First Coast Pet

Posts Tagged ‘dog health symptoms’

For a very long time, the domestic dog has been a man’s best friend, this is a well known fact. Man has always looked to their dogs for loyalty, companionship, and many attributes that even a human cannot offer. Due to a dog’s dedicated loyalty to his or her owner, ability to make even the hardest person become soft hearted, many people, like you and me, love having these four legged companions around for as long as possible.

Unfortunately, the health of a dog is as at much risk of deteriorating as ours is, and when our pets’ health is on the verge of being in danger, we should all be aware of our dog health problems so that we have more of a chance of fighting off the illnesses.

So let’s start investigating some of the illnesses that our dogs can pick up. There are numerous amounts of different types of dog health issues, but there are a few that are prominent:

Dog diarrhea: The same way as humans suffer from it, dogs do too. An upset stomach can be a result of food that irritates the dog’s bowels, or even a stomach bug that is going around targeting dogs.

Hip and back problems: These problems are more commonly found with taller and thinner dogs because of the inability to grow large muscles around important bones. Sausage dogs often suffer from very bad back problems because they have a very long and fragile spine that carries most of their weight.

Arthritis and general skin disease: These issues are very prominent with older dogs. As a human gets older, so will its body. Arthritis is very common with dogs, so their joints will get damaged as they grow older. Their skin can also start to weaken and then skin disease could very possibly take it’s toll.

Luckily at this day in age, dog health insurance is available, so that it will not cost an arm and a leg for your dog to be seen to by a vet. The vet will do his or her utmost to help you with any dog health questions.

As it was said earlier in this article, there are many, MANY more dog illnesses and problems that can contribute to shortening your dog’s life, which emphasizes the point that we should all be increasingly aware of the symptoms of these horrible diseases and illnesses.

Dog and puppy owners need to be sure they understand a few dog health problems basics so they can help their pets if by chance they contract one of the common dog health problems. An oldtime belief, still held onto by many people, is that if their dog has a cold and wet nose, the dog is healthy. There are no scientific basis for this belief as no one can tell from how wet or how cold a dog’s is has anything to do with hereditary heart problems, parasites, intestinal worms, blindness, deafness and every other health problems that dogs can contract.

Responsible owners should disregard such beliefs without scientific basis and focus on looking at the overall condition of the dog including regular physical checks of the eyes, teeth, ears, mouth and skin for any abnormalities that could be signs and symptoms of a particular disease. On top of that, the dog owner should be responsible enough to provide all the care and attention that their dogs need including proper nutrition, preventative medicine and good grooming to ensure that their pets will be in good and healthy condition for years to come.   

Signs Of Common Dog Health Problems

There are a number of signs and signals that might be telling you that your dog has specific dog health symptoms or problems or diseases. Dog owners need to make sure they are familiar with symptoms of potential dog health problems so they can take quick action and avoid bigger problems later on.

* Overall, a healthy dog’s coat is shiny, soft to the touch and full. With wiry coated dogs, like Australian terriers, you need to be sure that the coat is springy and has thick strands of fur. Breeds with double coats should have no indication of thinning on the undercoats.

* Redness, sores, scabs, scales, flakes, lumps and growths on the dog’s skin can be signs of health problems. The skin and coat should be free from parasites including fleas, ticks and mites. An overabundance of scartching or biting of their own skin could mean your dog is infested with parasites like mange mites.

* Just like people, if your dog’s eyes are bright and shiny, this is a good healthy sign. Around their eyeballs, dogs have an area that needs to be pink to show that they are healthy. This region is called the conjunvtiva and if its pale in color, this could mean some hidden health challenges. Make sure there are no out of the ordinary discharges seeping from your dog’s eyes, particularly nothing green or yellow.

* Bad odors and/or bloody discharge from the ears is good symptom that something is wrong. The ears should be clean with no signs of parasitic activities.

* Gum regions that have that healful pink glow to them but that may have some black coloring mixed in is a healthy sign. Pale gums might mean your dog has a problem with anemia. Reddish gums that leak droplets of blood can often be signals that there is something amiss peridontally and this combined with a rank breath odor can spell trouble with a hidden health problem.

* Going back to the age-old belief on the dog’s nose, a healthy dog normally has a cold and wet nose but this should be caused only by clear and watery discharges that are common in dogs. If a foul and colored discharge from the nose emanates, this is a sign of an abnormal condition and should be looked at. These kinds of discharges in young puppies could indicate canine distemper and may turn out to be fatal.

