Author: Mike Fietz

With an overdue spring finally coming into its own, it’s time for many of us to start spending some time in the garden. Whether you’re planting vegetables for the table or decorative plants to brighten up the yard, you can be pretty sure that your pets are going to be keen on inspecting the greenery. And by inspecting, I mean eating. Unfortunately, not everything in our gardens is pet-safe.

The biggest threat comes in the early stages when bulbs are being planted. These things are like buried treasures for curious dogs, and if a plant is toxic, the bulb is often where you’ll find its toxin in highest concentration. Daffodils, hyacinth, tulips, and lilies are some of the most common garden plants with poisonous bulbs, but there are many others. Be particularly vigilant in keeping pets from rooting around in the dirt after planting. And if you plan to store those bulbs indoors for a few days prior to putting them in the ground, bear in mind that you might be placing the most dangerous part of your garden right under your pet’s nose.

Animals don’t necessarily need to dig up the bulb in order to become poisoned. Many plants defend themselves with toxic leaves and flowers as well. In small amounts, most toxic plants are only capable of causing gastrointestinal distress—maybe some oral irritation and vomiting. But the full list of toxic plants is too broad to generalize, and some can be extremely dangerous. Be particularly wary of lilies if you have cats. They are uniquely vulnerable to lily toxicity, suffering potentially fatal kidney failure even at relatively low doses. Although some species of lily are safer than others, I would recommend that you not leave things to chance unless you’re absolutely sure. If you’re a cat owner, it’s worth leaving lilies of any kind out of your home and garden just for peace of mind.

Gardens aren’t always decorative, however. You may have read or heard about the potential hazards of common vegetables like onions, garlic, potatoes, and tomatoes. There is an element of truth here, but it has been greatly exaggerated—people just can’t resist sensationalizing strange facts like these. In all four cases, the toxic compounds are present in miniscule concentrations, and pets would need to consume very large amounts to pose any serious threat. It’s certainly possible for an intrepid dog to scavenge enough, so I’d recommend common-sense precautions, but you can generally grow these plants without a great deal of concern.

Unfortunately, a full list of toxic plants is far too exhaustive to cram into a single article. Luckily, the ASPCA maintains an online glossary of poisonous plants, and I recommend that you check to see if anything on your garden list might be there. It may be wise to ensure those plants are kept safely behind fences, or that they are simply left out altogether. And if you do have reason to think your pet may have eaten a poisonous plant, it’s always best to act quickly. Call your veterinarian right away. Toxicity, regardless of the type, only becomes more difficult to treat as time passes after ingestion.

Dr. Mike Fietz is a small animal veterinarian at Georgetown Veterinary Hospital. He received his veterinary degree from Cornell University in 2003, and has lived in Charlottesville since.

Charlottesville has no shortage of things to do outdoors in the summer, and we’re lucky to live somewhere that pets are often just as welcome as people. From dog-friendly parks and hiking trails to Downtown restaurants that happily serve bowls of water to their canine dinner guests, there are worse places to have four legs. But all that sunshine comes with some risk, making this a good time to remember the simple causes and catastrophic effects of heatstroke.

Heatstroke isn’t a simple matter of overdoing it and then needing some Gatorade and a nap. It is a widespread system failure, and once the process starts, it can be very difficult to reverse. Animal bodies are meant to run within a narrow range of temperatures. Pushed beyond those limits, even by just a few degrees, things unravel fast. Proteins change shape and stop functioning. Cell membranes break down and spill their contents. Blood leaks out of vessels, and clots form within others. The kidneys and liver stop functioning normally, and the brain can be permanently damaged. There’s no pleasant way to describe this. It’s an emergency, and while some animals can be rescued, this is one situation that’s easier to avoid than it is to correct.

A terrible number of heatstroke cases begin in cars. I can’t stress this enough: Don’t leave your pet alone in a car, even for short periods of time. Cars are like little greenhouses on wheels, and cracking the windows does absolutely nothing to change that. It only takes minutes for a sun-baked car to reach dangerous temperatures, and it’s not worth risking tragedy for a few moments of convenience. Even if you think you’re just running into the store for a few minutes, the person ahead of you in line with 19 coupons and a checkbook doesn’t know or care. Although this advice goes double in the hotter months, it holds throughout the entire year. My last car-related heatstroke patient was in January. January! I know you think it won’t happen to you. That’s what everybody thinks until it does.

