Vet Judy

If you are tired of stepping in puddles of pee with your bare feet, you absolutely must know about the great resources out there to help you potty train a dog. When you start, you need to recognize two facts about your dog.

First, by nature a dog goes to the bathroom when it wants to and where it wants to so you are going to have to change his or her nature. Second, your dog absolutely adores you and will do anything to get your approval.

You will use the fact that your dog wants to please you to overcome his or her natural tendencies. If you are looking for a complete dog training course, check the links in the article for some great resources.

Paper Training a Puppy

There are three main ways to go about potty training a dog. If your dog spends a lot of time in a kennel, you can train him to go in a corner so it is in one spot. If you have a fenced in yard and will just let your dog go outside when she needs to go to the bathroom, you can train her to go to the door and let you know when she has to go. The third way, and the focus of this article, is to potty train your dog using a mat.

Potty training a dog to go on a mat is a simple concept that works really well if you don’t have easy access to an outdoor area where you can take your dog. For those of you who live in an apartment, especially if it is multiple floors up, this may be the only way to go.

The concept is simple. You put a mat in a corner of a room and train your dog to go to the bathroom on that mat. Your mat can be as simple as a bunch of newspaper or as elaborate as an artificial grass mat that simulates the outdoors. As with anything you want to train your dog to do, positive reinforcement is the key. Yelling at a dog won’t change behavior nearly as effectively as positive reinforcement when your dog does what you want him or her to do.

When you are house training or potty training a dog, remember that you got the dog to love. Your dog will do anything to get your affection and if you use that to your advantage, potty training a dog can be a quick and easy task.

Training your pet can be one of the most rewarding experiences you ever have with your pet, but also one of the most frustrating if you don’t have all of the right resources. Got to ObedienceTraining4Dogs.info for great resources to help you learn how to train a puppy - or dog. If you are looking for articles on almost every topic including pets, head over to http://www.knowledge-share.org/blog/ for some more great reads.

            Anytime you go into a place that hasn’t been cultivated and do some cultivating, you’re going to disturb thousands upon thousands of seeds that have been waiting for something to disturb them.  These seeds are called “weeds,” and they’ll love you for making a food plot.  Here are some tips to keeping the weeds from growing where you want your deer food plots to grow.

·         Get an early start

            Weed control is just another good reason to begin planning your food plot in the spring—even when you won’t be planting until late summer.  When we establish new plots, we go in during the spring when the grass is a few inches high a spray the field with glyphosate (Roundup™).  Glyphosate is a very safe herbicide and gives us a good “burndown” before tilling a few weeks later.

·         Spray it again

            An initial application of Roundup™ won’t take care of all the weeds, though.  So come back in the middle of the summer and do another burndown.  This second application, combined with the tillage for your late summer seeding, will take out a lot of those weed seeds.  For new plot sites where there may be a lot of weed pressure, another burndown application might also be an option.

 A herbicide like glyphosate easily and economically applied to plots sized less than a few acres.  If you don’t have the sort of sprayer that can easily do a whole acre, you may be able to hire the application rather inexpensively from a local farmer or farm supply business.  I hear from friends in the States that this can often be done for around $30-$40 per acre, and I think you’ll find a $75 investment that keeps the weeds of your food plot to be worthwhile.

Once you have your weeds under control first, then you can move onto choosing what to plant. I love annuals especially when you spend most of your first year just dealing with the weed issues. For more information on annuals see article: http://www.diydeerfoodplots.com/articles/annual-forages.html

Legume Lowdown: Clovers

            In an earlier blog, I touted the research reports from Minnesota concerning birdsfoot trefoil, an important legume in deer food plot plantings.  I’ve also written about how it’s critical to inoculate legumes at planting.  Now, I want to list some of the benefits of clover for deer food plots. 

            Clovers are perennials that are high-quality sources of green deer forage .  It comes in several varieties that are deer friendly.  Like alfalfa, fresh clover gives deer a browse option that combines the high protein with the high calcium of a legume.  Red clover (Trifolium pretense) is a cool-season legume that can be fall-seeded in more moderate climates or spring seeded in northern climates like mine.  It is an exceptional source of calcium at 1.70%. 

            White clover, also called ladino clover (Trifolium repens), can be more susceptible than red clover to nematodes attacking its root system.  Both red and white clovers are seeded in soils with a pH range of 6.0.  Ladino clover tends perform a little better than red clover in poorly drained soils.  It also can last a couple years longer in a deer food plot seeding than does red clover.  In larger fields, some land managers find that seeding ladino in the spring over a wheat planting is an effective management tool.

            Red and white clovers are often mixed with grass to provide a grazing option for white tailed deer.  Their status as cool-season, perennial plants make them a great source of nutrition in the spring and summer.  Food plots requiring a source of forage in the summer months should include red or white clovers in the mix.

            Don’t confuse red or white clover with another plant often marketed for deer food plots, alyceclover (Alysicarpus vaginalis).  Alyceclover is a warm-season annual plant that performs well for deer food plots further south.