A few other things that indicate a healthy dog are the weight – normal for the breed, body temperature – dogs get fevers just like children, and how the urine and feces look and smell. The most important thing is to understand these symptoms of dog health problems so that the minute you spot something out of the ordinary, you can take action right away.

If you take the time to review the dog health advice available on the Internet or at your local library you will see that it is not just little baby humans that suffer from a risk of ear infections. It’s actually fairly easy to spot the warning signs that there might be trouble in there even without being an expert or taking your pet to the vet.

If you watch him or her you might notice that there is more head shaking than is typically normal for your pet. Maybe he or she is doing more scratching than you recall in and around the ears. While all mammals, humans alike will from time to time find the urge to scratch the ears. When it becomes more than normal then you should look into the causes.

It could be a dogs ear infection or it could be some form of parasitic infestation like mites or even something as mundane as having some severely dirty ears. But the only way that you are going to find out is to investigate and once you do it is fairly easy to get to the root of the issue and to come up with a combat plan to end the problem for your pet.

Dog health advice is everywhere and will help you to identify the culprit and find the appropriate solution should you decide to handle it yourself rather than visiting the vet. The bottom-line on an ear problem, whether it is an infection or an infestation is that it needs to be dealt with swiftly and decisively because the longer you take getting it taken care of the longer the dog is going to suffer and ultimately the more it is going to cost you to end it.

A dogs ear infection is something that is going to be best dealt with by using some form of medications. You really should bite the bullet here and take the canine to the vet. They are properly equipped to diagnose and handle the problem and they are the ones that will be able to make sure that it is completely taken care of so it does not reappear. Either way you need to be well informed and make sure that you take the dog health advice as seriously as if it were your own personal health.

Just like us humans dogs have an outer, middle and an inner ear and there are different types of dog ear infections that can be present in those various places. This is yet another of the reasons that a vet is your best option and its difficult to find the dog health symptoms. He can make sure that he is treating the right area.

You will notice or find that the dogs that are most susceptible to this type of issue are ones like the cocker spaniel and other dogs that tend to have floppy droop over ears. They tend to also be the hardest to treat because the ear continually covers the area and getting it to stay clean during treatment can be a difficult task.

We all know how important it is for us as humans to make it to the doctor and/or dentist. We have scheduled routine maintenance and checkups to make sure that we catch disabling problems before they become major. We carry insurance to make sure that we can do that at a fairly affordable price. So why is it that we do not afford our loyal and adoring pets the same respect and thought and follow dog health advice?

Let’s face it dog health is an important issue and we have to follow dog health advice. We say that we love our pets and yet keeping them healthy only seems to enter our mind when the canine is ailing and showing signs of trouble. It is rare these days that we as owners take the family pooch in for some well doggy care. Most of us we fairly rigorous on getting the shots and such taken care of when the four legged bundle of energy was a pup that we barely knew and yet as an aging and loved member of the family we tend to take his or her pet health for granted.

Granted, dogs tend to be rather hardy and not be in need of too much medical attention so we tend to not think as much about it as we might with a hamster or something that might be more prone to contracting something. SO it’s easy to see why pet health care may be the last thing on your mind.

However we also know that the longer something goes unchecked the more potential there is for problems and the more expensive those potential problems and dog health symptoms may tend to be. We know it with cars and car repairs. We know that the routine exams that we get as humans for our health and teeth tend to ward off more expensive problems. Face it folks if we didn’t take care of our teeth and didn’t go to the dentist regularly we would have a mouth full of expensive to fix or remove cavities.

Mans best friend really won’t complain either. He or she will continue to greet you at the door with tail wagging and giving you the unconditional love that have made dogs the animal of choice for family pets for as long as recorded time can be traced. You may not even know there is a problem until he or she begins to exhibit signs of issues such as uncontrolled bowl movements or urination. And what’s really bizarre is that if your pet has no history of such behavior and then all of a sudden starts it we have the tendency to say “Bad Dog” and punish them or put them outside like an outcast.

Remember this is your pets way of telling you something is wrong and you need to heed those signs and get him or her to the family vet immediately and see what the problem is before it becomes expensive and/or life threatening. The pup can’t say, “Hey there, I am having diarrhea from that spoiled meat that little Johnny gave me.” So as a responsible owner, the dog health advice care is up to you.

We all know how having health insurance impacts our life. We complain about the premiums until something catastrophic dog health symptoms actually happens where the policy has to pay out thousands or hundreds of thousands of dollars that we would not have had and then we are grateful for it once again.

