Knollwood Hospital for Pets

Dear Friends,

Are you as tired of this cold and wet and nasty weather as I am? Bless my poor frozen whiskers, but I'm not even as excited about chasing the deer each morning and evening as I usually am - it is just too much when the snow is as deep as I am tall!

I hope, when the weather is this cold, that your humans are taking good care of you. Here are some things you may need to remind them about:

1. When they check the weather to see if it is too cold to take you for a walk, they need to remember to check the wind chill, too. Even for dogs with shaggy coats like mine, wind chills below freezing can affect our little ear tips and our tails. And for my smooth-coated friends - Oh my, the wind chill can affect every part of your body! Just last week, we saw a kitty at the hospital who had her ear tips frozen right off!

2. It ain't sissy to wear a coat in this weather! Our humans put one on themselves, after all. It's not just little foo-foo dogs who need coats. Have you ever seen what most Greyhounds wear in the winter? We have a lot of them at our hospital, because there are so many wonderful groups that rescue them when they can't race anymore. These rescue groups sell wonderful coats that are made of nice warm fleece and they cover up most of those delicate Greyhound parts that are exposed on account of their short fur. Most of these retired racing dogs are big, strong dogs and if they can wear a coat and not look like a sissy, so can you.

3. Did you know that if you spend a lot of time outside, you may get to eat more food? It's true! Being active outside burns more calories than being a couch potato inside, so you may need to remind your people to feed you a little more. (I tried this with my Mom but she said she wasn't buying. Then she told me to go look at my butt in a mirror. Can you imagine???)

4. Watch those de-icing granules when you walk! Many of them contain chemicals that can burn our delicate paws and toes. Remind your people that if they MUST walk you in areas where de-icing chemicals are used, that they need to wipe your feet off as soon as you get home. We are seeing a lot of dogs at our hospital with sore, red feet that were burned by those de-icers. 5. Please don't annoy your owners by begging to hang your head out the window when you are riding in the car with them in this weather. Remember what I said about wind chill? Well, it gets worse when the car is going faster. So when you are riding in a fast car, it doesn't even have to be very cold to freeze those ear tips right off your head!

6. If you get wet in this cold, you MUST remind your owner to dry you off right away. Remember that your fur loses its insulating capacity when it is wet, and you can freeze any wet parts of you right down to your skin almost instantly in the cold we've been having lately. If your owner won't listen to you, just ask him or her what parts would be closest to the snow if they were walking outside on all fours with no clothes on. I think they will see the light about keeping those same parts dry on you!

7. And last but not least, here comes the most important thing of all. This is something that I see all the time at our hospital and it makes me so mad, I just want to bite someone's ankle, rude as that might be. Some poor dog comes in to see one of our Doctors, limping badly, and the human they belong to says "Yes, she's limping, but I don't think she's in pain."

Now. Let's just think about this logically for a minute. Do any of us dogs, my dears, walk as badly as we can, just for grins? Of course not! We walk as well as we can. So if we are not walking well - if we are limping, or if we are having trouble getting to our feet after we've been laying down - it is because we are painful. But because we are pack animals by nature, we don't talk about our pain like our wimpy humans do. OK. Here is why. Please focus, my friends, because this is important. Those wimpy humans complain about pain because usually another wimpy human will try to make it all better for them or will at least feel sorry for them. But if one of us pack animals complains about pain, what happens? No other dog is gonna feel sorry for us! If we make pain-noises like our humans do, we might be viewed as a weaker animal by other dogs and we might be picked on and bullied. We might not get the good-looking individual in the pack that we had our eye on. We might even miss out on some meals if other dogs think we look weak and can be bullied out of the way. This is what our brains tell us. So, dogs don't complain out loud, unless the pain is very, very bad. We complain silently - we show our humans that we hurt by the way we walk and move slowly.

So, my friends, sometimes you need to stop being such good and brave dogs - and cats, too! - and be forceful with your owners! Let them know that you need to see your veterinarian to make you better if you are stiff and limping. Our Doctors have so many ways to make you feel better - from joint medicines that are specially made for our short little carnivore digestive tracts, to pain relievers, to muscle relaxants, to injectable medications. Even therapies like acupuncture and chiropractic and Reiki and indirect manipulative techniques can make you feel better when you are painful from the cold.

I myself take a liquid medicine sometimes when my leg flares up - you remember I had an operation on my knee a few years ago - well, sometimes it gets stiff in the cold and damp just like people with arthritis feel worse in bad weather. And I get my spine and my feet adjusted regularly. (Do you see a veterinary chiropractor, my friends? If you do, make sure that they adjust your feet, 'cuz it does no good to fix your spine if your toes are all out-of-joint). And I make sure to take my prescription joint support every day. Right now I am taking Arthriease Gold - it's a powder and it mixes right in with my food. And sometimes I go to my mom when it is very damp and cold, and I let her know that I am not feeling well and she gives me an acupuncture treatment. Then I feel great for weeks!

The rest of this couple of months, I will be poking through all the great stuff I have been reading about from my Mom's seminars. I have TONS of interesting things to tell you, I just need to decide which ones!

Until April, my friends, please stay warm and dry - and wear your coat.

Your friend,

LIZZIE