But animals can—and do—overheat in other circumstances. While people can dissipate heat by sweating, dogs can’t do much but pant, and that’s a terribly inefficient way of cooling off. If you’re going for a long hike, bring lots of water, take plenty of breaks, and try to stick to the shade (this will also help prevent scorched paws from hot pavement). Try to plan your activity in the morning or evening when the sun is lower in the sky. Swimming can help keep cool if your dog likes the water. Be particularly careful if your dog is overweight or brachycephalic (read: smushy-faced, like pugs and bulldogs), because they are at an even higher risk. And if you’re thinking of shaving your pet for the summer months, don’t go too wild. Trimming away the heavier fur can be useful, but that coat protects animals from the sun’s rays, and shaving down to the skin can actually make things worse.

Watch your dog carefully for signs of heatstroke. Heavy panting and thickened saliva may be early evidence that something is wrong. As the problem gets worse, you might see dark gums, stumbling, confusion, or complete collapse. Dogs and cats that spend a lot of time outdoors should have ready access to water and shade. If there is any question, get your pet soaked down in cool water, offer water to drink, and get to your veterinarian as soon as possible. Treatment is far more effective if started early in the process, and waiting to see what happens next can be fatal.

Summer is a great opportunity to spend time outside with our pets, but it only takes a few minutes for a happy day to become a tragic one. I see it far too often. Keep things safe, and enjoy tomorrow, too.

Dr. Mike Fietz is a small animal veterinarian at Georgetown Veterinary Hospital. He received his veterinary degree from Cornell University in 2003, and has lived in Charlottesville since.

I’ve completely lost track of how many coughing dogs I’ve seen in the last month or two. They come in honking like geese and hacking up slime. Yup, there’s a nasty case of kennel cough touring Charlottesville, and it seems nobody is safe (well… nobody who happens to be a dog). But wasn’t your dog vaccinated for kennel cough? Why is this thing so hard to keep away? And what do we do about it?

I can’t blame anybody for being confused. Veterinarians have played fast and loose with this terminology for a long time. The truth is that “kennel cough” really doesn’t mean a whole lot. It isn’t a specific diagnosis, so much as a convenient (and charmingly alliterative!) description of the symptoms. When a dog comes in with an upper respiratory cough that we suspect is infectious, we call it kennel cough. Ta-da! Without unnecessarily advanced testing, we have absolutely no idea what’s causing it. By the book, afflicted dogs should be diagnosed as having “infectious tracheobronchitis,” which is as nebulous as it sounds and not as much fun to say. So kennel cough it is.

There is a long list of bacteria and viruses that are candidates for causing kennel cough. Sometimes they act alone, and sometimes they join forces. Somehow, Bordetella bronchiseptica became the reigning king of that list, and the Bordetella vaccine is frequently referred to as the kennel cough vaccine. That’s fair enough—it’s certainly one of the historically prevalent causes. But the important thing to know is that being vaccinated for Bordetella doesn’t protect dogs from the entire list. They are still vulnerable to kennel cough—we’ve just shut one door.

So this…thing that’s been going around lately can be pretty much anything, or maybe a whole collection of them. Maybe it’s Bordetella, and maybe it isn’t. Truth is, it hardly matters. The vast majority of cases are self-limiting, just like when you or I manage to catch a cold. We hack and sputter for a little while, and then our immune systems send it packing. So long as they are otherwise healthy, dogs with kennel cough typically get better in a couple of weeks, and treatment is frequently unnecessary. We do treat some patients, especially if their size or age leaves them uniquely vulnerable to deeper infection, or if symptoms have really become a drag on the patient’s overall comfort. Your veterinarian may prescribe antibiotics, or even a cough suppressant if things are really out of control.

Preventing kennel cough can be a frustrating affair. Most causes are airborne, and can spread rapidly. Vaccination remains important, and has done a lot to limit outbreaks even if it can’t prevent them all. Is it worth keeping your dog away from kennels and daycare? Maybe during an outbreak, or if you have a lot of dogs and don’t want to deal with living in an infirmary for a few weeks. But in general, I recommend that you don’t overthink it. If you send your kids to school, they’re going to catch a cold eventually. And if you send your dog to daycare, he’s bound to catch a cough sometime.

If and when he does, don’t worry too much. It’s just a little case of kennel cough …whatever that’s supposed to mean.