That is until the first time they have to take the beloved four-legged family member in to see the vet to have something taken care of. At that point they see that it is expensive to have the pet taken care of. In fact in some instances it can actually cost more to have similar things done on a dog than it does on a human. Part of that is because unlike us, the dog can’t tell the doctor that this or that hurts or that he or she is experiencing this dog health symptoms or that one. It is up to the vet to run tests to find that information out. And those tests can prove to be fairly costly.

Even the cost of having a family pet put to sleep can run into a large outflow of cash. And by the time you get to the point of needing the dog health insurance it is not something that you can buy. Most vets at that point offer financing or payment options to cover something that insurance would have handled for literally next to nothing.

So you weigh the options. The family dog health against your wallet and see where your bottom line comes out. Americans are great gamblers and this decision is a gamble there is no doubt about it. Animals are generally fairly self-sufficient and as a rule don’t manage to have anything that can’t be handled well by rest and normal Mother Nature. However as we know and have seen the world is far more polluted and full of carcinogens today than it was even a few short years ago. If your dog is an indoor only pet, there is certainly less chance of strange things and dog health symptoms happening but if he or she is out of doors a lot there are more things out there in the “wild” than you can imagine that can cause serious harm to your pet.

Puppies are inquisitive and more prone to accidents and older dogs are more susceptible to old age type problems, so there really is no way to rule out an age group as not needing coverage and adherence to dog health advice.

We all know how having health insurance impacts our life. We complain about the premiums until something catastrophic actually happens where the policy has to pay out thousands or hundreds of thousands of dollars that we would not have had and then we are grateful for it once again.

But how many of you were aware that you could get a policy to cover your dog health? Not many I wager. In fact it is a subject that not many people think about. I mean they are just animals after all and we have to follow dog health advice to avoid them getting sick. That’s what many people say when they are asked if they have thought about dog health insurance.

That is until the first time they have to take the beloved four-legged family member in to see the vet to have something taken care of. At that point they see that it is expensive to have the pet taken care of. In fact in some instances it can actually cost more to have similar things done on a dog than it does on a human. Part of that is because unlike us, the dog can’t tell the doctor that this or that hurts or that he or she is experiencing this dog health symptoms or that one. It is up to the vet to run tests to find that information out. And those tests can prove to be fairly costly.

Even the cost of having a family pet put to sleep can run into a large outflow of cash. And by the time you get to the point of needing the dogs health insurance it is not something that you can buy. Most vets at that point offer financing or payment options to cover something that insurance would have handled for literally next to nothing.

So you weigh the options. The family dog health against your wallet and see where your bottom line comes out. Americans are great gamblers and this decision is a gamble there is no doubt about it. Animals are generally fairly self-sufficient and as a rule don’t manage to have anything that can’t be handled well by rest and normal Mother Nature. However as we know and have seen the world is far more polluted and full of carcinogens today than it was even a few short years ago. If your dog is an indoor only pet and you follow dog health advice, there is certainly less chance of strange things happening but if he or she is out of doors a lot there are more things out there in the “wild” than you can imagine that can cause serious harm to your pet.

Dog health insurance is not something that we like to think about. Not when it comes to our family and certainly not for the family pet. But dog health is an issue that every owner is going to face at some point in time if he is not following the dog health advice. Puppies are inquisitive and more prone to accidents and older dogs are more susceptible to old age type problems, so there really is no way to rule out an age group as not needing coverage.

If you take the time to review the dog health advice available on the Internet or at your local library you will see that it is not just little baby humans that suffer from a risk of ear infections. It’s actually fairly easy to spot the warning signs that there might be trouble in there even without being an expert or taking your pet to the vet.

If you watch him or her you might notice that there is more head shaking than is typically normal for your pet. Maybe he or she is doing more scratching than you recall in and around the ears. While all mammals, humans alike will from time to time find the urge to scratch the ears. When it becomes more than normal then you should look into the causes.

It could be a dogs ear infection or it could be some form of parasitic infestation like mites or even something as mundane as having some severely dirty ears. But the only way that you are going to find out is to investigate and once you do it is fairly easy to get to the root of the issue and to come up with a combat plan to end the problem for your pet.

Dog health advice is everywhere and will help you to identify the culprit and find the appropriate solution should you decide to handle it yourself rather than visiting the vet. The bottom-line on an ear problem, whether it is an infection or an infestation is that it needs to be dealt with swiftly and decisively because the longer you take getting it taken care of the longer the dog is going to suffer and ultimately the more it is going to cost you to end it.

