Horses

Equine Metabolic Syndrome The How and the Why

Equine metabolic syndrome (EMS) is a disorder of several systems which has several similarities with a human variant.

There are several things that may be happening in a horse with Equine Metabolic Syndrome but predominantly we know that obese animals, animals with genetic predisposition for it, animals that are in young pastures or under exercised animals. They will generally have several issues with their fat metabolism, insulin resistance and an actual increase in circulating insulin.

One of the big consequences of EMS is laminitis and is usually when you are going to notice something might actually be wrong with your equine partner. So, what’s the connection between a metabolic syndrome and hoof issues? There are several proposed mechanisms but we know that consuming a higher than usual load of water soluble carbohydrates causes insulin to surge in concentration and also the excess of carbohydrates being fermented will create an inflammatory response that causes laminitis.

This situation often happens when animals are given access to rapid growth pastures where there is a lot of rain and then an abundance of sunlight or also excessive amount of concentrates in their diet. These pastures are both large sources of water soluble carbohydrates and of overfeeding that might lead to obesity, one of the most important predisposing factors for EMS.

Good news though, it’s quite the manageable condition if it can be adequately recognised by owners.

While laminitis is the chief complaint of horse owners with EMS, there are several other signs that might indicate they are suffering from a metabolic imbalance that needs to be corrected.

Don’t forget to check your horse for not only lameness but also: obesity, large fat deposits on the neck or chest, preputial or mammary gland swelling due to fat deposits and oedema and ill formed hooves with divergent rings that indicate past episodes of laminitis.

If you have a horse that keeps on weight well and doesn’t seem to require all that much feed, they might at be at risk of developing obesity and insulin disorders so it’s important to keep a close eye on these horses.

Is your horse looking like they might have EMS? Give a call to your vet and find out the best way to figure out for sure.

Remember the sooner the diagnosis the better this condition can be managed!

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Cats

Practical Tips to Enrich Your Indoors Cat’s Life

Environmental enrichment has a very important role in the lives of indoor cats.

These cats are often under stress for many different reasons and this is not always obvious to their owners. Many cats are unable to express their normal behaviour: playing, hunting, scratching, climbing to high spots and even simply hiding when they don’t want to be bothered. Some cats struggle to deal with their social environment by not getting along with other cats or humans in the household. The reasons are many and over time, all this causes damage.

Through the cooperation of vets, cat behaviourists and scientists it has been proven that indoor cats living in underenriched environments can suffer from chronic stress and anxiety, obesity, and feline idiopathic cystitis among other potentially serious medical conditions. It can also trigger behavioural changes such as urine marking, house soiling and even some types of aggression.

In order to improve your cat’s quality of life be sure to provide different types of resting areas and hiding spots to avoid unwanted interaction. Cats cope with unpleasant situations by retreating and hiding. You can use cat trees, shelves (so they have access to high places) and cardboard boxes in their favourite rooms of the house.

There should be at least one litterbox per cat but the ideal formula is to have one more litterbox than the number of cats in the household. Resting areas, feeding and drinking spots should increase in number depending on how many cats live in the same household.

Scratching vertical or horizontal surfaces (depending on your cat’s preference) are also recommended, and a wide variety of toys such as toys with the owner’s scent, toys on wands, egg cartons with treats hidden inside, and balled up pieces of paper.  It is also a good idea to rotate them so they always have “new” toys.

Cats enjoy the different stages of hunting so they will have a lot of fun if you divide your cat’s daily ration and put it on multiple places in your home, under furniture, rugs or even using food toys. This means cats can search for food/snacks around the house and get them from the toys which simulates hunting behaviour.

Environmental enrichment for cats is about finding and implementing ways to make their environment more interesting, complex, and engaging in a way that allows and even promotes their normal, natural behaviour.

These changes have a low cost, are easy to implement and will improve dramatically your cat’s health and welfare, reducing and even preventing the previously mentioned health disorders.

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Dogs

Cataracts

Let’s gaze into the eye today and look at one of the most common causes of blindness in our dogs.

Cataracts are defined as the opacification of the lens, which is to say that the part of the eye that acts as the focal point for light no longer lets light pass through it. The crystalline lens, as it is called in anatomical terminology, acts exactly like the lens on cameras, telescopes or glasses. It sits right behind the iris and is going to bounce light to the retina on the far back of the eye.