Dr. Mike Fietz is a small animal veterinarian at Georgetown Veterinary Hospital. He received his veterinary degree from Cornell University in 2003, and has lived in Charlottesville since.

It can feel so unnatural to watch our pets grow old. It’s just not what we imagine when they first come into our lives. I was in high school when I got my first dog—a Lhasa Apso puppy I named Opus. I loved him dearly. He became part of my identity through college, vet school, and the start of my career in Charlottesville. He was the common thread that ran through so many changes in my own life. After all those happy and healthy years, I wasn’t prepared to see him become a tiny old man. He was supposed to keep playing with toys and chasing his tail, forever oblivious to such trite human concerns as aging. But there he was, losing his sight, sprouting little growths all over his body, and repeatedly turning up lame in his left front leg. Ready or not, he had gotten old.

These changes are hard to grapple with at first. They are sad and unwelcome. But our pets should be sources of comfort and happiness, not sorrow. It may take some time to refocus in the harsher light, but there is a lot of joy to be found in caring for older animals. It is, in many ways, a privilege to see them whole—to know them in all their stages of life, to meet them where they are right now, and to be with them when they need us the most. To live with an aging animal can be bittersweet, for sure. But it can be beautiful all the same.

There is no magic moment that a pet becomes old. We know this, of course, but we struggle to quantify it anyway. Most people know the equation that grants seven “dog years” for every real one. But with small breed dogs aging so much more slowly than large breed dogs, this simplistic formula leaves much to be desired. And anybody’s guess is as good as mine when it comes to cats, some of which seem old by their tenth birthday, and others which reach voting age without a gray whisker. So when asked if an animal is old, my reply is simple enough. Does he seem old?

I’ve never diagnosed an animal as “old.” Age is not a medical condition. But as animals age, they naturally become more prone to health issues that chip away at their quality of life. It seems so unfair—these animals who have lived their entire lives in an effortless state of happiness are faced with such an awful dose of reality. We are charged with protecting that happiness. Challenging? Often. Rewarding? Always.

As animals age, the way they interact with their environment changes. Just like people, many pets suffer some degree of hearing and vision loss. And some will unfortunately develop cognitive dysfunction, altering their very perception of the world. Although most animals seem to tackle these challenges with remarkable cheer (they really are amazing), some can become stressed or frightened. These pets find great comfort in consistency and familiarity to help them keep their bearings. There is security in a dependable schedule of walks, playtimes, and feedings. And if they are losing their senses, remember that you may need to develop new ways of communicating. Deaf animals may try harder to maintain eye contact, and depend on you to return the favor. And simple touch may be the most reassuring thing in the world, so get cuddling.

It is important to keep the layout of your home consistent. If you live with an aging pet, this really may not be the best time to renovate the living room. And take care not to create unexpected obstacles. It used to break my heart to see Opus tripping over a carelessly abandoned shoe in the middle of his otherwise clean hallway. It’s not his fault he went blind while living with a slob. Animals are incredibly adept at navigating a stable environment, even when their senses are failing, and keeping surprises to a minimum can go a long way toward making them feel safe and comfortable.

Take particular caution if you have stairs in your home. Even when older animals can see the stairs just fine, the pain and weakness that come with arthritis can make them dangerous to navigate. Blocking off stairwells isn’t a bad idea—it may be time to break out those baby gates you haven’t needed since housetraining. And laying down carpet runners can be really useful for older dogs that are having more trouble keeping their footing on slick floors.

Don’t forget how well you know your own pet. After all these years, you’re intimately familiar with any habits and idiosyncrasies. If something seems “off,” it may well be your first signal that a medical problem is brewing. And don’t underestimate the value of routine veterinary examinations. Burgeoning problems like heart murmurs may be completely invisible at home, and finding them early can help head them off before they get out of hand. Many owners are understandably concerned about putting elderly animals through extensive testing and treatment. Rest assured, most veterinarians share that concern. Many diseases of old age can be managed very simply and effectively, but that can’t happen until they are properly identified.

It is a sad truth that our pets age too quickly, even under the best circumstances. But old animals have a charm all their own, and taking care of them brings its own set of rewards.

“So, is it really necessary to… you know?” asks the anxious new puppy owner as he unwittingly extends two fingers of his free hand into the form of scissors.

The short answer? Yes. Yes, it really is. And for so many reasons.

