[AMA] I am a veterinarian. Ask me anything :D

lycans

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Oh I see! So it is completely up to individual vets preference? If my pup's 3rd jab is at 14 week, do you think it is still necessary to have the 4th Jab at 16 week then?
It's up to each individual vet assessment. I dont think so, but if you paranoid then just go for it loh
 

kikuzushi

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Hi lycans, my maltipoodle has not been eating well for the past week. She only eats a little every time we offer her food. Tried floof, chicken porridge, salmon, etc but she would just smell n walk away. Can also see she is trying to eat but can’t bring herself to. She will play with her food as well eg pushing her feeding bowl away. Noticed she brushed her mouth on surface too. Not sure if it is dental issue but she always has this regime of not eating every few months. She is still active and playful. She is 2 years old.
 

lycans

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Hi lycans, my maltipoodle has not been eating well for the past week. She only eats a little every time we offer her food. Tried floof, chicken porridge, salmon, etc but she would just smell n walk away. Can also see she is trying to eat but can’t bring herself to. She will play with her food as well eg pushing her feeding bowl away. Noticed she brushed her mouth on surface too. Not sure if it is dental issue but she always has this regime of not eating every few months. She is still active and playful. She is 2 years old.
I think more likely she is just being a picky eater but dental disease cant be ruled out so best to take to a vet and get her teeth checked out. If your pet is uncooperative may need sedation or GA to assess teeth
 

martian09

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Hello all

I have a 14 week Frenchie... He has no problems going to the pee tray to pee and poo in the house since I got him more than a month ago... But after I started to being him outside evey night for walks... He started to pee and poo everywhere but the pee tray...

Also, he likes sleeping on the pee tray so I have be stopping him from sleeping on the tray... Could this be the reason why he avoided the tray and pee evrryhere else??
Could it be health problem or behaviour problem?? Can anyone help me??
 

lycans

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Hello all

I have a 14 week Frenchie... He has no problems going to the pee tray to pee and poo in the house since I got him more than a month ago... But after I started to being him outside evey night for walks... He started to pee and poo everywhere but the pee tray...

Also, he likes sleeping on the pee tray so I have be stopping him from sleeping on the tray... Could this be the reason why he avoided the tray and pee evrryhere else??
Could it be health problem or behaviour problem?? Can anyone help me??
Bring to see a vet, I think its behavioral but u never know until u take it to a vet to check
 

scrummy

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Dear Lycans, my pet has passed away appx. 12 hrs after a surgery. My family is devastated and has a lot of guilt in this episode. It was out of our expectation that she will not be coming home. We received a call at 7am to tell us her heart beat is low and stopped, and if we want to do a CPR. The vet on night duty was not her surgeon and when we asked what was the cause of death, the duty vet said “maybe thrombosis”. Regardless, should the surgeon vet contact our family thereafter to give us a deeper insight on the cause of death? It has been exactly a week now and we did not receive their call yet. Hope to ask how should a professional vet handle such situation when my pet died under the knife?
 

lycans

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Dear Lycans, my pet has passed away appx. 12 hrs after a surgery. My family is devastated and has a lot of guilt in this episode. It was out of our expectation that she will not be coming home. We received a call at 7am to tell us her heart beat is low and stopped, and if we want to do a CPR. The vet on night duty was not her surgeon and when we asked what was the cause of death, the duty vet said “maybe thrombosis”. Regardless, should the surgeon vet contact our family thereafter to give us a deeper insight on the cause of death? It has been exactly a week now and we did not receive their call yet. Hope to ask how should a professional vet handle such situation when my pet died under the knife?
Sorry for your loss. What surgery was it?

All surgery are risky, even a routine spey or castrate. Whether the vet should contact you or not is individual preference. I would, but some other vets don’t.
 

TeaPotPlant

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Hi all!

I recently brought my just adopted 6 months old cat to a vet for a check-up as she have been breathing quite fast whenever she's asleep. She had diarrhoea and vomitted once on her first and second day at my house too but it has since then cleared up.

Her blood test results showed that her kidney and liver is in good state. White blood cells was normal too. But she's low on HCT and MCV. She's high on RDW. Doctor explained that she might have anemia and that it might be because of how she was having low quality food when she's still a stray cat/or when she's still with her previous owner.

I'm currently feeding her hill's science diet kibbles and orijen kibbles for noon time. Sometimes Gold D kibbles as well. For morning and night time, I'll be giving her wet food. Brand will usually be Aixia or Wellness. Sometimes giving her toppers such as Applaws wet food. Sometimes giving her Gold D or Aristocats wet food too but I prefer her to have Aixia or Wellness instead.

Doctor said that for the next visit, which is her first dose of vaccination, she will check on her HCT again to make sure that it's improving and not decreasing. She said to just give her better quality food to increase her Vitamin B12.