As it stands, it’s one of the pivotal structures involved in eyesight. Its transparency is given by fibres that are continuously produced which means that anything that might affect the fibres themselves or their replenishing and growth process will, most likely, lead to cataracts.

So, how can lens fibres be damaged in such a way that leads to visual impairment? Osmotic imbalances created in complications from Diabetes Mellitus due to high glucose in the blood stream, inflammation in the anterior chamber of the eye that causes deficient nutrition to the lens and hereditary factors that compromise lens fibre renewal are the leading causes of cataracts.

Many other issues may cause this condition like trauma, nutritional deficiencies, electric shocks, radiation therapy and even just old age.

What to look out for? If you look into your pets’ eyes you might notice they appear to be cloudy, this is quite indicative of cataracts but beyond it, your dog might have difficulties walking around the house, might be bumping into things more often, might be more easily startled by a sudden approach, might feel disoriented in unfamiliar environments which are all signs of progressive blindness.

This is a progressive condition, so it usually just gets worse. How much worse will depend on the underlying issue and the individual animal but don’t delay in consulting with your vet!

There are several treatment options and your vet will be more than glad to help you with any questions you might have about managing cataracts and what they can do to help. Remember, the sooner the better!

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Cats

Mammary tumours in cats

A malignant tumour is a type of mass that is composed of abnormally fast and uncontrolled multiplying cells that may or may not travel from the starting site to other organs. This type of malignant cell migration is called metastizing and they usually travel by the bloodstream or lymphatic vessels.

Malignant tumours cause local destruction and invasion of tissues and metastasis cause far away destruction of other organs. If left untreated or if it can’t be treated, they are most likely fatal.

Mammary tumours in cats, unlike in dogs, are overwhelmingly malignant. For dogs, about 50% of the tumours found won’t be malignant whereas cats have only about 5% to 15% chance of mammary tumours being benign.

It is a highly metastizing type of cancer, with over 90% of cats having metastasis found in necropsy. The most common sites for metastasis are lung and the regional lymph nodes near the primary site, but any other organ can be affected by cancer proliferation.

The causes for these are largely unknown but Siamese cats have been found to have twice the risk of developing mammary tumours, which points out that at least where that breed is concerned it may be of genetic origin.

There is a predominance for middle aged cats around 10 to 12 years of age and overwhelmingly more in female cats. Male cats present with about 1% to 5% of mammary tumours so if you see an odd lump on your male cat’s abdomen or chest, don’t rule out mammary cancer.

These masses may have several different presentations, they can be soft or firm, the skin can be intact or it may have ulcers and the glands closer to the pelvic area seem to be slightly more affected.

It is important to investigate all odd masses that you may find in your cat. If you feel a mass contact your practice as soon as possible. There is a chance it might not be cancer at all! There are other problems like abscesses or overgrowth due to oestrus that create palpable masses but just in case it is cancer, the sooner it is found the better!

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Horses

Demystifying colic


Colic is one of the horse owners most prominent nightmares and with good reason. Worldwide, it causes serious medical and economic problems in the equine population being only second to old age in terms of overall fatality rate. Colic sometimes seems so very unpredictable as some horses have a bit of pain and recover with simple medical treatment while others have to undergo surgery and still don’t make it.

The first thing that’s important to know about colic is what it is. Colic is defined as a manifestation of abdominal pain so it’s not actually a specific disease but a clinical sign associated with an immense number of diseases, which accounts for its often-unpredictable progress.

Adding to this, most of the times pinpointing the underlying condition of colic might involve complex exams and as such the cause of the colic remains undiscovered. Fortunately, this is because many cases of colic will be resolved with minimal intervention and attempting to pinpoint the cause would end up too invasive or too costly.

Most of the times the colic will be a problem of the gastrointestinal tract, also called a ‘true colic’, but problems in other body systems like uterus or obstructions of the bile ducts can also cause colic.

There are many ways a horse can signal they are experiencing abdominal pain, usually the first thing an owner will notice is lack of appetite and less ingestion of food. They may also be oddly restless, lie down more often, bite or kick the abdomen and as the level of discomfort progresses they might roll around or get up and lie down repeatedly.

Of course, each horse has its own personality and the severity of these signs might not correlate with the severity of the underlying disease.