Here’s the sad truth: There are literally millions of homeless dogs and cats out there. Shelters are packed beyond capacity. These unwanted animals face living their lives in cages, and more than half are euthanized to relieve the strain on a hopelessly overloaded system. I worry that big statistics like this can be too abstract to really strike home, so I’d ask that you simply imagine your own pet as one of them. If that knot growing in the pit of your stomach isn’t awful enough, magnify it by 5 million. That’s the ASPCA’s lowball estimate of the number of animals that cycle through our shelter system every year. It could be a million or two higher. This is a legitimate tragedy.

I’ll put the finest point I can on this. Unless there is a medical reason to prevent it, you should absolutely spay or neuter your pet. It is, without question or equivocation, the responsible thing to do. It doesn’t matter if your pet is a street mutt found in a parking lot or has AKC papers tracing his lineage back to a distinguished sire owned by King Henry VIII. Each new animal born is another one doomed to remain homeless. Sterilized animals break the cycle. It’s as simple s that.

On occasion, someone will take the opportunity to remind me that I’d be out of a job if there were no animals breeding at all. That’s true, I suppose. But I feel rather confident that veterinarians will happily reconsider their recommendations as soon as America finds itself even remotely threatened by a dog and cat shortage. Until then, the current wisdom on spaying and neutering rests in a pretty wide comfort zone. It’s time to stop making this problem worse.

But let’s, for argument’s sake, pretend that there wasn’t an overpopulation problem. Would there still be a reason to have your pet spayed or neutered? The answer is, again, yes. The health benefits of sterilization are many, and the risks are few.

Neutering is a term typically reserved for male animals, and refers to the removal of the testicles. It’s gross, I know, but bear with me. It’s a very quick procedure, and when dogs wake up, they have absolutely no idea that anything happened. Plus, unbeknownst to them, they are now more likely to live a full and happy life. Sneaky, sneaky. Neutered animals, for obvious reasons, cannot develop testicular cancer. They don’t develop prostate enlargement later in life. They are less prone to roaming and fighting, and less likely to demonstrate aggression and dominance issues (this is particularly important if you have children in the house).

Resistance to neutering frequently comes from men (I’ll give you a moment to express adequate shock). I’ve lost count of how many concerned women have told me that they really want to neuter the dog, but their boyfriend or husband keeps freaking out about the idea. This seems silly to me. I can only assume these poor guys are misunderstanding the procedure. So let me say, on the record: Don’t worry, boys. You get to keep yours.

Spaying is the term used for sterilization of female animals, and most commonly involves the surgical removal of the ovaries and uterus. It is a more involved procedure than neutering, to be sure. But it is performed so frequently that nearly any veterinarian can safely be considered an expert. And the health benefits are overwhelming. The most significant is the prevention of pyometra—a deadly uterine infection which I find myself treating much more often than I should. Ironically, the treatment is basically a spay, except much (much, much) more expensive and risky because the poor thing is almost always in critical condition by the time she comes in.

Animals spayed before their first heat cycle are also considerably less likely to develop mammary gland cancer (their equivalent of breast cancer), which is malignant half the time in dogs, and almost all the time in cats. This bears repeating: It is a common misconception that pets should be allowed to have a heat cycle before being spayed. Once animals complete their first heat cycle, they are at permanently increased risk of mammary cancer for the rest of their lives.

None of this is to say that spaying and neutering are completely without risk. It would be disingenuous to suggest otherwise. But those risks are completely insignificant compared to the risks of not doing anything. In recent years, there has been an increased push to postpone spaying and neutering until a later age, or to avoid it altogether. Much of this push comes from people who are well-intentioned but ultimately misinformed. Internet forums have created echo-chambers in which minor worries and rare events can be magnified into dire concerns which occur all the time. Blogs are passed off as literature, and repetition turns hearsay into fact. There is a lot of good information online, but it can be tough to separate the wheat from the chaff. If you have any questions about the safety or wisdom of spaying or neutering your pet, please speak to your veterinarian about it.

Spaying and neutering are important parts of responsible pet ownership. Not only do they help stem the tragic pet overpopulation problem, but they give your own dog or cat a better chance of living a full and healthy life. The choice really couldn’t be any simpler.

As we roll toward the end of January, I gather a lot of us have New Year’s resolutions that are already unraveling and set to expire by Groundhog Day. C’est la vie—in 11 short months, you can give it another shot. In the meantime, maybe it’s time to provide some surrogate willpower to those who have even less than we do. That’s right…the dog and cat have really let themselves go.