            Clovers, red and white, are an important part of deer food plot plantings, especially when seeded with appropriate grasses. For more detailed information about planting clover in your food plot see my article:

http://www.diydeerfoodplots.com/articles/perennial-food-plots-clover.html

            When it comes to your basic cool-season legume for deer forage, alfalfa (Medicago sativa) can’t be beat.  It is a perennial, but it can also be used as an annual in deer food plots, especially in more southern regions. 

            Alfalfa does not do well on clay soils; keep that in mind if your plot is located in such an area.  At about 19% protein and 1.35% calcium, alfalfa is especially good to supplement whitetailed diets in the spring and early summer.

            Alfalfa is a common forage crop used to make hay for cattle and sheep.  If there are alfalfa fields located at or near your hunting ground, be sure to factor that into your food plot design.  Deer that are used to grazing alfalfa elsewhere may not be as tempted to try it in a new planting.

            There are other legumes that are often recommended for deer food plots.  A number of these are warm-season annuals: hairy indigo, partridge pea, cowpea and deer vetch (also known as Aeschonomyne).  Of these warm-season annuals, cowpea can have good early-season forage potential for deer in some regions.  A cool-season annual, Austrian winter pea, has also performed well in more southern regions.

            For a fall forage legume in my part of the world, though, you almost have to go with a cool-season annual like vetch (Vicia) or birdsfoot trefoil.  These can be important legume forage sources that can complement the grasses and grains in your food plot’s design.  Don’t forget to properly inoculate the seed before planting.

            And never plant a legume without taking a look at soybeans, which I’ll deal with in the next blog.

Here is some updated and additional information for your consideration: Updated 2009

ALL bronchial and vomiting disease in cats CAN be caused by HW even WHEN Ab test is neg, Ag test is neg, No Adult HW has ever developed, echo is normal, and bronchial changes on radiographs are not that severe!!

Testing chronic bronchial cats for HW may be unrewarding even if clinical signs are induced by the immature forms because often the cats Ab status becomes negative 3 to 4 months after the original insult.

Adults generally live for 2 to 4 years and the death of A SINGLE worm can result in ARDS (Acute Respiratory Distress Syndrome). Most cats will survive this phase if treated, as the worms tend to die slowly over time.

Oddly enough, the existence of a single adult worm can decrease the inflammatory reaction in the lungs through suppression of monocytes. So clinical signs may be decreased and even radiographic abnormalities may be decreased when adults are alive.

Lung recovery is not uniform and fragments of worms are common, so healthy lung can exist next to severely diseased lung. The lung changes are not limited to bronchial spasticity and therefore it is not truly an “asthmatic” syndrome. The clinical signs may look like asthma to pet owners. There are bronchial, peribronchial and interstitial tissue changes.

Testing for Ab is limited in accuracy due to highly variable lab accuracy (depending on lab and assay proteins used for different stages of larval forms),  many cats will seroconvert to negative within 3 months, and even if Ab positive the HW may or may not have made it to the distal pulmonary artery as immature adults.

Testing for Ag is also problematic given the vast majority of problems in cats are related to larval forms and the test detects Ag from female adult reproductive tract.

So WHAT NOW:

As a clinician and as a pet owner this is an extremely difficult situation. The best description we have heard yet was given at ACVIM this year and may be useful in discussing HW and bronchial disease in cats.

“The juvenile delinquent form of HW is a hit and run driver in cats. The immature forms come in and create disease, and any evidence that they were the cause is not present by the time we arrive at the scene.”

#1)   Remember Clinical Signs:

*dyspnea 45%, vomiting 34%,chronic vomiting 38%, coughing 29%, sudden death 19%, neurologic 19%

#2) HW prevention should be recommended for ALL cats in areas where it is considered prudent to have dogs on prevention.

“If Canine Heartworm is a problem in your area, it is said: You may not be seeing cats with heartworm, but they are likely seeing you.”

#3)   Remember Critical Time Frames for Presentation: but don’t be confined by them.

a)       2.5 to 3 months after being infected by mosquito or 3 to 7 months after peak mosquito season. This is the time frame of the first arrival of larval forms at the lungs creating an intense inflammatory reaction.

b)      If becomes an adult: this may suppress macrophage activity and clinical signs may be absent or intermittent and even radiographic appearance may improve.

c)       Death of the mature heartworm 2 to 4 years later. Acute Respiratory Distress Syndrome can result from the death of even a single worm. This is less common than the problem with larval forms.

#4) ALL BRONCHIAL AND VOMITING Disorders can be caused by heartworm disease in cats.

#5) There is NO good way to prove or disprove your suspicion. Testing is extremely problematic in feline heartworm given the behaviour.  If your are suspicious treat as if, there is no other reasonable course of action.

#6) Prevention does not eliminate the possibility of inflammatory lung disease due to dying larval forms, but will prevent adults from forming (if compliance and drug choice are sound). There will be fewer incidences of ARDS in feline patients due to death of the adult worms.  

There are four heartworm disease preventive products approved by the FDA for use in cats: Heartgard® for Cats (ivermectin, orally) from Merial, Interceptor® (milbemycin oxime, orally) from Novartis, Revolution® (selamectin, topically) from Pfizer and Advantage Multi^TM for Cats (moxidectin / imidacloprid, topically) from Bayer. The current recommendation from the AHS is year round protection for all cats.