One of the most important things to know when confronted with the possibility of a horse having a colic is that it must have prompt veterinary assessment. The vet will try and determine if it’s an uncomplicated problem or if it’s an issue that’s likely to complicate and after that they’ll decide on the best course of action.

If you think your horse might be exhibiting abdominal discomfort, give your vet a call as soon as possible. The sooner a proper evaluation is done, the better chance of having a good outcome!

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Cats

Feline Infectious Peritonitis

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Feline infectious peritonitis (FIP) is a well-known yet relatively rare disease in cats caused by a massive immune-mediated response to an infection by the feline coronavirus.

There is a high rate of infection with coronavirus in cats, but only a small percentage of these cats will develop a serious clinical disease. This is due to the fact that there are virulent and non-virulent strains of the coronavirus. However, when this happens nearly all cats will die from this pathology.

This disease has several forms that can be broken down into effusive and non-effusive forms. The effusive form is better known among cat owners and it causes, among many other things, an increase in abdominal width due to fluid build-up while the non-effusive form will target organs like liver, central nervous system, kidney or eye and damage them severely.

With so many systems that might be affected, the clinical signs of a cat with FIP are myriad. Cats may present with diarrhoea, vomiting, weight loss, cloudy eyes or eyes that change colour, transient fever, distended abdomen, depression, among others.

It is more prevalent in young kittens, aged 3 months to 2 years of age and the incidence decreases sharply after 2 years of age. Cats on catteries or multicat places are at more risk than single cat households and FIP is a major problem in breeding catteries. It does not cause infertility or abortions but it does cause stunting in cats. Having kittens of observably different size of the same age and litter is cause for suspicion of coronavirus infections.

Important things to know is to always make sure to bring in coronavirus free cats into catteries and breeding centres, isolate infected cats from other cats and keep an eye on clinical signs in kittens.

It’s a disease that cannot be cured but always bring in your cat to the vets, there are plenty of things that can be done to give them better quality of life.

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Dogs

What is Kennel Cough?

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With holidays just around the corner, it also comes a time to leave our puppers and dogs alike in all manners of kennels or hotels while we jet off to our vacations (that is, those of us that don’t take our canine companions with us!).

Most of the time, though, these kennels will require vaccination against kennel cough, which is not part of the core vaccination protocol. So, what is exactly kennel cough?

Kennel cough, technically known as infectious canine tracheobronchitis, is a disease complex caused by several different bacterial and viral agents, chiefly among them Bordetella bronchipseptica, canine respiratory coronavirus, canine adenovirus 2 and parainfluenza virus.

It happens quite often in places that have several susceptible dogs and frequently less than ideal hygiene conditions. It is most severe in puppies from 6 weeks to around 6 months and in dogs with other subclinical respiratory illnesses like congenital anomalies or chronic disorders of the lower respiratory tract.

Most of the cases tend to present as uncomplicated and many owners have contacted with the classic dog, with the really loud cough, usually induced by touching the trachea or excitement but otherwise it’s a healthy animal. This form of the disease is, most of the time, self-limiting and will generally go away in about 2 weeks. Of course, depending on what agent is infecting your pup’s respiratory system and if there are other problems at the same time, might turn into a severe disease with fever, anorexia and difficulty breathing that requires quick action!

If your dog has coughing issues, even if otherwise healthy, take them to the vets for a check-up. While kennel cough is mostly self-limiting if uncomplicated, many other more severe diseases that also have cough are definitely not and the sooner a correct diagnosis is made, the better chances your faithful hound has of making it through unharmed.

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Cats

Permethrin toxicity in cats

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Permethrin is a molecule that is part of the pyrethroid class of drugs and it’s commonly found on formulations for flea and other external parasite control.

It’s a synthetic molecule derived from natural compounds found in the flowers of the Chrysanthemum genus. These flowers and their parts are used to repel insects but the natural compounds, called pyrethrins, are easily broken down by light, heat and air.

We contact with permethrin when we buy the spot on and pour ons for our dogs and this drug is safe to be applied on them when used in the correct way either by veterinary indication or per the manufacturer’s instructions.

Cats, however, should never be given these sorts of flea treatments! Permethrin and other pyrethroids are highly toxic to cats and even small quantities can induce lethal toxicity.

