did you know they estimate for every 1 tick you see on your pet they were exposed to 1000 other ticks ?

This month I would like to talk about prevention.  We all know prevention is key in human medicine.  That also applies to veterinary medicine.  The best advice I can give to keep your animals healthy and cut costs is to do regular annual checkups and flea, tick and heartworm prevention. Taken as a whole, doing these things can seem expensive up front, but by sacraficing these to save money the amount of cost and heartache that can accrue is devastating.

When we do annual checkups we are looking and listening to the animal’s breathing, heart, and pulse. We listen for heart murmurs, crackles or wheezes, anything that sounds strange in the chest and lungs.  We look at the eyes, ears and nose for any signs of infection, lumps, masses, or changes.  We always try to look at the mouth and assess the gums and teeth.  Peridontal disease is a silent killer in the animal world and unless we can look in those mouths, we don’t find it.  We check the skin for lumps, areas of hairloss, crusts, or itchiness.  While checking out the animal’s muscles and joints we are asking questions about how they eat, drink, go to the bathroom.  We want to know if there is anything different or if they are taking medications.  When we find something wrong we can address it before it gets out of hand.  Twice last week I had people decline exams to return in a week for problems such as a lump that came on “suddenly” and an ear  infection that was getting out of hand.

Please, also, consider purchasing the heartworm test and preventations for fleas, ticks, and heartworm.  If your animal becomes flea infested, contracts lymes (from ticks) or heartworm the amount of damage to their health is severe, often life threatening, and the damage to your pocketbook, alarming. We empathize with the economic situation everyone is in and can’t make clear enough preventing an issue, by finding it early, saves so much in the end.
Thanks and take care,
Cari

Dental month continues through February
Half price Heartworm test day is April 2nd, 2009.
Call for info on our first annual nail trim day.