Pet Products

Pet ProductsWe have a good range of OTC type pet products, including the Dermcare range of antibacterial shampoos and conditioners (Pyohex), the antifungal / anti yeast Malaseb shampoo.

We also stock the don't do damage by stripping important skin oils and can smell nice shampoos like the anti-inflammatory Aloveen and the Virbac range of surfactant shampoos of Allergroom and its oatmeal added derivatives.

For heartworm in dogs we mostly use the once a year heartworm injection, but also have the Interceptor/Sentinel once a month tablets, along with the Milbemax nice small and easy to give tablets that also knock the infective stage of heartworm as well as intestinal parasites.

Comfortis is our favourite flea product for dogs, as outlined below, but we also keep Frontline Plus and Advantix for combined flea and tick protection, along with Preventic tick collars.

And for cat flea control Frontline Plus, and our favourites Bayer's Advantage and Advocate for those who can't force a worming pill down their pussy's throat as an added benefit to flea control.

Killing Fleas

Achieving flea control can be incredibly hard to achieve, especially in late summer and autumn. To assist you the select products and control methods, there are some flea facts you need to know:

So what?

Any gap in flea control on any animal that has access or lives on your premises will result in a flea wave 14 to 90 days later, with the biggest adult emergence waves occurring in mild autumnal weather. This can result in the apparent paradox that you are finding even more fleas on your pets after commencing flea control that when they were on no treatment.

Remember 95% of fleas haven't arrived on your pet yet, and until they do any product you use can't kill them. Winning the flea war takes time, and it assumes that you don't have untreated flea laden intruders replenishing the egg reserve. For some people one of the most important flea products is rat bait, especially if you have or are near poultry or livestock being fed grain, as they will be sharing their food with the intruders. All the monthly products will work eventually, if you don't have intruders or shared ground problem with untreated pets.

If you can't solve the flea affected territory overlap problem, about the only product that will deliver comfort to your dogs is Comfortis because it kills so fast for a once a month product. It hasn't been registered yet for use in cats, and remember it does nothing against paralysis ticks. I think the best flea killer banger for bucks in cats at present is Bayer's Advantage which is a good quick killer.

Diet ProductsDietary Products

There are two broad categories of food products on our shelves:

Therapeutic Diets

These are for particular disorders and they are all made by Hills.

 

Hills Z/D is made for food allergy problems in both dogs and cats. This consists of itchy skin disorders often involving what is called tractional hair loss, where the hair is over-groomed off the body by the affected animal, and other skin problems like recurrent ear infections. In the dog these are genetically determined problems, and often appear early in life before the much more common pollen allergy disorders. Cats also have a genetic version, but can acquire one later in life with some bowel disease activating an allergic reaction to certain food proteins.

There are also gastro-intestinal disorders producing inflammatory bowel disease where the gut loses efficiency in digesting and absorbing food because the intestinal lining structure is interfered with by the immune system inappropriately responding to nutrient proteins.

Z/D works by reducing protein molecules down to very small units, from an average size of something called 650 Dalton units, down to about 15 Dalton units. This small they don't excite the immune system but they still satisfy dietary requirements. All the experts in gastro-intestinal disorders and dermatology I have heard on the topic consider Z/D Ultra to be the best product for testing whether food allergy is a problem, and where necessary for maintaining animals where diet change can't be successfully undertaken where this diagnosis has been confirmed.

With skin and alimentary disorders testing and control before Z/D type products, was and still is done with novel protein; that is something they would have rarely or never had before. In dogs fish is an uncommon dietary input and so Hills F/P (Fish and Potato) is often included in food allergy feeding regimes, and because of the Omega 3 content of fish diets can help in calming agitated skin in around 30% of dogs.

No use in cats though, especially for food allergy dermatitis, because seafood is the biggest offender in cats for that disorder. Not surprising really. Animals that evolved in the desert chomp on lizards, birds and rodents. Fish are hard to come by in arid zones unless you are around places like Lake Eyre 2 or 3 times in a human lifetime.

Hills I/D (intestinal diets) is very useful for dogs and cats recovering from pancreatitis. This is a nasty disorder that we get too that has a high relapse rate and is often triggered and re-provoked by higher fat content diets. Cats and dogs are better at being carnivores than we are, given their evolutionary heritage, and so normally they deal with fat very well, not getting anything like our vascular disorders aggravated by high fat and high glycaemic index carbohydrates.

But when they get pancreatitis, they are often cursed for life, and we find I/D is very good for stabilising the condition. It is also useful for animals that have disrupted small intestinal disorders that make digesting and absorbing food difficult. Low fibre low fat diets can help reduce severity of this problem in most though not all cases, and occasionally they cause mischief in the colon. That's another topic, and I am already raving way too much.

There are lots of others for specific problems, being obesity, kidney disease, liver disease, and bad teeth, and once again, all made by Hills. There are some other diets we order in when needed, mainly because the pet gets bored with the same old thing. We sometimes get Royal Canin when the Hills is sniffed and rejected.

Standard Diets

These foods we stock are all made by Iams / Eukanuba. This includes Puppy Growth Diets, which for large breeds are very important. Big breeds get big because they grow fast, and the problem with rapid growth is it is more error affected. High growth usually means high protein, and well, intuitively, a big puppy needs high protein. Right? Wrong!! Large breed diets reduce the protein and mineral content to slow things down. Doesn't mean they are stunted, just a longer time to get there.

In breeds with a high incidence of hip dysplasia, about 50% of the problem is dud genes. The other 50% is acquired problems caused by high protein / high mineral diets. So, eat the meat yourself, or feed it to the lion if you have one. Not the Lab / Bull Mastiff/ German Shepherd / All The Big Rest. Not anywhere near as important when they are fully grown.

The rest of these diets are largely about ingredient quality. Better fatty acids, better protein. Mass retail diets are still pretty good, just not as good.

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