Contents

Useful Tips on

Cats and Dogs

Cats Ringworm And Your Children

Bedding For Your Dog

Dangerous Dog Treats

Guide Dogs And Aging

Common Health Concerns Of Cats

A Dog's Dinner

Dog Grooming And Brushing Tips

Cat Behaviour

How To Keep Cats Out Of Your Garden

Should My Pet Have An ID Tag?

The Raw Diet For Dogs

The Collie Dog

West Highland White Terriers

When Dogs Scratch Themselves

Tips For Bathing Your Cat

Skin Irritation In Dogs

What You Should Do If Your Dog Eats Chocolate?

The Jack Russell Terrier

Useful Tips on

Cats and Dogs

Published by Megan Publishing Services

http://meganthemisconception.com

at Kindle

Copyright Owen Jones 2016 ©

Hello and thank you for buying this ebook called ‘ Useful Tips on Cats and Dogs’.

I hope that you will find the information helpful, useful and profitable.

The information in this ebook on various aspects of cats and dogs and related subjects is organized into 18 chapters of about 500-600 words each.

It will help people who live with cats and dogs, our favourite pets, understand the basics about these lovely animals than increase our happiness and lifespan.

As an added bonus, I am granting you permission to use the content on your own website or in your own blogs and newsletter, although it is better if you rewrite them in your own words first.

You may also split the book up and resell the articles. In fact, the only right that you do not have is to resell or give away the book as it was delivered to you.

If you have any feedback, please leave it with the company you bought this book from.

Thanks again for purchasing this ebook,

Owen Jones

Cats Ringworm And Your Children

Ringworm is quite common in cats, especially those that are not groomed or looked after well enough. However, even the most cared-for cats can get ringworm because it is so contagious.

However, ringworm is not caused by a worm. Sorry, for telling you how to suck eggs, if you already knew that, but a lot of owners do not.

Ringworm is actually a fungus known as dermatophytosis and is extremely infectious for most animals including humans. Cats frequently pass it on to every other whilst rubbing and pass it onto humans during grooming or stroking.

Not only that, but when you have the infection on your hands, you might develop ringworm on your body wherever you touch yourself or you may pass it onto someone else, another cat or your dog.

If you notice the tell-tale Catherine-wheel shaped mark on your cat, you must take it to the vet instantly for treatment.

Likewise, if you or your kids pick up the infection, you must see a GP or dermatologist. You should see an improvement in a few days and complete recovery within a week or so, although treatment may go on for a fortnight to make sure complete recovery.

Sometimes, you may not see the ring-like mark, but if your cat or child is itching or scratching in one spot and there are no fleas, suspect ringworm. Being a fungus, spores will drop off the host all over the house and might even become blown about in the aircon system. This could easily infect each living thing in the house, so it is nasty.

Therefore, if you suspect that something is wrong, but you cannot explain it, suspect ringworm, be on the look out for the signs and see to it as soon as it reveals itself.

While you have your cat on your lap, check it for signs of ringworm. These are very often on the head, where it has nuzzled a cat.

Look around the eyes, the ears and on the paws for bald spots, the ring mark or merely red, flaky dry skin. The cat may lick it or scratch the spot frequently and there might be dandruff.

The first thing to do is put on gloves and inspect the cat for fleas. If you do not see a heavy infestation of fleas, your cat probably has ringworm so get it to the vet as soon as possible.

In the meantime, isolate it from your children and do not touch the patch, although it may already be too late.

The treatment for ringworm in cats is quite simple. It usually involves bathing your cat every other day and applying anti-fungal cream once or twice a day to the infected patches wearing rubber gloves.

Applying the cream is not a problem, but a large number of cats actually hate being bathed, so this could become difficult. If your cat hates water, put it in a pillow case and fasten it at its throat with an old flea collar. This ought to prevent the cat from clawing you and running away.

A comparable treatment should be undergone by every member of the family, but you will merely exchange your normal soap and shampoo for an anti-fungal one for a fortnight.

Bedding For Your Dog

Bedding is very important for a dog, especially a puppy which has just been taken away from its mother. In fact, if you can arrange it, it is a good idea to leave a blanket with your puppy when it is still with its mother and siblings, that way the blanket will remind him of home, which will be a big consolation to it in its early days of loneliness.

The best material to use for your blanket is wool. Wool is absorbent and so retains some moisture and smells, which will help the animal feel at more home. Wool is also pretty tough and warm, not that warmth is really a major concern for a dog that lives in the house.

There is no need to purchase a special blanket for your dog. You can cut down an old blanket of your own, a metre square is roughly correct. This is big enough for any dog, will fit in a dog basket comfortably and is yet not too large to go in the washing machine every few of months. If you do not wish to run to the expense of using a blanket of wool, you could use an old towel, since towels are also absorbent.

Most dog owners permit their pets to sleep in the house and some even permit their dog to sleep on the bed. If you allow your dog to sleep in the house, it is best not to feed him after about six or seven o’clock or you will have to let him out or take him out late at night.

It is better to feed your dog twice a day than only once and be cautious of leaving food down all day, especially if there is no-one at home during the day to let him out.

If you make a decision to leave your dog in the garden all day and night, you will have to supply even more refuge for him. A kennel or dog house is the best way of doing this. A kennel ought to have a wooden floor which is a couple of inches above the ground.

You could put a few inches of straw in the kennel for your dog to make his bed and you can put a blanket or two in there as well. Do not worry about what you think it ought to look like, your dog knows best in these matters.

