Daughter Claire was home over the weekend and the big news was her plan to get a new puppy. Claire took it pretty hard when her dog Darcie died over the holidays. We all took it pretty hard. Chris and I had been taking care of Darcie while Claire was away at school. I'm secretly happy about this dec...

I'm often the first stop for family and friends when their dog or cat develops some sort of medical problem. I don't mind that at all. It gives me real life issues to write about here and it makes them better informed when they do go in to see their veterinarian. I spent a while on the phone with my...

Everyone has experienced it - tummy upsets that cause vomiting and diarrhea. When we have it, we endure and sleep it off. When our pets have it - we wring our hands in misery, because it's so hard to know what to do. Naturally, if any tummy upset or other strange behavior lasts very long (my limit i...

If you read my last post you'll know we are down in Big Bend National Park for a little hiking and biking. We brought Darcie along because we couldn't find a competent dog lover to take care of her. It was nice our first couple of days here. We were riding in shorts and short sleeves on Monday. We w...

We had about fourteen friends over for Thanksgiving dinner last night. We demolished a 14 pound turkey, one cheesecake, three pies and more bottles of wine than I can mention. Add in the dressing, taters, green chile corn casserole and spinach and you can imagine no one went hungry.  Darcie did an ...

  Remember when you were a kid and Mary Poppins was popular, or maybe when you rented the movie for your kids when they were little? Supercalifragilisticexpealidocious was the word that we all went around singing as the longest word we knew. As a vet student we learned a lot of really long lati...

As I was reading my previous post on round worms I was struck by how gross the activity of these worms can be. As a veterinarian I often lose sight of what pet owners must be thinking when they read about worm larvae migrating through their dog's body, or, in some cases, the organs of the owners the...

Yvonne got a note from Greg, a frequent visitor to S&S, about an unfortunate incident involving whip worms. He was wondering if we couldn't do a little something on the subject of intestinal parasites and maybe even do an S&S Out Loud segment on this topic at some point in the future. Whip w...

One of the most interesting areas of research still ongoing at Purina is the effect that caloric restriction has on the aging process. Regular readers will recall that we have done posts on the 14 year study Purina performed with Labrador retrievers. This major undertaking confirmed studies done in ...

We've talked about excess weight in dogs, cats and people several times on the blog. It's one of my favorite topics and one that I spent a good deal of time researching when I was at Purina. The fact remains that leaner animals are healthier animals. In fact, at Purina we've proven that caloric rest...