Online Pet Stores

Keeping Your Pet Safe In The Warm Weather Months

The hot summer months can pose a real threat to pets. Cats and dogs simply cannot tolerate extreme temperatures. As a responsible pet owner, you need to make sure that your pet is safe during these warm weather months. Here are some tips to help you and your pet.

Never leave an animal in a car: All pet owners should know the dangers of leaving any pet in a hot car, even if it is just for a few minutes. This especially applies to dog owners. Dogs love riding in the car and it is very tempting to let your dog ride to the grocery store with you. However, pet owners should never leave cats or dogs inside a car during hot weather. Even with the windows open, a car parked in the hot sun can reach sweltering temperatures. Pets left in hot cars can die within minutes or can suffer from severe dehydration. The best rule of thumb is the leave your pet at home in the cool air conditioner during the hot weather. You should also know that if you are a dog owner that allowing your dog a ride the bed of a truck could be very dangerous for a dog at any time of the year. One jolt can send your dog flying out of the bed of the truck, resulting in injury or worse. Even putting your dog unsupervised in the bed of a truck in a public place can be a recipe for disaster. Be extra careful with your pet during traveling. If you must travel with your dog or cat, secure your pet in the car and leave the air conditioning on at all times. Let your pets take frequent breaks on long trips and give them a chance to get a drink of water.

Be Careful Walking the Dog: There are many areas where the temperatures soar in the warm months. In places where the temperatures reach an all-time high, it is a good idea to walk your dog either in the morning or in the evening when temperatures are lower. During the summer, temperatures will be at the highest during midday. You should refrain from walking your dog during this time. Not only will you and your dog become hot and dehydrated, the hot concrete can burn your dog’s sensitive paws. When you do walk during hot weather, take along water for your dog and stop frequently to let your dog drink. Your dog will thank you for this.

Practice Proper Pet Grooming: It is always a good idea to keep your pet properly groomed, but it is especially important during the summer months. If your dog has very long fur, it is like wearing a fur coat in 95-degree weather. It is not comfortable to your pet. Also, keep an eye out for pets that have much of their fur trimmed off, such as poodles. Longhaired dogs can quickly overheat in the high temperatures. Poodles and other breeds with short cuts can get sunburned. Sunscreen does not protect dogs. With long haired dogs, regular brushing also helps remove the winter undercoat and can help your dog better regulate body temperatures during hot weather. Regular clipping of long hair can also help keep your dog cool. Even longhaired cats can benefit from a summer clipping. Longhaired cats are easily overheated, even if they do stay indoors.

Watch for Insects: Insects can be bothersome to your pet during the warm, summer months. Spring and summer are when fleas and ticks are the highest. Mosquitoes are also out during this time of year. It is always a good idea to make sure your dog and cat are getting their monthly flea and tick preventative. Your dog also needs to stay current on heartworm preventative, as mosquito bites can cause heartworms. Also, keep a first aid kit on hand for bee or wasp stings.

Outdoor safety: Summer is often when people spend a lot of times outdoors. Whether it is working in the yard, visiting the lake or swimming in the pool, you need to take extra caution when your pets are with you outside. If you mow your yard or put chemicals on the grass, be sure your pets are indoors and away from the dangers. Also, if your dog enjoys the water, keep a close eye on your pet. Most pets can swim instinctively, but it is always a good idea to watch. If you enjoy taking your dog out boating, you can buy life preserver vests for your dog to wear. You can never be too safe when it comes to your beloved furry friend.

Technorati Tags : during temperatures summer weather

Caring For Your Diabetic Cat

If your cat has just been diagnosed with diabetes, you might be afraid of what the future holds for your beloved pet. The good news is that cats can live long, healthy lives after being diagnosed with diabetes. The trick is that you, as a pet owner, must be dedicated to care for your cat during his or her illness. Diabetes is not a death sentence for pets. Here is some information to help you understand what you need to do to help your diabetic cat.

Regular Medical Care: After your cat has been diagnosed with diabetes, it is imperative that you visit your veterinarian on a regular basis. Your cat will need regular checkups to check the blood sugar levels and to make sure that he or she is receiving the right amount of insulin. When your cat goes in for a check up, the vet will ask that you do not feed your cat twelve hours part to the checkup. While your cat is at the check up, your veterinarian will draw blood and check blood sugar levels. People that have diabetes are able to check their blood sugar at home. However, this is not possible with cats unless you buy a glucose monitoring system. Your will probably ask that you bring your cat in every three months for this type of checkup.

Getting your Cat Insulin: When your cat has diabetes, it is your responsibility to make sure that your cat receives the proper dose of insulin twice a day. The amount of insulin that your cat will need will vary according to your cat’s individual condition. Most cats will receive between three and five units of insulin to times per day. It is important that you establish a routine for your cat. Your cat needs to receive insulin 12 hours apart. Most people that have diabetic cats will give their cat and insulin shot at the same time every morning and at the same time every evening.

