2003 FoxNest and ARF Newsletter
Information About The Care of Your Pets from The FoxNest Veterinary Hospital
and news about The Animal Rescue Fund of South Carolina (ARF-SC), our No
Kill Animal Shelter.
In this world, there are certainly bigger problems and tragedies than the plight
of stray and abandoned pets, but we at the ARF Shelter have chosen to help
at least some of these pets from our area find new homes. After all, taking care
of dogs and cats is what we do well.
We'd sure like your help. You can do so
by donating money (we are a tax deductible non-profit), helping with chores
and socialization of the pets, fostering a pet for awhile, donating things for
our fund raising yard sale next Spring, and by COMING TO THE CHICKEN
BARBEQUE ON SEPTEMBER 2OTH.
Let me start off by thanking everyone who's been a responsible pet owner
by bringing their pets to the FoxNest Veterinary Hospital. If we weren't
a successful practice we wouldn't be able to afford the high costs of taking
care of the shelter animals. Thanks for this support. In return, we do our very
best to provide top notch preventive and critical medical care for your animal
family members when they need it.
Oh, I forgot; You can also help support our shelter efforts by simply clicking
on our discrete banner ads on our web sites. We have over a hundred sponsors;
Amazon, PetSmart, Ebay, Sony, Walmarts, and many others: if you end up buying
something, we get a commission and it all goes toward helping clean, treat, love,
and find homes for stray pets.
Speaking of PetSmart, we've been very fortunate recently; Bonnie has arranged
for us to display pets needing homes at the PetSmart in Anderson. Our adoption
rate is going way up with this arrangement! The only catch is that we need
volunteers to accompany the dogs, so if you're willing to do this some Saturday
morning, please let us know.
ARF Adoptions If you don't already know; with lots of help from volunteers,
we at the FoxNest Veterinary Hospital run a no kill shelter for stray pets. It's called The Animal Rescue Fund of South Carolina (ARF-SC) We've found homes for over
200 pets this year. And every one of them cleaned up, treated for wounds
and minor illnesses if needed, tested for heartworms, leukemia, ringworm, and
parasites, vaccinated, neutered, socialized, and tenderly cared for until we found
them a home.
Unfortunately, we have many more people WANTING TO LEAVE PETS
than want to adopt them. So don't get angry at us if we are unable to take
your unwanted pet into our shelter without putting you on a waiting list for a
short while.
That's the big problem with a no kill shelter: there's only so much roomwe
can't take in new strays until we find homes for the pets we already have!
So please, if you have room in your hearts and homes for another petAND
you're a responsible person willing to take care of a pet please come
and take a look at the pets in our shelter.
Come on by and take a peek at all our kittens, puppies, dogs, and cats.
Or check out their pictures on our web site: www.ARF-SC.org.
Peek at Our Web Sites:
We've written several web sites, and if you love animals and find them
fascinating, you'll be impressed with the amount of information we've
gathered and written for you. There are hundreds of pages; each with something
interesting to know, each with a little humor, and each with a few discrete banner
ads to places like PetSmart, Ebay, or Amazon. If you end up buying something
after clicking on one of our banner ads; we get a commission, all of which goes
to our Shelter Fund.
Includes a special section about our beautiful UpState South Carolina
Includes other topics that might interest you: Animal Politics, Animal Laws
and Regulations, The Human-Animal Bond, Poisons, Diseases That Humans
can get from Pets, and much more.
ARF-SC.org all about our shelter including some of the letters we get,
pictures of the pets needing homes, and my comments about the challenges
of running a shelter. Also included on this site, of course, are all the details
about leaving or adopting a pet.
Some Veterinary Comments and Information
Heartworms: I think people are getting careless about giving their dogs
heartworm prevention because we're seeing a lot more cases of heartworm
disease lately. There's a new heartworm preventive available that may help
solve this problem; There's now an injection that prevents heartworm disease.
It lasts 6 months and costs the same or slightly less that the monthly tablets.
Ask us about the new PROHEART injection, or get more information from our
Website. (go to the page about heart diseases)
Heartworm in Cats: Cats are now getting heartworm disease and we now
recommend heartworm prevention in cats if they're outdoors much. Especially
if they stay out at night. We offer an inexpensive chewable, monthly tablet or you
can apply Revolution which is quite effective against all stages of fleas as well
as ticks, intestinal worms, and heartworms.
