Animal Safety Pt. 1

I am proud to finally present Introductory Animal Safety.

This document is a labor of love, created over the past 8 months originally as a resource to help keep pet sitters safe.

You may remember my post in February, The Complicated Contracts of Dog Walkers, where I said I wanted to create training resources for new pet sitters to help them stay safe on the job.

Two excellent pet sitters, Chris Wooten of One of a Kind K9 and Kim Fields at Everything and the Dog generously gave of their time to make sure this document would be helpful to new pet sitters in their field.

I would also like to thank Lili Chin, Dr. Karen Overall, and Elsevier Publishing for making the animal behavior images in the document available for non-profit use.

Since I could not find any similar documents available through the two major pet sitting organizations I will also be sending this handout along to them in the hopes they can use it for their members.

Since this safety information is helpful for all pet lovers I will present it here too. It will be split into at least 3 posts. This first section focuses on how to avoid catching animal diseases:

Creating Vet-Loving Cats

I spoil my feline patients every chance I get. I absolutely adore cats but for a variety of reasons can’t have them at home.  So, I try to enjoy my kitty patients as much as possible.

It is not easy to earn a cat’s love, and it’s even harder as a vet. It seems that cats take longer to warm up to people to try to give them vaccines.  

Luckily, our veterinary profession is finding new ways to keep kitties happier at the vet.

My hospital just finished a handout for our clients about making their cats’ visits low-stress.  Here are some of the highlights:

The Complex Contracts of Dog Walkers

Have you ever hired a dog walker or a pet sitter? I interviewed dog walkers for Riley this week and it was enlightening experience. Who knew it could be so complicated? 


Did you know that most pet sitting contracts say that if something bad happens to your pet sitter while they are watching your pet, you are responsible for all of the medical bills?

Whoa!

Can you imagine just how costly pet bites, scratches, and diseases can be?

What if you pet bit your pet sitter's hand? It could damage nerves in their hand and cripple them for life. If not properly treated by a doctor, cat bites can become deep abscesses that spread infection throughout the body damaging internal organs. Did you know that your cat might carry Cat Scratch Fever? In some people, this infection can be deadly. Parasites can be spread by pets too; roundworms are transmitted through pet's poop and causes blindness in rare cases. 

I was not prepared to pay millions of dollars in medical bills. Are you?

Even if these situations are rare, that a contract felt like a gamble. Unfortunately, every dog walking company I interviewed had this clause in their contract. 

I had to ask myself, if that much is on the line, how does anybody hire a dog walker? Here were a couple of questions I asked the companies and their responses:

Allergy Relief

Our last medical article discussed signs of allergies and common types of allergies in pets. We warned you that itchy pets sometimes have ringworm, mange, fleas or other diseases that could spread to people, so always see your vet to make sure your pet doesn’t have something you can catch.

If you missed the previous entry, catch up here.

So how can we make allergic pets more comfortable? Pets with mild allergies can be helped with some the easy suggestions described below.