Well, come on in and meet all my new people.  There are three of them! Many of you may have met my Dr. already, what a wonderful relief, she came along right when I passed a kidney stone!! I also have a new full time receptionist starting the end of August, and a new undergrad in the middle of august.  I am losing Shauna. She is moving away. and Jared is going to vet school, so he will only be working with the animals, and not out front any more.

I just went to a very interesting continueing ed course on Heartworm disease.  This talked about heartworm in cats.  I have never put my cats on heartworm prevention because they are 100% indoors, but after this meeting, I ordered product for heartworm control for cats, and started my kids on advantage plus for fleas and Heartworm.  We can not treat cats for heartworm, they either die, or they fight it off themselves.  We can test them for it, but we must test for antigen, and it is not perfect.  They are encouraging testing every year, I am not sure I support this, because of the cost and if I diagnose it, there is nothing I can do.  I do think testing for lung patients is not a bad idea.  I have just been told about a more affordable test, so we are likely to start testing suspicious kids.They discussed how many of my cats that have inflammaory  lung disease could actually be heartworm kids.  WOW!  

I hope all is good for you and your friends.

Be sure and continue heartworm prevention for your dogs and CATS!.  Flea and tick control should be going on forever if you are showing, boarding or parking.  If your animal is an in house only, go out to potty, you need to start up flea and tick control again, they have some special money back if you buy 6 months, I know it is a little expensive, so I do keep it on hand all the time, so you really only have to get 1 month at a time.

Canine influenza virus is in our area, so be sure and vaccinate your dogs that are boarding, showing, or training. I am requiring it for my boarding kennel, but a lot of kennels may not know about it yet.  Protect your kids, It is not required by law for grooming and boarding, but I would hugely encourage it.

We are going to be showing more often in the summer.  I am just not going to let the clinic bring me down like it did before my car accident.  I hope I do get to continue showing, I am getting mildly depressed about my kids not qualifying.

Take care, talk to you soon!

Dr. Donna Rizzo