Mend Your Diet

Does anyone else absolutly love this website for pet health questions?

I came across this site a while ago and really it has proved to be the greatest resource on pet health information I have been able to find online. I use it all the time to help friends and family and myself answer questions about pet problems that our vets have no answered adequately, or just to get a second opinion on treatments or symptoms etc. Its called Marvista Vet Pet Web Library.. http://www.marvistavet.com/html/the_pet_web_library.html If you havent checked it out before I suggest you do it is very helpful and informative resource for pet owners. Thanks to this site I have been able to find out many things and when my dog got an Aural Hematoma I was able to know all the options, treatments, causes etc and I was able to walk into the vet office informed and knowledgeable about my dogs problem. Anyone else use this site and love it? I say kudos to the people who made it its the best thing I have found to help me keep involved and informed about my pets health.

Public Comments

1. I didn't know about it but I will be sure to check it out! I have 2 Shelties that are both under a year and constantly have health questions so I'm sure it'd come in handy. Thanks.
2. neaver heard of it....hahaha
3. lol Is this the Book of Shadows* for Dogs?
4. I have two cats so that's where I spend most of my time. I do agree with you on this point. There are a few nutjobs, but most people here really try to help.
5. Yes I just love this site, it was very informative for me about my kitty, also alot of good Internet solutions to many of my problems, I check it out every day.
6. I love that one. thanks for spreading the word. I often use vetinfo.com ..vetinfo is a bit easier for me to find things, and has several case discussions on each topic, with alternate treatments. It is written in layman's language. I only put in my search word (usually a symptom) and the word vetinfo to bring up the topic on the site..Or, go to the site and use the alphabetical index..Also great cat stuff.
7. yahoo is also good because you can see many different peoples opinions instead of stated facts
8. Thank you for this reference.
9. ok i'll check it out...thanks!!!!
10. It is a great website, I use the pharmacy page often to check out side effects of meds, so I know what to what for even if I have used the med before in another dog since each dog could react differently, but no website will replace going to the vet for diagnostics to rule out or confirm a health problem, for example a dog limping can have be as a result of a large number of causes, an xray is useful for checking for a fracture or bone cancer if developed enough but that is it. that would narrow down the number of causes, and the vet would manipulate the joints to see if they are moving free without too much play and normally the cause would be a muscle strain so a vet would normally prescribe an antiflammatory and forced rest, if it does not get better than they may have to do more testing such as bloodwork to see if lyme disease or fungal infection, they may want to some scans to check nerves, re manipulate joints again to see of possible ACL tear and even then the answer is not clear, a lot of medicine is about guess work and using test to prove or disprove, and sometimes a dog may not present the normal common symptoms which can make diagnosing even harder, I had one greyhound who was hypotheroid , if I had not asked for the test my vet would never have guessed what was wrong as her symptoms were not the common ones plus she was very underweight and she was not feeling cold, instead she was always trying to cool herself down, she had no skin infection or ear infection, she had a couple of the rarer symptoms like fatigue, a very slight foot dragging which I knew from seeing her daily which the vet would have known unless I told him and from my reading I knew they could be related symptoms but they could also have been symptoms for several other diseases including tick disease, if I had not known about them being common symptoms in other diseases, I might have become a little ful of myself thinking I found the answer when my vet couldn't when in reality I just happen to pick the right test to ask for, but luckily I knew that I could be wrong If the thyroid panel came back negative I was prepare to ask for the more expensive tick panel to be done next. as I felt those would be the most likely based on my dogs life history. Do I agree, about learning and researching about diseases your dog is diagnosed with? A resounding yes!!!! Your vet may not be up on all the newest research going on with diseases or treatment methods, and some of the newer treatments can be safer. For example I have a dog with Lupus, the common treatment is daily prednisone for the rest of the dogs , which unfortanely has accumalitive side affects, it helps with the here and now but long term it takes it's toll and can shorten the dogs life span and even increase problems later which is what happen to another dog I had, so doing my own research I found a safer alternative treatment, and another health issue where new reseach has reveal large mistakes is kidney disease, the original kidney studies was done on rats(non carnivores) some 80 years ago and any vet that has went to school say 2 years ago and later will treat a dog with kidney disease bases on the rat studies with a low protein diet immediately upon diagnoses because that was what they were taught, the newer reasearch was done on dogs it has showed if very low protein is given prior to end stages it causes severe malnutrition and often the dog will die of other causes, and part of the research looked at types of protein, and it showed the protein needs to come from high quality easy to digest sources like meat not grains so the kidneys are not having to work as hard, most prescription diets make use of grain based proteins, the prescription food sompanies would have to admit their formulations are wrong and would have to add a lot more expensive ingredients into their foods which would mean a huge loss in profits that could serious hut their shares unless they were willing to jack up the price of their foods to almost double what they currently are because their current ingredients are not much better than in quality that ol roy especially with the kidney diet formula, so it is a food they have earned an extremely high profit margin on, because of that they are not willing to make changes any time, purina made a slight improvement by adding soy and removing corn to their foods to increase the protein and make is slightly more digestable which is better that Hills who is instead totally refuting the new research, even Finco's again who did the research 40 years ago when he had done his research on dogs and was bashed and silenced by the pet food manufacturers then, thankfully a few researchers came across is work and bravely did their own research despite the fact it could end their careers, also luckly that quite a number were looking at it at the same time as well as other researchers who decided to look at the effects of high protein the different research studies supported one another and Purina allowed the researchers to present their work and bring with them Finco's research at one of their nutrition symposiums, which formly acknowledged the old research based on the rat studies as wrong when it applies to dogs and cats, Innova was the first company to take a gamble on that research that should high levels of meat protein will actually help improve kidney health and came out with a food called EVO at 42% protein with no grains, many raw feeders especially show people were delighted as making trips to shows would be easier since they would not having to source meat when going out to shows, a few pet owners also wanted to try based on the things they were hearing despite many people saying it would harm the dogs kidneys or like myself who had a dog that was having problems digesting grains but every year for a bit I was running bloodtest to comfirm that no kidney damage was occuring, when I seen lot of the new research I also switched my other dogs over to the EVO, I have been feeding over 3 years and my vet is impressed with the health of my seniors, recently my vet did a series of x-rays on my oldest who is nearly 10 to check for arthritis and was really impressed her joints look like that of a 5 year old dog, and she has muscle tone and weight of a younger dog as well, and she has the energy to be the playmate of my 1 year old pup, so ongoing research on trying to find out what is best for your pets is worth it regards if they have health problems or not just by extending the quality of their lives or knowing that something is signalling a problem that is worth having checked out by a vet before it becomes a serious health problem. If your interesting in other good health information links A lot of research is dedicated to greyhounds worldwide, some to provide they best performance through care and nutrition and also with dealing with health issues which really applies to any dog this research forum has almost 500 topics but you need to register for free to view http://www.greyhoundresearch.com/research_articles.php?cid=6 The Merck Veterinary Journal http://www.merckvetmanual.com/mvm/index.jsp http://www.petshealth.com/dr_library/index.html