When we adopt a dog or a cat, generally when they are small, we often hear doctors talking about worm removal. The dog must ingest a tablet 3 to 4 times, depending on the instructions given by your vet. 

But what exactly is intestinal worming? Generally, we are talking about a large amount of worms that will include many different species. They enter in our pets organism and live as parasites, removing nutrients from the organism and causing different types of problems in our animal. 

Lets try to understand what worming is and why it is important to remove the worms in our dogs and cats. 

intestine worms

There are many type of worms that can become parasites in our animals body. There are so many that is it impossible for us to describe them and mention them in this page. Due to this, we will only be talking about strongyles and roundworms. We will be talking about tapeworms and non intestinal localized worm such as heart worms in another separate article.

There are many worms that live their whole life inside an animals organism whereas others tend to live outside the animals body. Roundworms are part of the first groups of worms, strongyles of the second one. 

Roundworms

For Roundworms, the most common type are the Toxocara canis which is specific for dogs and the Toxocara cati and Toxocara leoninca which is more specific for cats. 

These worms might also affect humans and in certain circumstances lead to diseases in our organism. 

Roundworms are very persistent and are not satisfied with parasitizing the intestine only. They often take a good walk around the dogs and cats body, producing damage where they can. 

They have tiny eggs that are undigested by the dog and the cat and are therefore released in its feces. They remain in the environment for a lot of time as they are very strong and resistant. If another animal eats the infected feces, the eggs will hatch inside the other animals intestine. They then start to migrate around the newly infected victim. They start from the intestine, then to the liver, then pass to the caudal vena cava (inferior vena cava in humans) and finally end up in the lungs.

Do they actually stop there? no they don't. They go through our bronchi and trachea to eventually end up in the throat. At this point the animal will notice them in the mouth and will swallow them again. They then go back inside the organism to the stomach and eventually in the intestine where they finally stop and start reproducing, producing eggs.

In all of this process the animals organism will react. If the animal had previous contact with these worms in the past they will try to fight them so that they can stop in the liver without proceeding further. 

But (there is always a but) if the dog is pregnant, the worms will proceed towards the placenta and infect the new baby inside the mother before birth. If we are talking about a cat, the worms will move towards the breasts, infecting the newly born baby through the milk assumption. 

Ill let you imagine what a migrant worm would do in all of this process through the organism: hepatitis, abdominal pain, pulmonary problems, diarrhea...

If the adult worms which are found in the dogs intestine eat food and produce eggs, these will also be visible in the feces with a microscope inspection at the vet. If the worms are in great quantities, some of them will die and it is possible to observe them in the feces with naked eye as long and white.

strongyles 

Amongst the strongyles that infest our animals body we find Ancylostoma caninum present in the dog and Ucinaria Stenocephala which will affect both dogs and cats. 

These worms live outside the animals body for a period of time and feed themselves until they are ingested by the animal. They then copy the exact same round about the roundworms we mentioned above did. They are however shorter and much more dangerous. In facts, these worms do not feed on the food that the dog ingests but instead they have a sharp mouth opening full of teeth that will pierce the intestine, sucking on the blood. 

Besides all of the rest we have other tragic consequences such peritonitis or hemorrhagic diarrhea which will lead to anemia. 

How to prevent them

There are some special tablets or vaccines you can give your dog to prevent and kill worms in their organism. These must be prescribed from your vet. In order to prevent these in children (very important) it is very important to clean your pets feces and cats litter box as they are domestic and will stay in the house with us throughout the day. We cant really prevent other external factors that might have worm eggs but we can avoid places which are crowded with dogs. (or simply avoid places where owners don't pick up their pets feces) 

Dogs are more affected by these worms because they tend to lick on the floor more often than cats, which are more wary. 

The removal or prevention of these worms is most likely to be done by your vet, generally 2 and 4 weeks after birth. The treatment then goes on every 45 to 60 days up to 5 to 6 months. It is also very important to remove the worms  from the mother before and after birth (to avoid the passage of the worms through the milk) 

The medicine used to remove these worms can be easily purchased in your local pharmacy, with a very accessible price. This medicine will be able to kill all the worms we mentioned earlier. It is so easy, that this process must be done without hesitation to assure our pets health.

During the latest years, there have been various discussions on alternative medicines. In particular, many people tend to go for Bach flowers: a natural remedy both for us and for our animal

Tuberculosis is known to be one of the most common diseases. For centuries now, health authorities achieved a minimized number of infections and installed safety precautions to avoid it. 

However, during the last years, migration from highly infected countries such as Africa have increased the chances of getting tuberculosis and since this is a disease that affect both humans and our animals, it is important for us to know how to prevent it. 

False pregnancy or phantom pregnancy is very common in female dogs. However, rumors and false myths about this situation circulate around the internet. Lets find out what this is really about.

Chronic renal failure is a common problem in every cat, besides its species and age. Today we will be talking about a pathology that has to be treated with the right precautions, as it can also lead to very severe symptoms. Let’s investigate what we can do when out cats kidneys stop working properly.

