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Matt Young's blog

Crusty Rabbit Ears

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Rabbit with crusty ears

Rabbits tend to be very quiet creatures. They don’t complain unless they are in extreme pain. Just because they don’t say anything though doesn’t mean that all is OK with them. Their quiet nature also means that they don’t necessarily show obvious signs of pain or discomfort even when it is definitely present.

Take Thumper, for example. He came in because his owner had noticed lumps coming out of his ears. There were a heap of crusts that seemed to be growing out of the ear. These crusts were quite dry and firm but crumbled on the end:

The good, the bad and the ugly of dog brushes

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Jack the dog enjoying having a brush with a slicker brush

Regular brushing is a great thing to do for your dog:

  • It keeps your dogs coat healthy and knot free
  • It’s a fantastic way to feel all around to check for ticks and to see fleas
  • It encourages healthy skin.

Choosing the right brush though can be very difficult and confusing. There are a large range of brushes and combs available in all sorts of styles. Dog's coats also come in a large range of thicknesses, lengths and hair types.

A dog social with coffee

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puppy on lead

Join us this Saturday the 11th January 2014 at 4pm for a walk out to Kanahooka point and back. 

This is purely a social outing and anyone is welcome to attend. Feel free to bring a friend!! 

Don't worry if you don't have a dog. You are still welcome to join us, I have plenty of dogs so you can always borrow one ;-)

Why does my dog panic when there are fireworks?

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Mintie in a thundershirt

All dogs get scared by fireworks, that's normal. They are explosions after all! The dogs don't know that they're about to go off so are taken by suprise. Dogs with noise phobia are extremely fearful of loud noises such as fireworks, gunshots & thunderstorms. Sometimes even noises such as the lawn mower, vacuum cleaner or wind can cause a noise phobia.

Dogs with a phobia show signs such as:

Diabetes in cats acts just like diabetes in people

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Manxi rolling over for attention in a cage

Manxi the cat being held by BekkyManxi came into us a few weeks ago because she had stopped eating and was very weak and had lost a lot of weight.

To cut a long story short she had diabetes and because her body was being deprived of glucose (sugar) and when she stopped eating her metabolism had changed and she was mobilising fat. The fat had accumulated in her liver and stopped it from working properly.

10 Tips regarding ticks in dogs & cats

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tick embedded in cat skin
  1. Check for ticks every day regardless of whether you use a prevention or not.
  2. Feel for the tick, don't just look. You’ll feel them before you see them.
  3. Frontline Plus needs to be applied every 2 weeks to control paralysis ticks.
  4. There is a new tick collar for dogs we have available that doesn't smell!
  5. In cats you need to use frontline spray every 3 weeks, the spot-ons don’t work for ticks in cats.

Product review: scalibor tick collars for dogs

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scalibor tick collar in box

Scalibor is a new tick collar that is available for dogs. It lasts for 3 months against paralysis ticks and the big advantage is it has no smell! Anyone that has used older tick collars would be aware of the strong chemical smell that they let off- yuk! 

While that is a good point there are downsides to this collar. I would not use it if I regularly took my dog swimming or if I bathed my dog more than fortnightly. 

Getting old can be a sign of illness

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Sydney playing with Sarah

Our cat Sydney had been losing weight over the last 12 months. He was having difficulty moving around and was just generally stiff for some time. About 12 months ago we ran some bloods on him as I suspected that something was wrong but the tests were all normal.

2 weeks ago we reran the blood tests because his appetite had become ravenous. He's always been food obsessed but this was just ridiculous:

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