What's Working Best For Flea and Tick Control This Year
The majority of our local fleas are resistant to the flea control products you can
buy without a prescription. Luckily, newer, safer, and much more effective
products are available that usually work great. These include Frontline,
Revolution, Advantage, Program, and Sentinel. None of them work perfectly,
but if used once a month, they work very, very well; especially on fleas.
Revolution and Sentinel do extra duty; both are heartworm preventives as well.
Frontline does the best job on ticks. Advantage claims to also repel mosquitoes
and ticks. (but I'm dubious) All these new products are available only by prescription
and therefore more expensive than over the counter pesticides, but if you love
having your pet as an indoor family member and you love knowing your pet isn't
tormented by fleas, they sure are nice. I have a lot more information posted about
the benefits and limitations of each of these products at FoxNest.com.
New Vaccines And New Vaccine Ideas
Thank God for vaccines. They save uncountable numbers of lives.
Complications, side effects, and problems are few or minor. And
vaccines are constantly being made more effective, safer, and less reactive.
Having said that; how often we should vaccinate is now a hot controversy
in our profession. For all pets, we still recommend a good yearly physical, and
for most pets, we still recommend annual vaccine boosters, but don't be too
surprised if for certain pets I advise skipping one or more of the vaccines as
unneeded. (Lot's more on this subject at AnimalPetDoctor.com)
New: a vaccine for Feline AIDS. This disease in catssimilar but not identical
to human AIDS is spread through bite wounds from one cat to another. Therefore,
we recommend that young, outdoor cats, especially if un-neutered consider
this new vaccine.
Another fairly new vaccine is Lymes Disease vaccine for dogs. You should
consider giving this vaccine if your dog gets a fair number of ticks.
Not Vaccines: neither are vaccines, but just for your interest, there are two new
injectables available to us now: ProHeart gives your dog 6 months of heartworm
protection with one injection. NeutroSol injection will render your male dog
sterile. This is easier and slightly cheaper than surgical castration, but there is
a problem; while it stops sperm production, it may not stop testosterone
production. You may not get all the benefits of reduced leg lifting, roaming, and
fighting.
New For Older Pets
Kidney failure is the number one cause of discomfort, illness, and death in older
cats and dogs. And until recently, we didn't have a simple, inexpensive test for
the early stages of kidney disease. Now we do. I highly recommend this $25
urine test for pets over 12 years of ageabout a third of them will test positive.
And consider this test even if your pet isn't quite 12 yet, especially in large breed
dogs; the earlier we detect the disease the better. Early kidney disease is some-
thing we can manage well with a special diet.
We keep getting new and better glucosamine based products for arthritis.
If your pet is now taking Glycoflex 3, I now think that SynovaG3 is working even better.
We now have a fairly helpful treatment for liver disease. If you didn't know, liver disease tends to cause slow debilitation, poor digestion, and wasting away of older patients. It's frequently the reason our older pet friends seem to be so thin and weak.
Don't just assume your older pet is less active or feeling lousy due to old age; we can often help.
More About ARF and our upcoming Grilled Chicken Barbeque
If you didn't go to the barbeque last year, please don't miss it this year. The half chicken was grilled to perfection, but what they didn't advertise was even better; all the side dishes and deserts provided. What else: The Dixie Chicks Band. Whoops, I've got that wrong. The Dixie Keys Band. The Give Aways. The Raffles. And the company of lots of responsible people who love animals. Tickets available at The FoxNest, area Pet Supply Stores, or from (phone numbers to be provided soon)
Please come. It's not expensive. The animals need your support. And the people doing all this work out of the goodness of their hearts deserve your respect and patronage. Thanks. And thanks to The Friends of Arf, the volunteer organization making this possible.
Saturday Afternoon on September 20th.
Want To Help With The Animals?
If you're willing and able to help organize a golf tournament, poker run, yard sale, or any other fund raising event to help us support our no kill shelterplease volunteer.
If you're willing and able to help organize and lead training or puppy classes please volunteer.
And at the very least, please take good care of your own pets and the animals in your immediate vicinity. Good health and good behavior aren't accidental; some effort, expense, and discipline is required. The rewards in joy and well being are great.
23 Sep 03 The barbeque is over. It was a beautiful day and the turnout was great.
Thanks to all who made this possible.
A few pictures below:
