Puppy to Dog Care

Vaccinations

Vaccinations

Vaccinations need to be undertaken always by the pet owners and the dogs need to be vaccinated at the appropriate time. This helps to improve the resistance of the animal against some specific diseases causing frequently problems in dogs. The dogs that are orphaned due to the death of the mother have lesser protection in their immune system.
Such animals are to be particularly protected against various diseases.

Vaccination is usually started at the age of five to six weeks and prior to this age, the maternal immunity will be helping the animal to have natural disease resistance. It is always better to deworm the animal before the vaccination and this is given emphasis many times. Vaccination against the parvo virus is done at an early age because pups are often being affected by parvo viral infections. The booster dose for each vaccine needs to be given at appropriate time and this helps to build up the immune status to an appreciable manner. Vaccination is carried out in many countries against rabies disease.

Read the rest of this entry »

Bathing Your Dog

Bathing Your Dog

Bathing a dog needs to be given more emphasis. This is because of the fact that if you are careless in bathing, the animal may end up having some infections. For example, if you don’t close the ears with large cotton ball, the water may enter into ear canals and may cause some ear infections with signs like constant discharge from the ears and shaking of head.

Frequency of bathing actually depends on the breed of the dog. If the dog is of a hairy type like the cocker spaniel, then the bathing is to be carried out once in six to eight weeks. If these breeds are bathed too frequently, then the skin and coat loose the protective characters. However, when the dog has defecated on the skin due to the frequent digestive upsets leading to diarrhea, to avoid the bad smell, the dog may be subjected to frequent bathing some times by the owners.

Take more care in avoiding some irritant soaps or human soaps. The soap materials used for human beings are not suitable for dogs. Similarly, many human shampoo products are having some ingredients that are not suitable in the proportions that are to be used in case of dogs. Hence, always try to use the shampoo products that are mentioned mainly for use in dogs. Take more care in using any new product.

Read the rest of this entry »