Looking After Your Pet

General guidance for dogs, cats and rabbits, written for our local conditions in the Driftless region of southwest Wisconsin. If your pet is unwell, please call us rather than relying on general advice.

Routine care at a glance

Parasites

Intestinal worms. Adult dogs and cats need deworming every three months. Puppies and kittens need it far more often: every two weeks from two weeks of age until twelve weeks, then monthly until six months. Get the dose right by weighing your pet rather than guessing, and reweigh growing animals each time.

Fleas. Fleas are active year round here but peak from November to March. Treat every pet in the household on the same day, every month, and wash bedding in hot water. If you are still seeing fleas after a month of treatment, the usual cause is an untreated animal in the house or a product applied too infrequently, not resistance.

Ticks. The Driftless is deer tick country, and this is the parasite that costs our patients the most. Blacklegged (deer) ticks carry Lyme disease, anaplasmosis and ehrlichiosis; American dog ticks and lone star ticks are here too. They are active any time the ground is above freezing, which in a mild winter means most of the year, so we recommend year-round prevention rather than a season of it.

Check dogs after every walk in tall grass or brush — behind the ears, in the armpits and groin, between the toes. Remove a tick with fine tweezers close to the skin, pull straight out, and do not use heat or petroleum jelly. A tick attached for less than 24 hours rarely transmits Lyme. We screen for tick-borne disease annually with a 4Dx test, at the same visit as the heartworm test.

Heartworm. Heartworm is spread by mosquitoes and is fatal if untreated. Treating an established infection is expensive, slow and hard on the dog; prevention is a monthly chew or a twice-yearly injection. We test every dog annually before refilling prevention. That is not a formality — a dose given to an already-infected dog can cause a serious reaction, and no product is 100 percent effective.

Dental care

Around eight in ten dogs and cats over the age of three have some degree of dental disease. It is painful, and pets rarely show it — they simply keep eating.

Signs to look for: bad breath, brown or yellow tartar along the gum line, red or bleeding gums, dropping food, chewing on one side, pawing at the mouth, reluctance to play with toys.

What helps

• Brushing with a pet toothpaste. Never use human toothpaste; it contains fluoride and often xylitol.
• Introduce brushing slowly: let them lick the paste, then touch the brush to one tooth, and build up over a couple of weeks.
• Dental diets and VOHC-approved chews reduce tartar. Ask us which ones we stock.
• Raw meaty bones can help but carry risks of fractured teeth and obstruction. Never feed cooked bones.
• Have the teeth checked at every annual visit.

Once tartar has formed, brushing will not remove it. A scale and polish under anesthetic is the only way to reset, after which home care keeps it away.

Weight and feeding

Roughly four in ten pets we see are overweight, and it shortens their lives.

How to check at home

• You should be able to feel the ribs easily with flat hands, without pressing.
• Looking down from above, there should be a visible waist behind the ribs.
• From the side, the belly should tuck up rather than run straight or sag.

Practical steps

• Measure meals with a cup or scales instead of estimating.
• Treats should be no more than 10 percent of daily food. Vegetables like carrots and green beans work well as low-calorie treats for dogs.
• Feed to the pet in front of you, not to the number on the packet, which is a starting point only.
• Weight loss should be slow: about 1 to 2 percent of body weight per week.

Bec runs free technician weight checks. Most owners find monthly weigh-ins the single most useful part of a weight-loss program.

Foods that are toxic to dogs and cats: chocolate, grapes and raisins, onion, garlic, leek, chives, macadamia nuts, xylitol (in sugar-free gum, peanut butter and some baked goods), cooked bones, bread dough, alcohol, and any human medication not prescribed for them. Lilies are lethal to cats, including the pollen.

Summer and heat

Summer afternoons here run into the 90s °F with high humidity, and heatstroke can kill within 30 minutes.

• Walk dogs before 8 AM or after 7 PM in summer. If the sidewalk is too hot for the back of your hand for five seconds, it is too hot for paws.
• Never leave a pet in a parked car, even briefly, even with windows down.
• Provide multiple water bowls in shade, plus a shallow clam-shell pool for dogs.
• Flat-faced breeds, overweight pets, black-coated dogs, rabbits and older animals overheat fastest.
• Rabbits are far more at risk from heat than cold. Bring hutches into shade, add frozen water bottles wrapped in a towel, and keep airflow moving.

Signs of heatstroke: heavy noisy panting, bright red gums, drooling thick saliva, wobbliness, vomiting, collapse. Wet the pet with cool — not iced — water, put a fan on them, and drive to us immediately. Call on the way.

Winter

Winter does more damage here than summer, and it lasts longer.