Is there any supplements on the market that I could buy for my cat? I'm giving her salmon oil from Burp that's meant for pets in the morning and probiotics in the evening as she's having bad diarrhea when she first came to my house.

Main concern will be the fact that her PCT is high. I'm a first time cat owner so there's lots of things that I don't understand from the blood test. Doctor only told me that from the look of it, my cat is having some inflammation in her body hence the PCT result is high instead of normal. She didn't give any medication for it nor advise me on what can be done. Someone I know informed me that high PCT usually indicates that there's possible bacterial infections in the body. Maybe that explains why my cat is breathing fast whenever she's asleep, but when I consulted the doctor about it, she said that the cat's breathing and heart rate sounds normal to her and that the fast heart rate and breathing might be due to the cat is dreaming.

I messaged the vet clinic and asked them does my cat need to be given antibiotics since her PCT is high. But they're unable to advise till Saturday as the doctor in charge of my cat is not in the clinic.

Is it true that high PCT result indicates that there's infection? And if so, is it very serious?
 

lycans

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Hi all!

I recently brought my just adopted 6 months old cat to a vet for a check-up as she have been breathing quite fast whenever she's asleep. She had diarrhoea and vomitted once on her first and second day at my house too but it has since then cleared up.

Her blood test results showed that her kidney and liver is in good state. White blood cells was normal too. But she's low on HCT and MCV. She's high on RDW. Doctor explained that she might have anemia and that it might be because of how she was having low quality food when she's still a stray cat/or when she's still with her previous owner.

I'm currently feeding her hill's science diet kibbles and orijen kibbles for noon time. Sometimes Gold D kibbles as well. For morning and night time, I'll be giving her wet food. Brand will usually be Aixia or Wellness. Sometimes giving her toppers such as Applaws wet food. Sometimes giving her Gold D or Aristocats wet food too but I prefer her to have Aixia or Wellness instead.

Doctor said that for the next visit, which is her first dose of vaccination, she will check on her HCT again to make sure that it's improving and not decreasing. She said to just give her better quality food to increase her Vitamin B12.

Is there any supplements on the market that I could buy for my cat? I'm giving her salmon oil from Burp that's meant for pets in the morning and probiotics in the evening as she's having bad diarrhea when she first came to my house.

Main concern will be the fact that her PCT is high. I'm a first time cat owner so there's lots of things that I don't understand from the blood test. Doctor only told me that from the look of it, my cat is having some inflammation in her body hence the PCT result is high instead of normal. She didn't give any medication for it nor advise me on what can be done. Someone I know informed me that high PCT usually indicates that there's possible bacterial infections in the body. Maybe that explains why my cat is breathing fast whenever she's asleep, but when I consulted the doctor about it, she said that the cat's breathing and heart rate sounds normal to her and that the fast heart rate and breathing might be due to the cat is dreaming.

I messaged the vet clinic and asked them does my cat need to be given antibiotics since her PCT is high. But they're unable to advise till Saturday as the doctor in charge of my cat is not in the clinic.

Is it true that high PCT result indicates that there's infection? And if so, is it very serious?
In general I use the values from the blood test machine as a guide, it is afterall a machine scanning the blood which can sometimes produce wildly inconsistent results. If all else, just interpret your cat, is your cat eating/drinking well? Any vomiting or diarrhea? Playful vs quiet, lethargic? If your cat is normal, I would leave it alone. If you are super paranoid, can do a manual PCV/TP along with blood smear to check platelet levels and see what is actually inside the blood sample. If you are even more paranoid, can consider sending the bloods off to companies like AVD or Idexx for a clinical pathologist to check, this option will cost a few hundred dollars at least.

Kittens can have low HCT and still be normal. Normal is a bell curve, it means nothing in the grand scheme of things without doing constant blood test to chart a baseline
 

TeaPotPlant

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In general I use the values from the blood test machine as a guide, it is afterall a machine scanning the blood which can sometimes produce wildly inconsistent results. If all else, just interpret your cat, is your cat eating/drinking well? Any vomiting or diarrhea? Playful vs quiet, lethargic? If your cat is normal, I would leave it alone. If you are super paranoid, can do a manual PCV/TP along with blood smear to check platelet levels and see what is actually inside the blood sample. If you are even more paranoid, can consider sending the bloods off to companies like AVD or Idexx for a clinical pathologist to check, this option will cost a few hundred dollars at least.

Kittens can have low HCT and still be normal. Normal is a bell curve, it means nothing in the grand scheme of things without doing constant blood test to chart a baseline
Hi!! Thanks for your reply. Appreciate it! 🙏🙏

My cat is not having diarrhea nor vomitting at the moment. She vomitted once yesterday morning, it's all those undigested food she had on the 12th October evening. She got a tablet of deworm medication on the 12th October, not too sure if that's the reason why she vomitted. It might be a side effects.

