Keeping Pets Healthy for Life During National Immunization Month

During August, our veterinarians celebrate National Immunization Month by raising awareness about the importance of vaccines for cats and dogs. Vaccinating is one of the most important components of your pet’s wellness and preventive care; vaccines are safe, simple, and extremely effective. While some health problems are unavoidable, there’s no reason to leave your pets vulnerable to the dangers of contagious diseases that we are able to prevent. With a simple schedule of vaccines, your pet will be protected from some of the most dangerous and contagious diseases.

Which Vaccinations Does Your Pet Need?

Cats and dogs receive a schedule of core (essential) vaccines and might also receive additional, non-core vaccines. Core vaccines are those that are strongly recommended and/or legally required for all pets to receive. Core vaccines protect pets from diseases like rabies, parvovirus, distemper virus, calicivirus, and herpesvirus.
Non-core vaccines aren’t necessary for every pet but are recommended based on each pet’s lifestyle, environment, and exposure risk. These include Leptospirosis, Bordetella, Influenza, rattlesnake, and Leukemia (in adults) vaccines.

Setting Up Your Pet's Vaccine Schedule

To keep the whole family safe, a pet owner simply needs to understand that pets require a combination of core and non-core vaccines on a set schedule. Your pet’s veterinarian will help you figure out the rest.
Typically, puppies and kittens begin receiving vaccines at about 6 to 8 weeks of age. To ensure their protection from disease, they then require booster shots every 3 to 4 weeks until at or after 16 weeks of age.
Once fully vaccinated puppies and kittens become adults, they will need core vaccine boosters every 1 to 3 years and non-core vaccine boosters as frequently as every 6 months. It’s also important to check with a veterinarian before traveling or relocating with your pet because different environments put pets at risk for contracting different diseases. These types of risks can be easily avoided by administering new vaccinations prior to your departure.

Signature Veterinary Services Brings the Vaccination Celebration to You!

If you’re too busy to visit a veterinary clinic or have a pet that gets anxious in new places, you can still make sure your pets are fully protected with an up-to-date schedule of vaccinations with Signature Veterinary Services. With our mobile veterinary clinic, our veterinarians will bring the vaccinations and wellness care to your doorstep! To learn more about the at-home veterinary services we provide or to schedule a preventive care appointment for your Carlsbad pet, we welcome you to contact us today.

The Golden Years: How to Help Your Pet Age Gracefully

With veterinary advances and improved nutrition, cats and dogs are living longer lives. Although we get to enjoy more snuggles and companionship than ever before, their lifespans are still much shorter than our own. Pet ownership almost always involves navigating the inevitable aging process. As a pet owner, it’s your responsibility to help your pets maintain a high quality of life well into their golden years.

How Does Age Affect a Pet's Wellness and Preventative Care Needs?

Normally, healthy adult pets visit the veterinarian for a checkup once every year. Pets should have a checkup every six months once they’ve reached about age seven (give or take a year or two depending on species and size), which coincides with the start of “seniorhood”.
During a senior pet’s wellness exam, our veterinarian will take extra care to examine your pet and screen them for conditions and diseases that are more common with age, such as:
  • Arthritis and other mobility issues
  • Cancer
  • Diabetes
  • Liver, Kidney, and Heart Disease
  • Endocrine/thyroid disorders
  • Dental disease
  • Metabolic disorders
  • Hearing and vision loss
  • Canine cognitive dysfunction
More frequent veterinary check-ups can help us detect early signs of these diseases and conditions in senior pets. Early diagnosis helps to ensure improved management and treatment options, before a problem causes considerable pain or discomfort or has a chance to progress to an advanced stage.
Your pet’s wellness exam will include a complete physical examination in addition to routine diagnostic testing. Diagnostic tests that help us detect health problems in senior pets include blood tests, urinalyses, and x-rays or ultrasound. Our veterinarian will also provide you with recommendations for modifying your pet’s diet, exercise, and environment for optimal health.

Does My Senior Pet Need to See a Veterinarian?

We recommend scheduling an appointment for your pet, if you notice any unexplained changes in your pet’s behavior or appearance, such as:
  • Weight changes
  • Appetite loss
  • Difficulty moving or reluctance to move
  • Increased thirst
  • Increased urination
  • Incontinence
  • Withdrawing from other members of the family
  • Lumps, bumps, or swelling
  • Trouble breathing or other respiratory problems
  • Increased vocalization
  • Weakness or lethargy
  • Confusion

At-Home Veterinary Care and Diagnostic Testing for Senior Pets in Carlsbad, CA

When your pet enters the golden years, help them enjoy the highest quality of life and the best health possible. With Signature Veterinary Services, your pet can receive veterinary care in or at the comfort of your own home. There’s no reason to put unnecessary stress on an aging pet with frequent trips to the veterinary clinic when we can bring our services right to your doorstep. To schedule an appointment for your aging pet, contact us today.

Protect Your Human and Furry Family Members from Zoonoses

Pets bring companionship, joy, protection, and entertainment. They keep us healthier, happier, and more active. However, understanding the potential risks (like zoonoses), along with the benefits, of pet ownership is essential for your household’s wellbeing.

What Is a Zoonosis?

Zoonotic diseases or zoonoses are diseases that can be transmitted from animals to humans. Different types of zoonoses, or illnesses that humans can contract from their pets, livestock, and wild animals include viruses, bacterial infections, fungal infections, and parasites.
Some zoonotic diseases have a significant symptomatic expression in humans while affecting non-humans very little. In people, different zoonoses cause symptoms ranging from mild to severely life-threatening.

How Common Are Zoonotic Diseases?

Zoonoses are surprisingly common. Some of the most well-known include the plague, bird flu, salmonella, rabies, E. coli, Ebola, and Zika. According to the CDC, about 60% of human diseases have a zoonotic origin and 3/4 of emerging or new diseases in humans come from animals.

