We all know how important it is to take care of our teeth. Studies have shown that gingivitis and periodontal disease have been linked to heart disease and other long-term health issues. Dentists recommend we floss and brush thoroughly twice a day to prevent bacteria from overpopulating. If left untreated, these harmful microorganisms will then enter the bloodstream and eventually attach themselves to fatty plaques responsible for causing blockages in arteries and leading to heart problems.
Just like humans, pet can also get dental disease that can lead to serious health problems including heart, lung and kidney disease. The American Veterinary Dental Society reports that 80 percent of dogs and 70 percent of cat show signs of oral disease by age three.
Bad breath is probably the most common sign that your pet needs some dental care. Pain when eating, drooling, excessive licking, bloody saliva, rubbing the face or muzzle and pawing at the mouth can all be signs of dental problems.
Brushing your pet's teeth has many ways but the most important is just do it. Using a child's toothbrush with a small head and soft bristles works well and fits into the mouth of small dogs and cats and can also reach the back teeth. When it comes with toothpaste, owners should use pet toothpaste and not people toothpaste because pets will swallow this and get too much fluoride. Daily brushing would be ideal for two to three minutes at a time.
Here are the following process to clean the inside surfaces of your pet's teeth:
1. Place your hand over your pet’s muzzle from the top
2. Gently squeeze and push his lips on one side between the back teeth (to keep his mouth open)
3. Pull his head back gently so his mouth opens
4. Brush his teeth on the opposite side
5. Repeat this process for the other side
If your dog or cat continues to resist, try gently wrapping him in a large bath towel with only his head sticking out. Above all, avoid overstraining and keep sessions short and positive. With a little daily help, you can improve your pet's dental and physical health.
A purring cat is music to the ears for most cat-lovers but for the Adams of England, their short-haired feline's purr are more like rock music to the ears.
Ruth and Mark Adams thinks that their cat, Smokey could be the world's loudest cat. According to the Telegraph, a cat normally purrs at 25 decibels which is far different from Adams cat. Smokey, a twelve year old cat reaches 92 decibels with her feline noise, making her ten times louder than the average cat. 92 decibels is equivalent to a lawnmower or hair dryer.
“When I’m on the phone friends ask what the loud noise is and they can’t believe it’s a cat. She even manages to purr while she eats. The only time she is quiet is when she’s asleep. It’s either adorable or very annoying it depends on your mood,” Ruth said in an interview.
A spokesperson for Guinness World Records added that they have a category for noisiest cat, but no entries yet. And so for official bragging rights of having the world’s loudest cat, the Adams family has sent an application to see if Smokey has the loudest purr on the planet. For now, Smokey is the world record holder.
Early Sunday morning at Eastlake, Ohio, two man might got trapped and died from a burning trailer. When the firefighters arrived, they were told by neighbors that there might be people inside the burning trailers. But during the search, they found the victims sitting in a vehicle across the street keeping warm.
Coco, a female dog saves her owner and it's roommate as she jumped on the bed and got the man's attention. Paul, Coco's owner and his roommate were fast asleep when Coco nudged him on the center of the bed. All of a sudden he smelled something, and he rolled on his back to look at the room, the room was hazy, flames crawling up the walls with crackling sound. Paul woke his roommate and headed for the door together with Coco and it's eight tiny puppies. The trailer was gone and complete loss.
For Paul, Coco is not just a man's best friend but a savior rather.
A cat in California has been caught on camera stealing over 600 items over a three-year period from neighbors' homes. The real cat burglar is such a strange case of stolen goods.
The sneaky kitty named Dusty is an average house pet by day but when the sun goes down, he hits the street by sneaking around and stole items in it's town. He is prolific and hard to catch like an amateur. Dusty was actually caught stealing a bath sponge, a toy dino and a bikini top. The thievery has been taking place for the past three years, and the cat has gotten away with a lot of stealing in that time.
Dusty's owner, Jean Chu told ABC News that he leaves at night and usually comes home with an item or two. Items he has brought home includes towels, gloves, shoes, socks and children toys. He even took a pair of shoes one at a time. Dusty's record is 11 items in one night.
