Cosmetic Surgery

Ear Cropping

Ear cropping is simply put plane wrong. Cosmetic surgery, such as ear cropping should be illegal in all states. I believe this because the procedure is long and painful, and the healing process for the dog is even worse. Sadly most people choose to have their dogs ears cropped at a very young age, some even choose to do it before they spay or neuter their animal. A majority of people are looking for the aggressive look in the animal, but what they do not realize is, is the pain the animal has to go through just to look how one may want them to look.

At the hospital I see about 2-3 surgeries a week that involve ear cropping. The procedure its self is longer than a routine spay or neuter, and also the dog loses more blood. First in order to even start the procedure, the dog must be sedated before surgery, and after. This is because of the massive amount of pain the animal feels after having the procedure over. Once the surgery is over the ears are bandaged and posted in order to keep them standing straight up, in order to do this bandages must be place inside the ear, and outside of it. Placing bandages inside the ears always causes debri to build up in the ear canal and can cause an inner ear infection. After the pet is released to its owners they are required to come back in about a week for a bandage change. Before the bandage change can even began the dog must be sedated, because touching the ears is extremely painful. Sadly the majority of the dogs still cry after the sedation.

The procedure itself is unnecessary; ear cropping should be illegal in all states. The animal is put through immense pain just have an edgy more aggressive look.

The importance of Spaying or Neutering your dog

When purchasing a new pet, such as a rabbit, cat, dog or others, one thing an owner should take into consideration is spaying or neutering their new pet. The surgical procedure is performed to prevent the animal from reproducing unless the owner plans on breeding. Breeding a pet is not recommended, but if one plans on breeding, they should do extensive research into the breed and their own dogs breed line.
The spay or neuter operation is a major surgery, but is considered routine.

For Dogs:

Female dogs reach maturity between six and twelve months of age, and it not spayed, they will go into heat twice a year, which last 21 days. It is recommended that that one has their dog spayed between eight weeks and six months of age. Other than obvious reasons, such as reducing the animal population, females should be spayed because it can prevent some problems seen in older dogs which are not spayed. Some problems include:

• Mammary tumors
• Life threatening uterine infections
• Unplanned pregnancies

Male dogs reach maturity between six and twelve months of age. Male dogs have a tendency to mark their territory by urinating in their home environment, and will start to wander from home in search of female dogs after they have become mature. Male dogs should be neutered between the age of eight weeks and six months, same as a female. There are many good reasons to have your dog neutered such as:

• Prevent reproduction
• Reduce prostate problems
• Eliminate Testicular cancer
• Reduce or eliminate the urine marking behavior
• General longer life span

As shown above, there are multiple great reasons to have ones pet spayed or neutered. Overall dogs generally live longer and live happier lives once. The healing process can take up to two weeks, during this two week period dogs should avoid using stairs, running or licking at their incision site. After the two week period and the stitches are removed, the dogs can return to their normal behavior.

Curiosity gets the best of puppies

I work at a veterinarian hospital, and on a weekly basis we always get frantic phone calls from owners whose pets have eaten something they where not supposed to. It is hard to say why animals eat the things that they do.
Puppies especially are known to eat, socks, under garments, earrings, necklaces, and most recently CD's.
Kittens are likely to chew on string, toys, and buttons

Obviously upon discovering these things are missing and are in your pets stomach it can cause panic, but relax, your not alone, this happens to people all the time. Sometimes depending on what the animal ate, they may need surgery, but in most cases one must just wait to see if it will pass on its own.

Sometimes if you make your pet vomit it can danger them even more. If someone’s pet ate a CD, making him vomit could cause a lot of damage to their lining of their stomach and esophagus.

When I brought my first puppy home, I tired everything to “puppy proof”, my house, but some how he had gotten his mouth on my boyfriends X box controller, He ate two of the knobs off of the controller, and my boyfriend was not to happy about it. I knew that he must of swallowed the plastic because there was none on the floor, but thank goodness it passed on its own. The picture to the right is of him :-)

I created this blog so we can all share our similar stories about our crazy pets eating anything and everything they can get their mouth on. Feel free to post your pets pictures of their experience.