It is not difficult to learn to give your cat insulin injections. Your veterinarian will walk you through the process, and then you can repeat this at home. Usually your veterinarian will recommend that you give your cat injections between the shoulder blades in the scruff of the neck. With patience and practice, your cat will barely feel the injections. In fact, most diabetic cats know when it is time to get their injection and they may actually remind you by meowing.

Stocking the Right Supplies: It is important that you have the right supplies on hand to help treat your diabetic cat. You will need a vial of insulin as prescribed by your veterinarian, syringes and alcohol swabs. It is always a good idea to order your insulin when you are about halfway empty. It may take a couple days for your veterinarian to order your insulin. Your veterinarian might also recommend getting your diabetic cat vitamin supplements and seating him or a special prescription diet such as Science Diet W/D. You must be able to see your cat immediately after he or she receives their injection. It is also a good idea to have some numbers to your veterinarian into at least two 24-hour emergency vet clinics available with you at all times just in case your cat needs help.

Many people who owned diabetic cats worried about the costs that this condition incurs. It certainly does cost money to take care of a diabetic cat. A vial of insulin will cost you approximately %85 and will last you about two months. A box of 100 Syringes will cost about %30 and will last you 50 days, as you should use a new syringe for each injection. Prescription food will cost you about %40 for a 20-pound bag. However, it is important to remember that your cat is a part of your family. Most pet owners do not hesitate spending this kind of money on their pets.

Patience and Love: Above of all when you have a diabetic cat, you need a lot of patience and a lot of love. It is not always easy to care for sick and ailing cat. However, with the right care, you can expect your diabetic cat to have many more years of happy life.

Technorati Tags : insulin diabetic veterinarian diabetes

Exotic Pets: Chameleon

Chameleons belong to the lizard family. Chameleon has been derived from the Greek words chamai and leon meaning earth lion. The structure and size of chameleons varies a lot. They can be from one inch to thirty-one inch long. Chameleons are kept as exotic pets because of their characteristic color changing capability. They change colors so as to camouflage, communicate with each other and to regulate temperature. They also have a very long tongue to catch prey.

Chameleons do not have the ability to change colors from birth. They are either brown or grey color when they are born. They start by changing to one or two colors and when they reach five months, they gain total control of the color changing ability and are able to change to many colors like green, black, turquoise and blue green. Various colors show emotions such as stress, sense of temperature change, excitement and to communicate with other chameleons. Brighter colors exhibit good mood; darker colors such as black, grey and brown depict stress. Few other colors are also seen when the chameleon takes transition from color to another.

They even have very long tongue, which they use to catch flying preys. Chameleons have the ability to stretch their tongue up to one and half the length of their body. This way they can catch flying preys as well as preys, which are placed far off. They have three toes with two of them facing one side and the third in other direction. This structure helps them to get a firm grip, which facilitates their tree climbing habit. They spend most of their lives on treetops. Some of them also are gifted with prehensile tails, which are also used to take good grip while climbing.

Another amazing fact of chameleons is that they rotate their eyes in two different directions. Both the eyes are independent of each other. The structure of the eyes is globular which they use to rotate and get view of a larger radius. The eyes are used to watch out for enemies and as well as hunt for food. Along with insects and slugs they also eat plants.

Chameleons are kept as pets because many people find them very fascinating. But they are very difficult to be maintained and naive pet owners should not certainly start with them. Although they aren’t the toughest of all exotic pets, they are also not the easiest to handle. Their requirements are very comprehensive and owners simply get tired of them after one point of time. But if the owner has made up his/her mind, they should certainly go for a chameleon, which has been brought up in captivity and is trained. The ones that come directly from the wild are more dangerous, they have a possibility of being infected and it is very difficult for them to adjust to new environment. They will also be more stressed out, which will be a big hindrance in training. Also when the wild chameleons are caught and shipped to destination, there is a possibility of it dying on the way itself.

While selecting the pet, the health of the animal can be determined by close observation. The chameleon should be able to change colors and also should be active. They should be brightly colored and the flesh of the body should be smooth and not scaly. Males are easier to maintain because their nutritional requirements are less.

Species that are kept as pets are Panther Chameleons, Veiled Chameleons and Jackson’s Chameleons. Chameleons basically are solitary animals and their camouflaging ability explains it very clearly. They simply don’t like to be handled. They shouldn’t be kept with other pets and it is a really bad idea to keep two male chameleons together as they will fight and injure each other. They should be put in a cage with lots of foliage, which can cater to their needs of climbing trees and as well give them the desired privacy.

Technorati Tags : chameleons their colors which

A Lizard’s Eye View of Life as a Reptile

If you think of lizards at all, you think of those little reptiles that you see scurrying down a tree trunk or across your back door at dusk. There are many different types of lizards in the reptile family, and the group as a whole has some very interesting behaviors. The first unusual behavior, and the one most people know, is that they can separate from their tails when they are in danger of being caught. You may have experienced this as a child when trying to catch one of the small lizards or striped skinks, and ended up with only a tail in your hand.