I understand that the roly-poly cat is kind of cute, and that the pudgy dog just looooves bacon. And as the owner of a hound dog, I’m well acquainted with the mind-control properties of pleading eyes. But it’s going to be a lot less cute when the cat needs insulin twice a day, and the dog develops crippling joint disease at 7 years old. From diabetes to arthritis, all that weight has consequences, and that means it’s your job to keep it under control.

Most animals are overweight for a simple reason—they eat too much and don’t exercise enough. There are some exceptions that may be worth looking into if your pet isn’t responding to a diet plan (dogs, for instance, can struggle with thyroid conditions that complicate weight loss). But by and large, this genuinely boils down to math. If animals burn more calories than they consume, they have to lose weight. Our pets are amazing in countless ways, but violating the laws of thermodynamics isn’t one of them.

So how much food should your pet get? Just as in people, there’s no magic number that can apply to everybody. Animals have varying caloric needs based on size, genetics, and activity levels. I generally recommend using their current feeding as a baseline, and adjusting from there based on the target weight. But that means knowing how much they’re eating right now. “A handful, maybe?” or “About this much of a bowl” just aren’t specific enough. You need a measuring cup. And you need to break the habit of just filling the bowl when it’s empty (this is an especially common problem with cats). Meals should be measured and given two or three times a day.

That’s where the good news comes in. Human diets are such a chore. The food is always different from meal to meal, and it’s hard to keep track of how many calories things have. But our pets eat pretty much the same thing every day, it’s been explicitly designed to provide proper nutrition, and it comes out of a bag. Adjusting calories is a simple matter of filling up to a different line on a cup. You have complete control over what gets put in your pet’s bowl, and that means you have the power to get him down to size.

Some animals require heavy reductions in feeding to make the right impact. In those cases, it may be worth considering an entirely new diet rather than trying to feed less of the usual food. The problem is that food contains more than just calories. When you feed less of it, you are also feeding fewer vitamins, minerals, and other nutrients. And if you have to cut way back, you may wind up shortchanging your pet in other ways. Vitamin supplements might be considered in these cases. Otherwise, dedicated low-calorie and prescription diets are available to help ensure that your pet gets proper nutrition while you shave off the calories.

Of course, animals don’t only eat during mealtime. There’s always somebody looking to toss the cat a treat, or share their dinner with the dog. It adds up! Keep in mind that animals are a lot smaller than we are. Your “little piece” of meat is a Porterhouse to a Jack Russell Terrier (which doesn’t stop him from eating it in less than two seconds). We mean well, but our eyes are much bigger than their stomachs, and those uncounted spare calories can completely ruin efforts to improve your animal’s health. Cut these out completely until you have a really good sense of what direction things are headed, and even then, offer them sparingly. If you need treats for training purposes, stick to low-calorie options like carrot pieces. Or, if you pre-measure your pet’s food for the day, just take a few kibble from that pool and use those.

So far, we’ve really only dealt with the “calories in” half of the equation. It’s important to remember that you can also encourage weight loss by increasing the calories spent during exercise. Cats can be a bit tricky in this regard—most aren’t too inclined to join you for a jog. But laser pointers and other toys can be used to get cats moving again. Meanwhile, Charlottesville offers no shortage of parks and hiking trails to help you get the dog back in shape. And who knows? You might find yourself making a dent in your own New Year’s resolution in the process.

Dr. Mike Fietz is a small animal veterinarian at Georgetown Veterinary Hospital. He received his veterinary degree from Cornell University in 2003, and has lived in Charlottesville since. Got a question? E-mail mike@ c-ville.com.

Question: My cat can’t seem to figure out how to use her litterbox. She pees in it just fine, but poops on the floor next to it. Any ideas?

Most cats are really easy to litter train. In most cases, it’s just a matter of giving them a litter box and letting them figure out the rest. Unlike dogs, you don’t typically need to spend weeks and months teaching them right and wrong. Why? I have no idea. But when it comes to bathroom habits, cats are pretty much plug and play.

Except, of course, when they aren’t. And then the frustration begins.

One of the most common problems is litter aversion. Some cats just don’t like the litter you’re using. They might find it completely appropriate for urinating, but would prefer to take their number two elsewhere. Strange? Sure. But when have cats ever been anything but strange?