• Antifreeze (ethylene glycol) is the most dangerous thing in a Wisconsin garage. It tastes sweet, a few tablespoons will kill a dog, and by the time a cat shows signs the kidneys are usually already gone. Clean up every spill, store it sealed, and call us immediately on any suspicion — treatment works only if it starts within hours.
• Road salt and de-icer burn paw pads and cause vomiting when licked off. Rinse and dry paws after walks, or use boots.
• Frostbite takes ear tips, tail tips and paw pads. Short-coated, small, old and very young dogs should not be out long below 20 °F. Cats and rabbits kept outdoors need an insulated, draft-free shelter and unfrozen water.
• Cats sleep in warm engine bays. Bang on the hood before you start the car.
• Ice on the river and on ponds will not hold a running dog. Keep them leashed near open water.
• Arthritic pets stiffen badly in the cold. Tell us if your older dog is slower in January than in July — that is treatable, not just age.

Snakes

Timber rattlesnakes and eastern massasaugas live in the bluffs and prairies of the Driftless, and dogs find them from spring through early fall, especially on rocky south-facing slopes and around woodpiles.

Signs of a bite are usually local and dramatic: rapid painful swelling, puncture wounds that ooze, bruising, drooling, and collapse in a badly envenomated animal. Most bites are to the face or a front leg.

If you suspect a snakebite: keep the pet as still and calm as you can, carry rather than let them walk, do not apply a tourniquet, do not cut or suck the wound, do not ice it, and do not try to catch or kill the snake. Call us on the way in. We stabilize, give pain relief and fluids, and refer for antivenom (CroFab) — a clinic our size does not stock it, and getting you to Madison quickly matters more than anything you can do at home.

Rabies

Rabies is present in Wisconsin wildlife, mainly in bats, and it is always fatal once signs appear. That is why the vaccine is required by law rather than merely recommended.

• A bat in a room with a pet, or a pet that has caught a bat, counts as an exposure even with no visible bite. Do not release the bat if you can safely contain it — it may need testing. Call us and the county health department.
• Skunks, raccoons and foxes are the other species worth worrying about. Any bite or scratch from wildlife means a call to us the same day.
• Keep every dog and cat current, indoor cats included. An unvaccinated pet exposed to a suspect animal faces a long strict quarantine, or worse; a currently vaccinated one usually needs a booster and a 45-day observation at home.
• Wisconsin requires rabies vaccination for dogs by 5 months of age, and a current license. Bites to people are reportable, and an unvaccinated biting animal is quarantined for 10 days.

Other seasonal hazards locally

• Foxtails and grass awns from midsummer: check between toes, in ears and under armpits after walks in dry fields. They migrate inward and do not work their way back out.
• Rodenticide: anticoagulant baits and, worse, bromethalin and cholecalciferol baits are common on farms and in outbuildings. All are emergencies, the treatment differs by type, and the packet tells us which one — bring it with you.
• Blue-green algae in ponds and slow river backwaters in late summer: do not let dogs swim in or drink from water with a green scum.
• Bee, wasp and hornet stings: usually mild swelling, but call us if the face swells or breathing changes.

Puppies and kittens

• First visit at 6 to 8 weeks for a health check, vaccination and deworming.
• The socialization window closes around 14 to 16 weeks. Expose them to as many people, surfaces, noises and situations as you can, in a positive way, before then. Carry unvaccinated puppies rather than skipping the exposure entirely.
• Puppy class runs over four Wednesday evenings each quarter.
• Rabies vaccination is required by Wisconsin law for every dog by 5 months of age, and dogs must be licensed with the county or municipality. We issue the certificate and can help with the license paperwork at the same visit.
• There is no law requiring microchipping in Wisconsin. We recommend it anyway — it is the only identification that cannot fall off. Register the chip and keep your phone number current with the registry, which is the step most owners forget.
• There is no law requiring spaying or neutering either. We recommend it for pets not in a planned breeding program, and we will talk through timing, which varies by breed and size.

Senior pets

Cats over 10 and dogs over 8 benefit from a six-monthly check. Aging changes are easy to miss at home and easy to mistake for "just getting old".

Things worth mentioning to us: drinking more or urinating more, weight loss with a good appetite, stiffness or reluctance on stairs, changed sleep patterns, night vocalising, lumps that have changed, bad breath, or coughing.

Arthritis is very common and very treatable. Non-slip mats, ramps instead of jumps, raised food bowls, a warm bed away from drafts, keeping weight down, and modern pain relief make a large difference.

When to call us rather than wait

Call the clinic on (608) 555-0147, or the after-hours mobile (608) 555-0182, if your pet is not eating for more than 24 hours, is vomiting repeatedly, has diarrhoea with blood, is drinking noticeably more, is limping and not improving after 48 hours, has an eye that is squinting or cloudy, is scratching so much that skin is broken, or is simply behaving in a way you know is not right for them. Owners are usually correct about that last one.

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