How Do Zoonoses Spread Between Humans and Animals?

Zoonotic diseases are most commonly contracted when people and animals mix. They can be transmitted during outdoor recreational activities like swimming in a lake or by interacting with animals at a petting zoo, working with livestock on a farm, or playing with a parasite-infested pet.
Primarily, zoonoses are transmitted by direct contact with an infected animal, contact with a contaminated surface, through the bites of parasites (fleas, ticks, and mosquitos), by exposure to contaminated water, or by consuming raw or contaminated food.

Can the Novel Coronavirus Spread Between Humans and Animals?

While it’s suspected that novel coronavirus has a zoonotic origin, we still do not know from where it emerged. According to the CDC, a few cats, dogs, and other types of animals like tigers and ferrets have been infected with SARS-CoV-2 (the virus that causes COVID-19). Although the risk appears to be low, more research is needed to understand the exact risk of contraction and transmission between humans and animals.

Protect Yourself and Your Pets from Zoonoses

To protect your pets and your human family members from novel coronavirus and other zoonoses, practice proper social distancing, practice safe food handling procedures, wash your hands frequently, and disinfect household surfaces regularly. Provide your pets with vaccinations, parasite preventatives, keep them away from wildlife, and limit their exposure to pets from other households.
For more information about protecting pets from disease, contact Signature Veterinary Services in Carlsbad.

Eyes: windows to the soul

Eyes are remarkable. They are sensitive. They can heal quickly, but they can also deteriorate quickly.

What symptoms should prompt a visit?

  • Green or yellow discharge especially if seen multiple times a day
  • Redness
  • Squinting of any kind: this is a sign of pain!
  • Swelling or bulging of the eye
  • Trauma to the eye
  • Cat scratch to the eye: these are urgent and can be very serious injuries

What diagnostics might help determine how to treat the eye?

Eye pressure reading

This helps to diagnose glaucoma which is very painful and can cause permanent vision loss. Often this can be managed with medicated drops but it is a condition that must be monitored closely.

Tear Testing

This involves putting a small piece of specialized paper in between the eye and the eyelid for 60-120 seconds. The tears will soak up into the paper and tell us if there is sufficient tear production or if your pet is experiencing keratoconjunctivitis sicca, commonly known as “dry eye”. Dry eye is a painful condition that can cause secondary ulcers as well as discomfort in our pets. This condition can be managed with lifelong eye drops.

Eye staining

This involves applying fluorescent stain to your pet’s eye. If there is a corneal ulcer or abrasion, the stain will stick to the affected area, turning it a bright yellow/green color. The stain will also travel down the nasolacrimal duct and may come out the pet’s nose, so don’t be alarmed if/when you see fluorescent green drops! If there is an ulcer present, we must be careful about which types of eye medications we apply as certain medications can actually make ulcers worse!

What type of treatment(s) will we implement?

This depends on what we find with the above testing. It will likely be topical in nature and is usually drops or ointment. We can teach you to apply the medication at your visit.

When do we recheck?

This varies depending on the condition. If we are managing an ulcer or conjunctivitis, it should be improving in 3-5 days and we will often want to recheck in 1-2 weeks depending on the treatment protocol instituted. If it isn’t improving in the time frame discussed or if it’s worsening, we need to recheck. For life long conditions such as dry eye, the rechecks may be more frequent following initial diagnosis and once stable, less frequent. at the beginning and once stable can be a little less frequent.

The very elusive and invasive foxtail…in a feline!

Buddy, a 2 year old neutered male domestic shorthair cat with an indoor/outdoor lifestyle, presented to us as a second opinion due to swelling (as arrow depicts) along his right abdomen. The swelling had been present for several weeks and Buddy was very painful, lethargic, and had not been eating well. Radiographs (x-rays) at another hospital showed a possible mass just behind his rib cage and referral to a veterinary oncologist was recommended due to suspicion of cancer. The owner elected to have us evaluate Buddy before seeing an oncologist.
On presentation, Buddy was very painful with a large area of firm swelling on his right side. We collected samples from this area using a needle (a procedure termed “fine needle aspirate”, which is a less invasive form of biopsy compared to a tissue biopsy). The samples were submitted to our diagnostic laboratory for microscopic evaluation (cytology). The results were most consistent with an abscess. Abscess? There was no history of fighting and/or bite wounds, so what could have caused the infection in this area? We intially treated Buddy with oral antibiotics, but the swelling persisted, so we proceeded to “Phase 2”: surgical exploration of the affected area, which would reveal the culprit.
Buddy was anesthetized and prior to exploring the area of swelling, ultrasound was used to locate fluid pockets under the skin. An incision was made over the pockets and an area resembling a bubble was identified between the muscle bellies. This bubble was the abscess and the fluid was sampled to determine the type of bacteria causing the infection and the most appropriate antibiotic for treatment. The area was flushed and a small piece of plant material emerged from the wound. The culprit of the chronic swelling was a foxtail! We suspect Buddy had swallowed or inhaled the foxtail and it migrated, as they aggressively do, resulting in the observed symptoms. Buddy recovered uneventfully and, with the help of a drain to permit any remaining pus to escape, healed well.
During the healing period, Buddy took antibiotics and pain medication. The drain was removed about 5 days after the procedure. The owner kept him inside to monitor his progress. Buddy was acting more like himself as the days went on; his appetite and energy increased and he wanted to play outside again.
Foxtails are no joke! They can be very elusive and despite their small size, they can cause big problems! Regularly checking your pets, especially between the toes and around the ears, for these potential foreign bodies is key. Long-haired dogs are most at-risk as these awns will attach to their fur and embed in their skin.