A dogs ear infection is something that is going to be best dealt with by using some form of medications. You really should bite the bullet here and take the canine to the vet. They are properly equipped to diagnose and handle the problem and they are the ones that will be able to make sure that it is completely taken care of so it does not reappear. Either way you need to be well informed and make sure that you take the dog health advice as seriously as if it were your own personal health.

Just like us humans dogs have an outer, middle and an inner ear and there are different types of dog ear infections that can be present in those various places. This is yet another of the reasons that a vet is your best option and its difficult to find the dog health symptoms. He can make sure that he is treating the right area.

You will notice or find that the dogs that are most susceptible to this type of issue are ones like the cocker spaniel and other dogs that tend to have floppy droop over ears. They tend to also be the hardest to treat because the ear continually covers the area and getting it to stay clean during treatment can be a difficult task.

We are going to highlight some dog health symptoms that might prove to be helpful and hopefully enlightening and will prove to be useful as far as dog health advice to those of you that are new to pet ownership and might even shock some of you that have owned a dog your entire life.

So why do dogs get sick? If the family pooch is left out in inclement weather they are definitely more prove to getting sick. Water is another thing that can cause illness. Dogs like to lap up water wherever they find it. However standing pools of water can hold lots of disease-ridden things. SO another good piece of dog health advice here would be to make sure that your pet has a good supply of fresh water to drink.

The second most common reason for a sick dog is by human error and not reading the dog health symptoms. Dogs are known for sniffing around and getting into things. It is what dogs do. That makes them very susceptible to becoming sick from ingesting something that they shouldn’t. Environmental poisons left by the people that are their masters. Things like household bleach or antifreeze left in the garage. All of these things can make dogs get sick at the very least and can cause a very painful and ugly death.

So a really good piece of dog health advice is to make sure that anything that is down where the animal can get to it is something that won’t make you sick. That equates to using the common sense that you have acquired over your lifetime.

While it is true that a dog can eat things that would normally make a human as sick as, well – a dog – it is still not a good idea. I have seen my neighbors give rancid meat to their pet. Food that could actually be smelled from a few yards away and smelled really bad. The dog ate it, later he seemed to have to poop more than normal but no other ill effects or bad dog health symptoms. But why take the chance of killing something that you love? My rule of thumb is that if it is human food that I would not eat myself, it hits the trash and not my dog.

Water is another thing that can cause illness. Dogs like to lap up water wherever they find it. However standing pools of water can hold lots of disease-ridden things. SO another good piece of dog health advice here would be to make sure that your pet has a good supply of fresh water to drink.

If you own a dog and are a responsible pet owner, you will most likely either know what things can affect your dog or what dog health symptoms you are going to look into it at some point during the life of your pet. You might just be surprised to learn how many things out there are actually affecting dogs both down through time and more recently.

While you should certainly discuss any dog health issues and thoughts or concerns with the family vet we are going to give you some guidelines to think over right now.

The first thing of dog health advice is to start with a clean bill of health from your vet. Make an appointment and make sure that you are at a point where there are no issues with the dog. This way you know that anything strange or unusual in your pet’s behavior pattern that pops up will be cause for concern.

One of the most common health conditions that your dog might face during its life is a run it with parasitic infestations. These can cause all sorts of issues and diseases in your dog. There are parasites that attack the outside of the pet as well as internal varieties that can cause everything from discomfort to death. The external ones you are familiar with, fleas, ticks lice and mites are but a few. You can help to spot and control these pests with regular brushing and grooming of your animal. The best indication that your pet might be infested is that he or she will be constantly scratching especially on the chest and in the immediate area of the ears. Treatment options and dog health advice will vary and you can get this information from your vet when you discuss the dog health issues with him or her.

The internal parasites that can infest your pet are actually harder to detect and cure. These particularly nasty pests usually, though not always, are passed to your pet from another animal. So it is best to keep your pet away from areas where stray animals can wonder and / or come into contact with your pet. These internal parasites include Whipworms, Tapeworms, Hookworms, Heartworms and Roundworms. They are easily capable of causing a rather rapid and untimely death so you need to identify and deal with them as quickly as you can.

There are various forms of skin diseases that can affect your canine friend and mange is the most commonly found which is caused again by parasites. The treatment for this can range from baths with medicine to shots or the applications of cream and regular oral type medication such as pills.

Rabies, which is a disease transmitted through the exchange of saliva or spit,
Actually is the one disease that causes the most concern because there is no cure or treatment available. That means if your pet gets it, he will be put down.

Parvovirus, Canine Distemper, Paraifluenzan and Leptospirosis are less common and not deadly today although they are still a huge concern.