She was having bad diarrhea, with farting sounds last week. I informed the aunty rescuer about it and she came over with one tablet of medication - Metoclopramide. She let her have half 1/2 of it. She said that it'll help and not needed to be brought to a vet clinic. The diarrhea lasted for about three days and finally stopped after I went to pet lover centre and bought probiotics for the cat. Her current poop consists of both firm and mushy. I'm still feeding her the probiotics once a day. She's peeing normally as well. She's drinking water as well. There are times she doesn't want to eat hence I got to hand fed her but it's not always. Usually she's fine eating and drinking.

But she's less active compared to when she's back in the street (according to her feeder). She's slept most of the day and not very vocal as well. She does walk around but not for long. She loves to sit on our lap and she doesn't seems interested in toys as well.

She just got spayed on 1st October and vet mentioned that her incision looks fine therefore she's no long in donut collar. She's weighting at 2.5kg. Domestic Shorthair. 6 months old.

Yes, I'm being paranoid as this is my first time having a cat. If anything happens to her, I'll feel bad and those feeders will definitely questions me. I do trust the doctor, she's the professional and who am I even. 😅 It's just I've lots of questions back in my head hence why I'm asking around. Hope that this doesn't offence anyone..... Apologies if I do 😭 I'm just really anxious about it.

I've attached her blood test results.
 
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bullfrog

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Hi lycans, I'm currently giving my 1.5 year old maltipoo Nexgard spectra. He has been taking it since he was a puppy with almost no side effects. About the only difference I have noticed is he is a little less hyper on the day I feed him his monthly dose. He still runs, plays, eats normally and doesn't vomit. But he tires out faster and rests a bit longer. Enough that its noticeable. He is back to normal self after maybe 6 hrs.

I have googled on such preventive meds and noticed that a small handful of dogs have bad reactions to it. I would consider his mild, seeing he still plays and eats.
Do you think i should try something else, have him go completely off preventive medication (heartworm then how)? Or can I continue giving it to him? I am aware FDA has an advisory on these oral meds as well.



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lycans

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Hi!! Thanks for your reply. Appreciate it! 🙏🙏

My cat is not having diarrhea nor vomitting at the moment. She vomitted once yesterday morning, it's all those undigested food she had on the 12th October evening. She got a tablet of deworm medication on the 12th October, not too sure if that's the reason why she vomitted. It might be a side effects.

She was having bad diarrhea, with farting sounds last week. I informed the aunty rescuer about it and she came over with one tablet of medication - Metoclopramide. She let her have half 1/2 of it. She said that it'll help and not needed to be brought to a vet clinic. The diarrhea lasted for about three days and finally stopped after I went to pet lover centre and bought probiotics for the cat. Her current poop consists of both firm and mushy. I'm still feeding her the probiotics once a day. She's peeing normally as well. She's drinking water as well. There are times she doesn't want to eat hence I got to hand fed her but it's not always. Usually she's fine eating and drinking.

But she's less active compared to when she's back in the street (according to her feeder). She's slept most of the day and not very vocal as well. She does walk around but not for long. She loves to sit on our lap and she doesn't seems interested in toys as well.

She just got spayed on 1st October and vet mentioned that her incision looks fine therefore she's no long in donut collar. She's weighting at 2.5kg. Domestic Shorthair. 6 months old.

Yes, I'm being paranoid as this is my first time having a cat. If anything happens to her, I'll feel bad and those feeders will definitely questions me. I do trust the doctor, she's the professional and who am I even. 😅 It's just I've lots of questions back in my head hence why I'm asking around. Hope that this doesn't offence anyone..... Apologies if I do 😭 I'm just really anxious about it.

I've attached her blood test results.

Looks pretty normal
 

lycans

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Hi lycans, I'm currently giving my 1.5 year old maltipoo Nexgard spectra. He has been taking it since he was a puppy with almost no side effects. About the only difference I have noticed is he is a little less hyper on the day I feed him his monthly dose. He still runs, plays, eats normally and doesn't vomit. But he tires out faster and rests a bit longer. Enough that its noticeable. He is back to normal self after maybe 6 hrs.

I have googled on such preventive meds and noticed that a small handful of dogs have bad reactions to it. I would consider his mild, seeing he still plays and eats.
Do you think i should try something else, have him go completely off preventive medication (heartworm then how)? Or can I continue giving it to him? I am aware FDA has an advisory on these oral meds as well.