So why do we put something so toxic to cats on our puppers? Why isn’t it toxic for them too?

It’s easy to think that cats are simply small sized dogs but the truth is they are radically different species with very different physiologies. This means that the enzymes and detoxification pathways that make permethrin safe to be applied on our dogs are not present in our cats.

Permethrin will affect tissues with a lot of lips like nervous system, liver and kidneys. An intoxicated cat will present with signs as soon as half an hour to several hours after contact. If you see tremors, hyperexcitability, seizures, difficulty breathing, hypersensitive skin or hypersalivation bring your cat to the vet immediately!

Putting dog flea treatment on cats can have severe toxic effects and is very likely to be deadly!

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Horses

Winter weather precautions

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Horses are hardy animals that are capable of resisting a good cold weather season but, as with all of our animals, they require special care and attention to make sure they don’t suffer any unnecessary stress.

We love our comfortable loveseats by the fire with a warm blanket and a hot beverage so we tend to look to our horses standing outside in the snow and rain with some pity but experts agree that, when allowed to acclimatize, horses often prefer being outdoors. This, of course, is given sufficient shelter and nutrition provisions.

Important things to consider when preparing your horse for this winter are:

  • Making sure your animals have adequate shelter from extreme conditions like wind, storms or heavy snowfall and give them free choice to be either outside or on the shelters/stable. While they can resist temperatures of around -15ºC in the absence of wind or moisture, heavy snow or rain makes them search for shelter.
  • Colder weather means horses require more energy at rest to keep core body temperature stable. The lower the temperature gets and depending on body conditioning scores/coat type, the more forage will be needed so consult with your vet regarding the quantity your animal should be receiving.
  • Keeping an eye on water conditions and water intake seeing as winter feed usually has less moisture. If dramatically decreased, lower water intake will risk severe gastrointestinal tract problems like colic. Snow and ice are not adequate sources of water for domestic horses, as such, make sure that water is above freezing, ideally between 7 and 18 to maximise consumption.
  • Blanketing is usually needed when there is no shelter available, when the horse has a chance of becoming wet or had its winter coat clipped, when animals are very old, very young or with low body mass. The coat is an amazing insulator but this is only true if it is not wet or muddy, so if you see your horse might suffer from rain or ice get them a nice, well fit blanket.
  • Exercise and hoof care should feature on the calendar of any responsible horse owner. The weather may be bad, but they require regular exercise to avoid problems like lower leg oedemas and further complications when heavier work returns in spring. Hooves in general don’t grow as much during winter but that doesn’t mean they don’t need trims every six to twelve weeks and regular professional attention.

    • Beyond these, interacting and looking over your horse regularly is the best way to not be caught by surprise with a horse too thin, dehydrated or with limb issues! If you have any questions, don’t hesitate to contact your vet and they can help you find the best way to keep your equine companion in tip-top shape this winter.

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    Cats

    Feline Calicivirus Infection

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    This virus causes a common respiratory disease in cats, usually with upper respiratory tract signs. The agent that causes this pathology is a single-strand RNA virus with several serotypes that usually cause similar clinical signs.

    Of the cats that are infected, some will remain persistent carriers and these will go on to infect other cats by shedding the virus in variable quantities. It’s particularly troublesome in multi cat facilities like pounds, catteries, colonies or houses with multiple cats.

    It affects chiefly kittens older than 6 weeks but cats of any age may show signs of illness. It might cause ocular and nasal discharge with little to no sneezing, with characteristic crusts around eyes and nose. Kittens might be reluctant or stop eating altogether due to painful ulcers in the palate, tongue or lips. Generally, patients will be alert and in good body condition.

    Uncomplicated infections are relatively simple to resolve, usually resolving within 3 to 5 days. Complications may arise from opportunistic infections that will use the fact that the virus has damaged the normal integrity of the airways and settle in with much less impediment. Complicated cases might evolve into severe pneumonia that requires a much heavier medical intervention than an uncomplicated infection and they tend to present with fever.

    Vaccination is an important cornerstone in the management of this pathology. The vaccine for the Feline Calicivirus is considered a core vaccine and should be given to all cats, as early as 6 weeks. In colonies with severe issues with this infection, kittens may be vaccinated a little early. If you feel your colony or cattery are at a higher risk, ask your vet about the best protocol for your particular situation.

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