Animal Planet featured the kitty thief on a show using a night vision camera to video Dusty stealing the goods using his mouth. He is known as “Klepto the cat”. Dusty obviously has an issue with taking things, and they are such a random mix of items too.
Now, the neighbor has gotten used to it and knows where to go and claim their stuff.
A 6-year-old male domestic shorthair cat in Wisconsin has tested positive for the H1N1 influenza virus, the first confirmed case of H1N1 in a U.S. pet since January 2010, according to Idexx Reference Laboratories. The Westbrook, Maine-based company confirmed the test result with its Feline Upper Respiratory Disease RealPCR Panel. The American Veterinary Medical Association, which tracks all instances of H1N1 in animals, sent out a media alert.
The cat had been presented to a veterinary emergency hospital due to respiratory distress. A second cat, a 10-year-old female domestic shorthair, from the same household was also taken in but tested negative for the virus, although it is now presumed that it too had the virus. Despite aggressive supportive care, both cats were euthanized due to their deteriorating condition and failing to respond to treatment.
The owner of the cats had been ill with flu-like symptoms prior to the cats' illness and is believed to be the source of the infection. In addition to humans and cats, this strain of H1N1 influenza virus has also been found in pigs, birds, ferrets and a dog. There have been no confirmed cases of pets passing the virus back to people.
The American Veterinary Medical Association (AVMA) is reminding pet owners that some viruses can pass between people and animals, so this is not an altogether unexpected event. Pet owners should monitor their pets' health very closely, no matter what type of animal, and visit a veterinarian if there are any signs of illness.
For H1N1, signs of illness can include lethargy, loss of appetite, fever, runny nose or eyes, sneezing, coughing or changes in breathing.
Deaf dachshund Sparky, finally had his day after he was given a permanent home at Missouri School for the Deaf.
The one-year-old dachshund Sparky, was taught to understand hand signals by prisoners at a Missouri prison before being taken in by the Missouri School for the Deaf in Fulton. Sparky was trained sign language through a program that pairs rescue dogs with prison mates. When the eight weeks of training was over, the inmates at the South Central Correctional Center in Licking decided they wanted Sparky to live with deaf students.
Today, Sparky is right at home with the school's youngsters, who have taught him additional sign language. The students continue adding to the sign language Sparky learned from the inmates. He already knows the signs for "no," "sit," "lay down," "stay," "stop" and "heel,” and s working on additional signs that mean “food” and “outside.” And a second deaf dog, a Boston Terrier named Petie, may be on his way to the school soon.
Sparky and Petie come from the Puppies for Parole program of the Missouri Department of Corrections in which inmates train animals with behavioral or other issues that make them difficult to adopt. The program saves dogs that might otherwise be euthanized and it gives inmates a constructive activity.
The owner of the Whistler Outdoor Adventures company that allegedly had 100 sled dogs slaughtered to cut costs after the Olympics speak for the first time following reports of the tragedy. Outdoor Adventures Joey Houssian has scheduled a number of media meetings Monday along with his lawyers.
Houssian wrote an editorial letter to the Vancouver Sun saying that he shared "people's sadness and disbelief" over the execution-style slaying of the animals during a two-day period last April. He also adds, “while the facts and legal responsibility for them is being investigated, I take moral responsibility for everything that happens within my company.” I, more than anyone, want to understand the truth about what happened and what was described.”
Although the dogs were killed in April 2010, the story only came to light after Robert Fawcett, the manager of Howling Dog Tours, recently applied for worker's compensation due to suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder.
Based on a statement, Fawcett advised Joey Houssian, his boss, that about 50 dogs would be euthanized. The dogs to be euthanized were ‘too old’ or ‘sick’ and ‘not adoptable.’ These dogs live to ‘run’ and were not able to do so and would have had to be kept in cages with the result that they would have a very poor or virtually no quality of life.” Fawcett shot and knifed about 100 dogs — including many he had raised from pups. There was at least one accidental death when one of the dogs he had intended to keep was injured by a ricocheting bullet. He was then forced to fire a fatal shot. All together, Fawcett destroyed one-third of his herd of sled dogs and indicated in the compensation board documents that he had to euthanize them after a downturn in the tourism industry following the Winter Olympics in February 2010.
