All the Creatures

With heat waves going on in full swing over the majority of the USA, here are some suggestions on how you can help your pets beat the heat:

Provide shade in an area that has breeze. Shade with stagnate air is almost as bad as not having any shade at all. Like in the photo above you can also provide a misting system for your pets. The misting systems also work well for livestock in barns as well as for dogs. Those of you that live in a high humidity area might want to just supply a breeze from fans, either overhead fans or free standing fans. Many local feed stores have huge free standing fans for sale for barns and other livestock areas. Here are what they look like:

Of course you want to make sure that all of your pets and livestock have plenty of water available. In fact I am now about to go outside and check all of the livestock tanks to make sure they are full.  At the same time I will check all of the animals to see if any of them are suffering from the heat.

For caged birds, you can make them comfortable by providing the occasional misting of water from a spray bottle.

All the Creatures

Horse owners and other livestock owners should be aware of what plants can kill their animals. For example did you know that just one leaf of an oleander plant can kill a horse in a matter of hours? Yet most unaware horse owners have those plants growing as ornamental bushes in their landscape. I have a friend that almost went ballistic when a neighbor or hers trimmed his oleander bushes and threw the trimmings into her pasture. Her neighbor certainly got educated later that day by her and her husband the deputy sheriff.

If you own livestock, you must educate yourself to the dangers of poisonous plants that your animals might come in contact with. Get yourself a good book on plants with lots and lots of full color photos like, “All About Poisonous Plants.” Most feed stores have them and of course you can find them on sale all over the internet.

Livestock owners that feed their animals baled hays should also be able to identify poisonous plants that have been dried and baled in their hay. Some plants are harmless at certain stages of their growth so you need to be aware of the plants poisonous life cycle.

Protect your animals and get educated about poisonous plants.

All the Creatures

Flea season has finally arrived in the Pacific Northwest. I was wondering when it would get underway. We have had nothing but cool wet weather until the last few days when it finally warmed up. Fleas like warm weather so the eggs can hatch. Our house cat gets her monthly dose of Advantage as a regular precaution but I usually wait for flea season to arrive before treating the dogs. The dogs get Advantix, which is the same as Advantage but it is water proof. The dogs like to play in the creek that runs through our property and so I need to use something that is water proof. I try to find the stuff on sale because it can often be expensive. I don’t buy it from our vet anymore since they charged an arm and a leg for it.

The one advantage of using Advantage is the fact that the fleas that land on the dog or cat will die within 24 hours. That makes the dog and cat a flea magnet that kills the fleas. That is what our vet told us when they sold us the stuff.

I tried other spot on types of flea products for dogs and cats and the only one that I found to work was the Advantix. Hartz was the worse, it didn’t work at all and the other ones only worked for about a week.

All the Creatures