Experimenting with your cat’s litter might be the first step. There is an impossible variety of cat litter available. Some of them clump, and some of them don’t. Some are scented, while others are au naturel. Clay, crystals, wheat, corn, newspaper… it never ends. “Mountain Fresh” and “Autumn Rain” might test well with human shoppers, but your cat may find the smell objectionable. Or maybe she just doesn’t like the litter’s texture between her toes when she does her post-business digging.

If you’ve already tried a broad selection of litter, it may be time to turn attention to the box itself. Some cats like the seclusion offered by a covered box, but others prefer the open-air freedom of a flat pan. The fancy electronic self-cleaning box might make your life easier, but its whirring and clanking may have scared your cat and created a permanent phobia. Or maybe the box is positioned next to a noisy household appliance like a clothes dryer. All it takes is one loud buzz at the wrong moment to teach a cat that this might not be the best place to poop. And if you have more than one cat, it may be time to invest in a few more boxes. Behavioral experts frequently recommend that you have one box per cat, plus one more for good measure. Nobody likes to have litterboxes all over the house, but it’s preferable to having cat poop on the stairs.

If none of these things are working, it may be time to visit your veterinarian. Cats can be cryptic animals, alerting us to stress and illness in strange ways. Perhaps she’s had a few rounds of constipation, and mistakenly associated the discomfort with her box. Maybe an anal sac impaction is making the process painful for her. It’s worth getting a clean bill of health to ensure that some unexpected health problem isn’t flying below radar.

Litterbox troubles can leave cat owners feeling like there’s no solution. Luckily, more often than not, a few simple tweaks can get most issues under control.

Think of the worst toothache you ever had. Try to remember how it drove you nuts until you finally got the problem taken care of. Now try to remember some other things about the experience. How did the tooth look? Pretty normal, I bet, just like the rest of your teeth. And did it make you stop eating? Doubt it. Maybe you just chewed on a different side, or suffered quietly while you finished dinner. Would your friends and family have known you had a toothache if you didn’t tell them? Probably not. Hold that thought.

Now imagine a dog or cat coming in for an examination. The teeth are crusted with tartar, if not completely encased in it. The gums are bright red and angry, and in some spots they’ve receded to expose the root of the tooth. The breath—oh, there are no words to describe the breath. “He’d really benefit from a dental procedure,” I suggest.

“But he’s still eating,” I’m told. “He doesn’t act like it bothers him at all.”

Let’s not mince words here. If a completely normal-looking tooth can cause such agony for a person, is there really any question that these animals are suffering? It’s easy to overlook dental care in animals because, by and large, they keep silent about it. And worse, dentistry hasn’t really become a focus in veterinary medicine until the last decade or so, which means long-time animal lovers don’t remember this ever being discussed with them before. But pretending it doesn’t exist doesn’t make it vanish. Dental tartar and gingivitis are not cosmetic. They cause significant discomfort, eventually climbing up and around the roots of the tooth to cause deeper inflammation, infection, and pain.

Prevention is always the best bet to keep things from growing this dire. Although the suggestion frequently elicits incredulous giggles, nothing beats good old-fashioned brushing to keep dental disease at bay. Any soft-bristled toothbrush will do, but you’ll want to use a toothpaste intended for pets to keep them from swallowing too much fluoride (plus they come in pet-friendly flavors like chicken and fish). But here’s the rub —it really needs to be done every day or two in order to be effective. Less often than that, and you reach a point of diminishing returns where plaque has too much chance to harden into tartar, which is far more resistant to brushing. For the best results, you really want to stay ahead of that process.

There are a lot of tricks and products out there which are intended to keep animals’ teeth clean, and while they may help, they just don’t hold a candle to brushing. Feeding dry kibble can help scrape plaque away, but it’s no magic bullet. We wouldn’t be able to avoid the dentist by limiting our diet to crunchy food, and neither can our pets. Chew toys and long-lasting treats like rawhides can help scrape away tartar too, but dogs don’t chew equally with all their teeth, so the benefit isn’t likely to cover their entire mouth. Enzymatic drops and oral rinses promise the benefits of brushing without the hassle, but this is a bit like throwing out your toothbrush because you use mouthwash. If it seems too good to be true, it probably is.

Despite best efforts, tartar is almost certain to accumulate in time. We brush our teeth twice a day (right?), and even we still need an occasional scaling to keep things clean. It’s exactly the same for dogs and cats. A proper scaling does require anesthesia, which often frightens people. But in healthy animals, anesthesia is extremely safe, and the risk of leaving things unchecked is far greater. You may see nonanesthetized dental scaling advertised, but it’s not worth the cost. Although the teeth look nicer at a glance, disease above the gumline has gone completely unaddressed, and the tooth roots remain at risk of progressive decay.

