Pet Health

Help! I can tell that spring is right around the corner because my dog, Rudy, came home smelling of skunk. I wasn’t expecting that so soon and didn’t have any of the commercial stuff available so I tried the tomato juice trick that I had heard about and then he just smelled like skunk mixed with tomato juice.

I love your column and read it every week! I have four cats and recently took one of them to the vet. She said his back teeth looked very dirty and need to be cleaned. I have scheduled his surgery (yes, it is considered surgery because he needs to be anesthetized), and I know that his teeth would have been in much better shape if I had just brushed them.

My cat Otis is a beautiful sweet boy but just lately, when I go to kiss him (you betcha, right on the lips), I have been noticing that he has bad breath – really yucky bad breath. He seems OK otherwise. Should I be worried about this or is it just too many indescribable mouse parts?

My cat, Sophie, is 16 years old and I suspect that I don’t have much longer to spend with her. No disease or anything that I know of, but she just seems to be slowing down. She has always been a little cranky but seems to be much more mellow now. What can I do to make her last years the best years possible?

My cat, Amanda, has an infection and the vet prescribed antibiotics for her in tablet form. I know it is important to give them to her, but what was she thinking? Right now Amanda is hiding under the couch and my arm is all scratched up and the pill flew off somewhere that I can’t find it. Help!

I have two dogs. One of them, Amanda, loves to go out in the winter, no matter how cold and she runs around happily in the snow until I call her in. She is a mutt of some sort with short hair, so it’s not like she’s a natural winter dog. The other one, Gertie, is a little poodle mix and she acts like snow feels like hot burning coals. I can hardly get her to go out to do her business and then she zips right back to the house.

I just got back from the vet’s office where I took my dog Betsy and my cat Boomer for their annual check up and boy am I mad! She got all grouchy with me and told me they are FAT. Well she used the word obese, like that would be more polite somehow. I just go by the recommendation on their dog and cat food packages and they only get a few treats per day. She wants me to cut that down by a quarter and cut out all treats. They’ll starve. What do you think?

This is the time of year that we usually issue warnings about all the horrible things that can happen to your pets over the holidays. If it’s not poinsettias to worry about (which it is not) then it’s mistletoe (which it is) or chocolate, or grapes or tinsel (yes to all). But you can just go online to any reputable animal welfare site, we like the ASPCA, and read all those depressing and dire warnings. We’re not saying you shouldn’t read up about them. We’re just saying, let’s have fun instead!

My neighbor down the road has a big dog that looks like some kind of shepherd mix. He keeps him tied out beside his house ALL the time. That means 24/7. He has a dog house and he goes in there when it’s really awful out but mostly he just sits there in the yard. I called the dog control officer for my town and she said there is nothing she can do as long as the dog house is adequate and it is.