Q: My cat has this spot on his size that looks like a hot spot.  His hair is falling out and the skin is raw and moist.  What do I do?

A:  When dealing with an unknown skin issue, make sure you have your vet rule out anything serious (such as roundworm) before you begin treating.  Hot spots, though, are very common and very easy to treat.  They affect both dogs and cats. 

First, be sure your cat is on a good, meat-based diet with little-to-no grain.  Cats systems in particular are not equipped to deal with grains, and this can cause skin issues.  A 6lb bag of Chicken Soup for the Cat Lover's Soul is $9.89 and it is an excellent value food with good ingredients. 

Furminator for Cats Thick, dense coats can trap dirt, bacteria and moisture close to the skin, creating the perfect environment for hot spots to occur. Make sure your kitty is well groomed.  Come in and check out the furminator for cats.  It's GREAT for pulling out that dense undercoat, which will help to keep your cat cleaner, cooler and less prone to hot spots. $29.98

Fleas are a major cause for skin lesions and hot spots and running a $.49 flea comb over your cat is a great way to find stray fleas or check for telltale flea dirt. 

	Bark 2 Basics Shampoo If your cat will let you, bathe him in an oatmeal anti-itch shampoo.  With its 16 to 1 dilution rate, a bottle will last a year!  Choose from an oatmeal anti-itch or a hypo-allergenic shampoo. $12.98 (16oz)
	Biocane First Aid Lotion Biocaine first aid lotion reduces pain and itching and promotes healing and can be applied directly to the sore.  It also contains a bitter tasting substance that discourages your cat from licking at the area. $10.98
	Homeopet Hot Spots or Skin & Itch Relief And finally, we carry a line of homeopathic remedies that are very safe and effective.  By putting a few drops into your cat's water, you can help them find relieve from itching and even hotspots.  A 15ml bottle is $14.98 and a cat dose is only 5 drops a day.  Long lasting, gentle and very effective on hot spots.  It dries them up within hours! $14.98

YOU can help!

It's no secret that the Humane Society is overwhelmed with dogs and cats that need to find homes.  We decided to help by taking in a mama dog that just had puppies and foster her and her babies until they are ready to go into foster homes...or better yet, forever homes.  Kennel living is stressful on any animal, more so on mothers and babies.  Our hope is that by raising them, training them and socializing them, we can help these pups get started on the right track to finding forever homes.  This isn't easy, though.  Once weaning starts, and the puppies become more independent, it's necessary to give them one-on-one interactions. 

This is where you come in.  We are looking to involve children and families in the raising and fostering of these puppies.  Not only will it give the pups a great start on their house-training and basic obedience, but local children will be educated on proper puppy care.  We are offering free obedience classes to the people who foster and/or adopt these puppies, as well as help and support getting these babies raised right. 

If you are interested in the foster program or adopting these pups, you can contact us at (479) 452-3235 or email Kris at kris@luvhappytails.com. You can also contact the Sebastian County Humane Society, www.sebastiancountyhumanesociety.org.

Q: My lab is all of a sudden shedding like crazy.  The brush we have does not seem to do much good.  Any ideas??

The FURMINATOR!  We have used the furminator professionally for a number of years.  I guarantee we have the best price on it.  Come on in and you can watch a DVD and see it in action.  This is a professional quality de-shedding tool.  Make sure you use it outside because you will have hair everywhere.  We have them for cats, small dogs, medium dogs and large dogs.  The shedding you are going through is just normal spring/summer shed if you are feeding a quality meat-based diet.  

The furminator works on most coats from Golden Retrievers to Collies and Shelties.  Not for poodle or bichon type coats.  I also recommend our Bark to Basic line of shampoos.  Detergent free, gentle, deep cleaning and concentrated, it is what we use in the grooming parlor and needs to be diluted 16 to 1.  Available in wonderful fragrances like honey-almond and berry.  Completely bio-degradeable and economical.  

Make sure you feed a quality diet as well.  No wheat, corn, soy or by-product meal or unidentifiablerendering plant garbage.  Read the ingredients list.  