When that kind of disease gets out of control, we don’t have much choice but to extract the offending teeth. It’s not as bad as it sounds, I promise. Animals don’t notice the loss, and they’re far more comfortable without festering dental abscesses and throbbing nerves. If your veterinarian has suggested an extraction, it is almost certainly in your pet’s best interests. Believe me—pulling teeth is like, well, pulling teeth. We don’t enjoy it, and we don’t do it if we don’t have to.

It’s surprisingly easy to take our pets’ teeth for granted. No matter how bad their dental disease gets, they seem to go about their lives as if nothing is wrong. But we shouldn’t mistake their stoicism for permission to ignore their health. Just like people, animals suffer when their teeth aren’t taken care of. Luckily, just like people, it’s also not that hard to keep them on the right track.

One of the joys of having pets is sharing. We share our homes, our families—our entire lives—with them. And sometimes that means we share our food. Truth is, most “people food” is absolutely fine for animals (at least in moderation). But some things we eat just don’t sit well in fuzzier stomachs, and are best avoided entirely.

We’ll start with the big one. The one everybody knows. The one that results in panicked phone calls to my office whenever an Oreo goes missing. Yes, chocolate is toxic to dogs and cats. The good news is that the majority of cases aren’t as bad as you think. Chocolate contains a natural stimulant called theobromine which isn’t all that dissimilar from caffeine. Coffee drinkers will be well-acquainted with the symptoms of minor overdose (upset stomach, restlessness, and increased urination), but dogs aren’t known for their sense of moderation, and aren’t inclined to delicately select two or three chocolates from the box of 50. They’re more likely to eat the whole lot, and chase it down with the packaging. Making matters worse, dogs and cats don’t metabolize theobromine as rapidly as we do, so it has a longer time to linger in the bloodstream and cause trouble. It’s these higher doses of theobromine that can cause muscle tremors, a dangerously accelerated heart rate, seizures, and even death.

So how much is too much? It depends a lot on the size of your pet, the type of chocolate, and the amount they scarf down. A 75-pound Labrador won’t be phased by a two-ounce bar of milk chocolate, but your 20-pound Pug may be in rough shape after indulging. Dark chocolate and unsweetened baking chocolate contain an even higher concentration of theobromine, meaning smaller amounts can be more dangerous. That’s worth keeping in mind with the holiday season coming up—there tends to be a lot more baking chocolate floating around kitchens this time of year.

Chocolate isn’t the only way for animals to exercise their sweet tooth. Perhaps it’s a stretch to call chewing gum a food, but animals have no qualms about swallowing it, and many common brands are a significant danger to pets. Specifically, keep an eye out for an artificial sweetener called xylitol. While no problem for people, dogs and cats don’t quite know what to do with the stuff. Their pancreas confuses xylitol with regular blood sugar, resulting in a massive insulin surge that causes their real blood sugar to bottom out. If it gets low enough, animals may become disoriented, have seizures, or enter a state of hypoglycemic shock.

Lest I be accused of a crusade against the candy industry, I think it’s necessary to point out that nature has a few nasty surprises up its sleeve, too. Raisins may be the healthy stand-in for chocolate chips in our cookie recipes, but they may be even more dangerous to pets. For reasons nobody knows, raisins (and grapes) can push dogs into severe kidney failure within a few hours of ingestion. And they aren’t the only hazard in the produce aisle. Garlic, onions, avocados, and macadamia nuts, though not as life-threatening as raisins, can cause their share of trouble if pets consume enough.

It’s odd to think that foods we eat every day might be dangerous to our pets, but it’s important to know which ones to keep safely out of reach. Unfortunately, even with the best precautions, accidents happen. If you have any reason to think your pet got into something toxic, call your veterinarian right away. Try and get a sense of how much might have been ingested, and provide any relevant packaging if you have it. Treatment decisions are much easier to make when we know exactly what we’re up against. Most cases do fine with proper support, but early intervention is always your best bet, and waiting to see what happens next may cost valuable time.

Dr. Mike Fietz is a small animal veterinarian at Georgetown Veterinary Hospital. He received his veterinary degree from Cornell University in 2003, and has lived in Charlottesville since. Got a question? E-mail mike@c-ville.com.