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Afoxolaner (active ingredient) in Nexgard Spectra may cause lethargy in some dogs, if you feel this side effect is not acceptable, then talk with your regular vet about swapping to some thing else
 

bullfrog

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Afoxolaner (active ingredient) in Nexgard Spectra may cause lethargy in some dogs, if you feel this side effect is not acceptable, then talk with your regular vet about swapping to some thing else

I think its acceptable. I just hope there isn't any long term side effects feeding this to him monthly.

I did speak to my regular vet about stopping completely. He suggested to use Frontline as an alternative but that doesn't have any heartworm prevention. He then added all the heartworm prevention meds have some ingredient that would have pet owners concerned as well.

Then I asked if there are many pets at his vet that are using nexgard. He responded that pet owners are buying it up like candy.


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dopodhome

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Hi lycans
My four year old jrt has been diagnosed to have high grade intestinal lymphoma. Am now performing immunohistochemistry to determine T or B cell lineage.

Intestinal mass: Transmurally expanding and effacing the mucosa, submucosa, tunica muscularis and serosa, and extending into the mesenteric adipose tissue is a non-encapsulated, dense proliferation of neoplastic lymphocytes. There is obliteration of mucosa, expansion of lamina propria by neoplastic lymphocytes, which also separated, surrounded and replaced smooth muscles of the intestinal wall. The neoplastic lymphocytes also expanded the serosa, invaded into and dissected between layers of adjacent mesenteric fat. The neoplastic cells are arranged in dense sheets with scant fibrocollagenous stroma, are round to polygonal, have moderate amphophilic cytoplasm, indistinct cell borders. The nuclei are round to oval, pale to moderately stippled, and have a one prominent nucleolus. Nuclei of neoplastic cell are 1.5-2x the diameter of an erythrocyte. Mitoses are noted at 20-22 per high power (400x) fields. There is mild anisocytosis and anisokaryosis, many tingible-body macrophages within the neoplastic cell population.

Just received oncologist report staging it as 5b. Any advice? Should I get a second opinion?

Thank you
 

lycans

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I think its acceptable. I just hope there isn't any long term side effects feeding this to him monthly.

I did speak to my regular vet about stopping completely. He suggested to use Frontline as an alternative but that doesn't have any heartworm prevention. He then added all the heartworm prevention meds have some ingredient that would have pet owners concerned as well.

Then I asked if there are many pets at his vet that are using nexgard. He responded that pet owners are buying it up like candy.


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That is correct. Always buy 2 of the Nexgard Spectra is what I recommend because there is no guarantee there will be stock in 3 months time :o
 

lycans

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Hi lycans
My four year old jrt has been diagnosed to have high grade intestinal lymphoma. Am now performing immunohistochemistry to determine T or B cell lineage.

Intestinal mass: Transmurally expanding and effacing the mucosa, submucosa, tunica muscularis and serosa, and extending into the mesenteric adipose tissue is a non-encapsulated, dense proliferation of neoplastic lymphocytes. There is obliteration of mucosa, expansion of lamina propria by neoplastic lymphocytes, which also separated, surrounded and replaced smooth muscles of the intestinal wall. The neoplastic lymphocytes also expanded the serosa, invaded into and dissected between layers of adjacent mesenteric fat. The neoplastic cells are arranged in dense sheets with scant fibrocollagenous stroma, are round to polygonal, have moderate amphophilic cytoplasm, indistinct cell borders. The nuclei are round to oval, pale to moderately stippled, and have a one prominent nucleolus. Nuclei of neoplastic cell are 1.5-2x the diameter of an erythrocyte. Mitoses are noted at 20-22 per high power (400x) fields. There is mild anisocytosis and anisokaryosis, many tingible-body macrophages within the neoplastic cell population.

Just received oncologist report staging it as 5b. Any advice? Should I get a second opinion?

Thank you
I will say it in laymans term; your dog will be dead in about 6 months time. Sorry about the outcome. Sure, go for a 2nd or 3rd opinion if you so desire but do cherish what time you have left.
 

appleist

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Hi Lycans, I just adopted a cat for the first time. I noticed 1 side of the cat's neck fur is shaven. May I know what could be the possible reasons for that?

The rescuers say it's like this when they found the cat, but I am not sure if I can trust their words.

Their vet bill seems dodgy too, with no traceable details that I can call to verify. The cat seems healthy, but I'm afraid it may have any illness/disease.
 

lycans

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Hi Lycans, I just adopted a cat for the first time. I noticed 1 side of the cat's neck fur is shaven. May I know what could be the possible reasons for that?

The rescuers say it's like this when they found the cat, but I am not sure if I can trust their words.

Their vet bill seems dodgy too, with no traceable details that I can call to verify. The cat seems healthy, but I'm afraid it may have any illness/disease.
I normally shave kitty's neck to sterilise the skin prior to collecting blood.
 

appleist

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May I know if there is any health report that adopted cats will usually have to prove that they are free of any illness/disease?
 
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