Sign up for our newsletter here on the website, to get more information and tips on shedding and diet, and all your other dog and cat issues.

We celebrated with a little family portrait.  It won't be long before these babies don't fit together on a table.  They're growing so fast!  Tuesday they will have been with us 2 weeks, and the time has just FLOWN!

 L toR: Porsche, Lexus, Audi, Royce, Aston & Jag

More pictures are, as always, in Yanna's gallery.

Special thanks to the official beebee-sitters of this lovely litter, Randi & Caylee Kirby, who are working very hard (as though it's a JOB) working with these babies and getting them used to being handled.

What's this about *another* nutro recall?  I don't understand why this keeps happening!

The newest recall from Nutro is voluntary and effects several of their cat dry foods.  Their synthetic premix of vitamins and minerals contained too much zinc, which is toxic.  Mistakes can happen, we are human after all.  But with poor regulation, they keep happening.  Which is why we carry a food called Nature's Logic.  Nature's logic is the only pet food in the world that uses no synthetic vitamins/minerals.  They offer all the proper nutrients, vitamins and minerals naturally, through their ingredients.  For example, taurine (most commonly sourced from china and added synthetically) is found naturally in the animal protein Nature's Logic uses (chicken, lamb, venison, etc). Zinc, rather than coming from zinc oxide, comes from meat, pumpkin seeds and egg.  And Nature's Logic uses enough of these ingredients to have proper nutrients in the final product, rather than having to add it later.  The result is a food that is not only made from quality ingredients, incredibly nutritionally dense, lacking all the icky fillers, but also makes all the vitamins and minerals easy to tolerate and completely safe by getting them from natural sources.  Stop by the shop or go to www.natureslogic.com for more information. 

And while you're surfing the web, don't forget to check up on our new rescue foster dog and her six puppies.  Or you can follow her on twitter at www.twitter.com/babypuppies

We've now had Yanna and the crew here for 7 days.  Yanna is doing great.  She is sweet and gentle and a real character.  I put the puppies in a towel-filled basket to keep them organized while I weighed them.  Once they were all out, mama climbed inside and waited patiently for me to weigh her!  I didn't want to break it to her that she was too heavy for the puppy scale. :D

As the pups are 11 days old, their eyes are starting to open.  They're gaining weight steadily (some more than others!) and starting to get more mobile.  The most exciting days are still ahead of us!

Pictures from today are now in Yanna's Gallery, so stop by for a peak.  

And don't forget, Yanna and her puppies have a twitter page!

 

My dog has horrible knock you down stinky dog breath.  He eats dry food but it doesn't help.  What do I do?  We can't stand to be around him.

First, you need to forget the idea that eating dry food will keep your dog's teeth clean.  It's true that chewing, tearing and gnawing will keep a dog's teeth clean, but they don't gnaw on their kibble.  Gnawing on raw meaty bones is the most natural and easiest way to keep your dog's teeth clean.  It may take a couple of times to get your dog used to it (and it's best to cut back on the food you're feeding on bone days) but the results are well worth it.  Even tiny tiny dogs can benefit from raw bones and probably need it MORE than bigger dogs.  Ever smelled a pomeranian's breath?  It will curl your hair.  We keep a variety of cut beef bones in our freezer and they range in price from $2.98 to $5.98. 

If you're squeamish or just don't want to deal with the hassle of raw meat, Zuke's makes a great Z-Ridge dental treat.  These treats are very similar to Greenie's, without the issues of digestibility making them much safer.  They come in sizes from mini to large and range in price from $1/bone for minis to $6/bone for large. 

And finally, there is always Petzlife dental gel and spray.  Incredibly effective and easy to use, it will dissolve the tartar from along the gum line (21.95 spray, 24.95 gel) and freshen your dog or cat's breath.

Meet Yanna.

Yanna is a young stray picked up as a stray by the Sebastian County Humane Society, and the new mama of 6 fat and sassy puppies.  Yanna is being fostered here at Happy Tails, where we will care for her and her litter.  Our goal is to start the training of the puppies, fine tune whatever Yanna knows, and get them all started on a much happier, healthier life with forever homes.