This gruesome cruelty receives worldwide reaction with an outpouring grief and anger over the deaths. The company even received threats and angry phone calls.
Mayor Melamed of Whistler has suspended the sale of Whistler Outdoor Adventures activities via Whistler.com and the Whistler Visitor Centre until further clarity around allegation.
While much of Asia celebrates the Year of the Rabbit, Vietnam is striking a note of independence from the dominance of Chinese culture and marking the beginning of the Year of the Cat.
The two communist countries remain ideological allies and have endorsed a similar transition to a market-oriented economy. But their relationship evokes strong emotions and contradictions in Vietnam, where many bitterly recall 1,000 years of Chinese occupation and, more recently, a 1979 border war. The two countries share 10 of the zodiac calendar's 12 signs-- the rat, tiger, dragon, snake, horse, goat, monkey, rooster, dog and pig, but the Vietnamese replace the rabbit with the cat
Why does cat not included in Chinese zodiac? There is a folk that explains how each animal in the Chinese zodiac was given their place in the 12-year cycle.
According to the website of the American Chamber of Commerce in Vietnam, Ho Chi Minh chapter, the Buddha summoned all the animals together for a banquet, so he could assign them a particular year in the cycle. Animals were bestowed a year in the order of their arrivals. When the cat heard the news, he notified his friend, the rat, and the two made plans to go together the next day. However, the cat lived up to its lazy reputation and slept in the next morning. As the rat did not bother to wake up his friend, the cat did not make it to Buddha’s meeting. He was not given a year in the Chinese zodiac. This legend not only clarifies the cat’s absence from the zodiac, but also explains why cats hate rats — the rat betrayed the cat. Meanwhile, the rat made its way to the assembly, but not without more tricks. Knowing that it would be hard to beat the larger animals to the meeting, the rat enlisted the help of the ox, who allowed the rodent to ride on its head. The two continued on their journey together. But right before their arrival, the rat jumped off the ox’s head and rushed to the finish line first. The rat’s wily ways earned him the first year in the zodiac cycle followed by the ox.
And how did the cat replace the rabbit in the Vietnamese zodiac? Though there are various explanations of why the cat replaced the rabbit in the Vietnamese zodiac, the most plausible and popular theory suggests that the word for rabbit in Chinese, mao, sounds like the word for cat in Vietnamese.
Regardless of how the split came about, the Vietnamese today have no interest in bringing their zodiac signs into line with the Middle Kingdom. "For the Vietnamese, it's a matter of national honour not to have copied China completely," said Benoit de Treglode, from the Research Institute on Contemporary Southeast Asia in Bangkok.
You might heard about the a study about dog can sniff prostate cancer. But there is a new discovery that a dog can also detect colon cancer by simply sniffing people's breath or stool. But not all dogs, a specially trained dogs can only do that according to a new study.
Japanese scientists discovered a Labrador Retriever could detect a chemical produced by cancer cells just by smelling humans breath even in the early stages of the disease, and almost as accurate as a colonoscopy. In the study, researchers at Kyushu University used Marine, an eight-year-old Labrador. Marine completed 74 sniff tests, consisting of sniffing five breath or stool samples at a time in which one was cancerous, over a period of months. The samples came from 48 people with confirmed colorectal cancer and 258 volunteers with no cancer. Half of the comparison samples came from people with bowel polyps, which are benign growths that are thought to be a precursor of colorectal cancer.
Believe it or not, the dog correctly identified the cancerous samples in 33 out of 36 of the breath tests and 37 of 38 stool tests.
The researchers even complicated the task for Marine by adding a few challenges to the samples, including samples from smokers or from subjects with other types of gut problems which might have masked or interfered with other smells, but these did not interfere with the dog's olfactory accuracy.
An inexpensive, more accurate test to detect bowel cancer early could help in the fight against the disease, but don't expect dogs to take the place of colorectal cancer test. Besides, it is difficult to introduce canine scent judgement into clinical practice owing to the expensive and time required for the dog trainer and for dog education.
The study shows that cancer cells give off specific discernible odours as they circulate through the body. If the specific chemicals that produce the smell of colorectal cancer are identified, a sensor could be substituted for dog instead.