The Texas gecko actually uses his tail as a decoy when confronted by a predator, such as a snake. The gecko makes his tail point straight up, waves it slowly from side to side, and then sheds the tail. The tail itself continues to wriggle for several minutes, and is hopefully more interesting prey than the gecko itself. Lizard’s tails are made so that a wall of cartilage passes through several vertebra in the tail, and the blood vessels and muscles are modified at these points to allow easy breakage without much damage to the lizard. It will grow a new tail, but never quite the same as the original tail.

A number of lizards also avoid being eaten by changing color, in order to blend in with the background. It generally only takes several seconds for a lizard to expand the pigment in its skin to become more like his surrounding colors. This color change is made even more effective if the lizard remains motionless. Even without color change, a number of lizards can effectively play dead, or, as we normally call it, “play possum”. A number of predators need the vibration or sounds of movement to detect the where the lizard is, and so becoming entirely rigid can be an effective way of disappearing from the menu of the predator.

When a lizard is not being chased by a predator, it can do interesting and unusual things with its tongue. The tongues of reptiles can come in a number of different shapes, and lizard tongues are usually either long and narrow with a forked tip at the end, or short and broad. Both kinds of tongues are used to collect molecules from the air and bring them back to an organ in their mouth. This is a sense different than either smell or taste, but somewhat similar to each in some respects. Geckos use their long tongue to clean off their eyes, as many geckos do not have eyelids, and so wipe their eyes with their tongues. One Great Plains lizard regularly licks her eggs while waiting for them to hatch. In Australia, a skink with a bright blue tongue sticks out its tongue at predators, and lets it stay lolling out of its mouth. Naturalists are not sure of the reason for this behavior. Finally, chameleons use their long and sticky tongue to reel in their nightly diet of insects.

These behaviors are only the tip of the iceberg for this fascinating group of reptiles. Make your own study of these beautiful and unusual creatures, whether capturing one in your backyard, or discovering those a world away at the library.

Technorati Tags : lizard their tongue lizards

Exotic Pets: Raccoons

Raccoons are sometimes called the masked animals because of the black fur near their eyes which resembles a bandit’s mask. Their fur is usually of the colors white, black, grey and brown. They can be found in major parts of North America and Europe. Their native habitats are deciduous and mixed forests.

They have five long fingers on each limb which help them in easily opening latches, boxes, jars, open trash cans and turn knobs. There prints have great resemblance to human baby’s handprints. Raccoon’s tracks are found mostly on mud near water, where they usually wander in search of food. Their body weight can vary from six to thirty-five pounds and the length of their body can vary from twenty-four to thirty-six inches. Their bushy tail measures up to ten centimeters and has an alternate coloring of white and black. The black circle around their eyes, make them look mischievous and give them an image of a thief. That is substantiated by the fact that they are often sighted in urban areas stealing human garbage or eating other pet animal’s food.

Raccoons are omnivorous and apart from eating nut, berries, corn, mice, human garbage they also eat fish, shellfish, salamanders, egg, bird, frog, insects and amphibians. They have a habit of washing their food before consuming it, especially those who live in captivity. Pet raccoons can also be fed with cat food, as they enjoy it very much. A female raccoon gives birth to four to five offspring at a time. Raccoons mate in January or February and following by birth in April or May. They don’t hibernate in winter, but do become inactive.

Besides rabies, raccoons can also be the carriers of parvovirus, canine distemper, and roundworm. Nearly thirty-eight percent cases of rabies are a result of raccoon bites, in United States. If any unknown raccoon is spotted in the locality at daytime, the local health department should be contacted immediately. Raccoons show no sign of rabies and their body fluids will have the virus if they are infected.

It is illegal to keep raccoons as pet in majority of states of America because of the reason that they are carrier of rabies which could risk human life. In states where they are permitted, special exotic pet permit should be taken. Orphans raccoons which are rescued from the forest have a higher risk of being rabies carriers. They should not only be vaccinated, but also tamed. Raccoons can be bought from special breeders who would have taken care of everything before hand because taming a raccoon is a really tough job. They have really wild instincts which require thorough and strenuous training.

They have a natural tendency to bite, contaminate the food of other animals by excreting in it and are nocturnal. All these weird habits of raccoons require complete dedication of time and hard work. They can be even made to sleep at night. But raccoons held in captivity face health problems like obesity and develop a strange diet. The problem aggravates due to lack exercise. As they are omnivorous, they should be also fed with non-veg. diet, which is difficult for people who are vegetarian. When people make decision of keeping raccoons as pets, they should be ready to keep it forever, because captive raccoons face lots of dangers when released in the wild.

Technorati Tags : raccoons their which should