If you can not run to either blankets or towels, believe it or not your dog will be just as pleased with crumpled up sheets of newspaper for bedding. Newspaper is soft, absorbent and astonishingly warm, which is why tramps use it. It is also cheap and easy to replace when it gets dirty after rainfall.

A dog intuitively tries to make a nest to sleep in. I am certain that you will have noticed that dogs walk around in a circle three times before lying down. This is to flatten the grass before lying down and they do it whether there is grass beneath them or not. If you provide some form of bedding he will not be wasting his time.

Dangerous Dog Treats

Every dog likes to be given a tasty titbit as a reward and every dog-owner likes to give them. But do you know whether the dog treats that you are giving are healthy or dangerous for your pet, because there are both kinds on the market. In fact, there are hundreds of kinds of dog treats of all sizes, shapes and colours.

No matter what you feed your dog, it is worth checking whether he has consumed it all and if not why not. There could be a number of factors, but each dog owner should know how much their dog usually eats and what he especially likes. Not eating usually is frequently a sign that your dog is ill or about to become ill. Some foodstuffs can cause this sign though as well.

Treats that are manufactured to scrub your dog’s teeth often come in the shape of a bone, not that that is significant to the dog, He knows it is not a bone sure enough. But most dogs do like them. A problem can happen if your dog has powerful jaws and tries to consume big pieces in one go.

These large, slightly soggy pieces can become wedged in the throat or intestines causing blockages. Frequently these blockages will dissolve away over a couple of hours, but if they are resulting in breathing worries or discomfort, you may have to take your dog to a vet.

Rawhide chews also fall into this category although they come with problems of their own as well. Rawhide chews are useful for scraping plaque and tartar off your dog’s teeth that would otherwise lead to bacteria, bad teeth and bad breath, but they can also become lodged in the animal’s throat or intestines, so endeavour to purchase treats that your dog cannot swallow but has to chew on.

Rawhide is an animal by-product, so it has to be conserved to prevent it going off. Strive to find out what that preservative is and find out whether it is dangerous or not. It has been reported that some countries have been using arsenic to conserve their chews, this is obviously not a good idea and is one of the most perilous dog treats.

Chocolate is lethal to dogs. Not a lot of adults and very few children are aware of this, because you frequently see individuals giving their dog a square of chocolate. The reason these dogs do not die a horrible death is that most of the chocolate that we can buy nowadays does not contain much chocolate. It is chocolate-flavoured paste. Look on the list of ingredients on the wrapper of your next bar of chocolate to see what I am saying.

However, different countries have different laws about what can be called chocolate. The European Union is pretty good, America not so decent and Thailand is appalling. Normally, bakers’ chocolate is the most powerful, which makes a chocolate covered chocolate cake the most perilous for dogs - just the sort of thing they can steal from the picnic blanket.

Sickness, uneven heartbeat, ‘craziness’, hyperactivity, a visit to the vets for a stomach pump or death are normally the result.

Dogs love bones and they are good for them as well (which makes you wonder why so many dog chews are purchased). However, not all bones are good for dogs. Cats grind everything up small, which is why they can be safely given fish, chicken and turkey bones. However dogs tend to wolf things down, so never give these bones to your dog.

Fish bones are fine and sharp and can stick in the throat or gut as with humans requiring surgery, but chicken and turkey bones splinter into these slender slithers as well when crunched. Do not give them to a dog as a treat.

Guide Dogs And Aging

Aging has its plus points, like having more experience, having family and frequently having fewer financial problems, but it also brings other worries with it too, usually health worries. One of the health concerns that older individuals worry about is their eyesight.

Most people like to be independent, but blindness makes you to become dependent, especially if you go blind when you are older. At least whilst you are younger, you have a long time to learn how to deal with it.

There are several methods that you can lose your sight when you are older but one that effects 10% of those over 65 and 30% of those over 75 years is macular degeneration. It is often referred to as age-related macular degeneration, ARMD or merely AMD because it tends to affect those people who are more than 50 years of age.

However, macular degeneration just has an effect on the centre 2.1% of your field of vision, so it is very rare for ARMD to become the cause of complete blindness. The difficulty is that that 2.1%, centre field of vision is highly important for recognizing people and for reading.

So what can you do about it, if you get ARMD? One option would be to acquire a guide dog, a ‘blind dog’, as they say in the UK or a ‘seeing eye dog’ as they say in America. A guide dog will help prevent you from walking into things, which you might well do if you lose your central field of vision.

Most registered blind individuals are not totally blind. Some are worse off than others but sufferers of ARMD usually retain 97.9% of their field of vision, which is the peripheral vision. A guide dog would cover the rest for you.

Guide dogs are taught as puppies so they will remain with their blind friends for seven or eight years or more This allows the dog and the owner to build up a wonderful relationship, as all individuals do with their dogs. However, the relationship of a blind person with a guide dog though is extra-special. The dog knows that it is being relied upon for its master’ safety.

If you decide to go down the road of acquiring a guide dog, the best place to begin is your national association for the blind, the address of which you can find either at your doctor’s, in Yellow Pages or on the Net. Some countries’ organizations will charge you for providing a guide dog and others will subsidize your getting a guide dog and its training.

It would be a great idea to order a guide dog as soon as you are diagnosed with a disease that threatens your eyesight because that will give you more time to get to know and choose a puppy as your future companion.

If you are lucky and your physician saves your eyesight, you