What is chronic renal failure?

Renal failure is a pathology that affects out cats kidneys.

To understand what is going on, we must understand the role of the kidney in the body first.

Kidneys are two identical organs that connect to the bladder through some thin tubes called the ureters. Their main role is to act as a blood sieve to clean it and obtain useful substances.

Inside the kidneys, there are blood vessels, which are constantly flooded by all the blood content present in our body.

This blood is filtrated by some specific structures inside each of the kidneys, also called nephrons. We count approximately 200.000 of these in our cat and their role is to grab all of the waste products from the blood every day and eliminate them through urine.

Therefore, the main role of the kidneys is to eliminate all of the useless substances present in the blood through urine. An excess of these substances can be dangerous such as urea or creatinine.

Besides this role, the kidneys also have to regulate the correct water balance, salts, phosphate, calcium, potassium and other substances diluted in blood names electrolytes.

Other than that, kidneys also produce a very important hormones named renin. This hormone collaborated to maintain a controlled blood pressure level. If we have a blood pressure fall, the kidneys will produce more renin to increase it again and regulate it. 

In renal failure, your cat’s kidneys will start to damage gradually. In particular, nephrons start to turn off, just like a switch, until the levels of active nephrons will reduce even more every time.

If fewer nephrons are available to filtrate the blood, the more effort the active ones will have to put in order to filtrate the blood. This does not lead to optimal results.

At this point, we would come across an accumulation of waste deposit in the blood, which is unable to be eliminated by the kidneys. Electrolytes would also undergo a change in their balance.

Symptoms

The main problem with renal failure is that symptoms are not always immediately visible in our animal. They could only be visible when the kidneys are compressed at about 2/3 of their total functionality.

The most common symptoms mentioned by owners of cats are:

• Drinks much more water;
• Urinates often;

• Vomits frequently;
• Sometime he eat more and sometimes less;
• Refuses to eat;
• Loses weight quickly;
• Always tired and poorly active ;
• Fur seems dry and bristle;
• Has some wounds on the mouth;
• Breath smells something like urine;
• Breathes heavily.

When the situation is beyond saving, the kidneys are severely damaged and are unable to produce urine. Therefore, the waste substances in the blood will accumulate in the body until serious consequences.

At the last stage of this failure, your cat might experience coma, convulsions and tremors.

Causes

Renal failure usually does not have a specific cause but some different factors might increase the probability of experiencing it:

• diet full of proteins and sodium;
• poor quality diet with dry products only;
• Does not eat enough wet products nor water;
• Bacterial gingivitis, which might contaminate the blood, ending up in the kidneys;
• Renal traumas ;
• Tumors ;
• Already existing diseases such as FIP or immune-mediated glomerulonephritis;
• Renal infections;
• Leptospirosis;
• Urinary track stones ;
• Genetic predisposition ;
• Specie predisposition, especially in Siamese, Birnani, Balinese, Abyssinians.

Diagnosis

An early diagnosis is the best weapon we can use against renal failure in these cases. By doing this, we allow our pet to life a healthy and long life, besides this problem.

From the start of the symptoms, the vet will proceed with some blood and urine tests to analyse the electrolytes and to analyse the eliminated substances from the kidneys such as urea and creatinine. The amount of urine released is also taken into consideration; if the urine mass is less than expected, there are probably not enough waste products eliminated which means there are more left in the body.

In some cases, an ultra sound or radiography is also needed to evaluate the kidneys dimension. As well as presence of cysts, tumors or traumas in the nearby area.

The treatment

Renal failure can be treated successfully if the functionality of the kidneys are still at 80-85%. In the rest of the cases, we must appeal to a maintenance treatment to keep the problem under control.

The main therapies provide:

• vomiting medications;
• Forced hydration by intravenous or subcutaneous drip;
• Vitamin B supplements;
• Medicines to control blood pressure.

The last resource available to treat renal failure would be haemodialysis and kidney transplantation. Vets rarely suggest these options as they can lead to various problems.

Firstly, we are not ready scientifically to obtain organs from donating cats.

Haemodialysis is the process of renewing all of the blood content in the body with the use of a specific machine to clean it. In the veterinary field, this is still very rare, due to the machinery costs and because it is quite difficult to keep the cat still for a long time during the process.

For this reason, many vets suggest rich periodic intravenous insertions of rehydrating substances, which enables to dilute the blood, helping the production of urine.

What do I do?

The best tip for an owner of a cat with this problem is definitely to encourage a larger water intake and to provide a specific diet.

Try to purchase a small water fountain for animals to encourage them to drink fresh and clean water everyday thanks to special active filters.

Choose a specific diet for animals with this problem. It must have some specific features as well as being of an excellent quality brand.  

By doing this, you will assure a good and long life expectancy for you cat, learning to live with this problem.

 

Fever is one of the main reasons why we bring our pet to the vet. But what exactly can the symptoms be? lets investigate what are the causes and the treatments to fever in our pets and how we measure an animals body temperature.