Pet Meds: Keeping Your Pet Fit!
A dog coughing at night or a dog that is sedate due to sickness is not a very happy sight! Unless you want the blue cross members at your heels shouting ‘boo’, you would want your pet, be it a dog, a cat or birds (am just assuming that one wouldn’t prefer tigers and lions in their houses) to be hale and healthy.
Forget blue cross! Most pet lovers would care more about their pets than they care about fellow family members! But people, who are new to handling pets, need to realize the fact that the health of the family will be affected adversely if their pets get sick!
Pet Meds
Regular visits to a pet medical center is recommended for keeping your pet healthy, as it is not easy to know that your pet is sick in some cases till the illness becomes serious! A pet is vulnerable to small mites, ticks and fleas. A host of parasites also look to prey upon your pets.
The parasites live on your pet’s body and feed on their health! Most parasites are transmitted to your pets when they come in contact with other pets that are infected, which is inevitable! One would not have the heart to stop your pet from wooing its date! Would you? Some of the parasites that frequently tend to harm your pets include heartworms and ticks!
Different Ways To Administer Pet Meds
The toughest part is to administer ear and eye medications to your pets, which you might have to do quite frequently. Pet meds come in the form of normal pills or capsules and chewable pills. The best way to give medicines to your pets is through their food.
Some pets have the habit of providing resistance to ingestion of medicines, while in some cases the pets would be too sick to be able to assimilate the pet meds. In such cases, one can avoid eating the pet medicines themselves and instead go for transdermal medication.
If you know that dermis means skin, transdermal medicine should not be Greek to you! Transdermal medicine refers to medicines in the form of gel that could be rubbed on the body of your furry pets. The medicine would seep through the skin of the animal and would join the blood stream!
While transdermal medication seems a very attractive alternative to forcing your pets to take medicines, they have some disadvantages. Most of the medicines are not available as transdermal medications. This is because some of the antibiotics are required in high doses and can be harmful when taken as transdermal medicines. Some transdermal medicines come with a soy base. These medicines cannot be prescribed for animals, which are allergic to soy! The biggest hurdle to using transdermal medicine is that, there is not much proof that it works!
The Age Factor
Younger pets are not easy to handle. They are bound to offer more resistance to medicines. Some of you might try crushing the pills and adding it to their food, or giving the capsules along with the food that they are fond off! It is a good option to massage the throats of pets to make them swallow bigger pills. When the going gets tough and the pets are too resistant, you might have to go for injections! Believe me pets hate injections too!
The older pets are prone to ailments due to aging just like human beings. Treating them for arthritis with anti-inflammatory is essential. Some veterinarians suggest providing food supplements to your pets from a younger age to improve their general body health.
Taking care of your pet is as important as taking care of your own health! Awareness about the various ailments that could affect your pet and the available medications for the diseases are of prime importance, to keep your pet fit!