Tag: Meningitis

  • It’s time to hydrate: nutritious hydration solution hits veterinary wholesalers!

    It’s time to hydrate: nutritious hydration solution hits veterinary wholesalers!

    They’re not eating. They’re not drinking. And they’re turning their nose up at everything you offer. Add post-operative food aversions to a need to initiate voluntary fluid and food intake, and it can feel like an uphill battle of wills.

    What have you got that supports hydration, is easily digestible and is palatable enough to encourage eating and drinking in your hospitalised and at-home patients?

    Furr Boost has the answer…

    It started with the bladder

    Encouraging her poorly beagle Phoebe to drink is a battle Louise Toal faced after her vet diagnosed urinary issues. She just wasn’t interested in drinking. Luckily for Phoebe, Louise is a Food Technologist and began experimenting with protein shakes for dogs, to bolster hydration and combat inappetence. This is when Furr Boost was born.

    It’s more than a hydration drink; it supports healthy digestion, immunity, metabolism and anxiety… plus, it’s delicious.

    Furr Boost has taken the pet market by storm and even braved the Dragon’s Den dragons. Now, this highly palatable, nutritious hydration solution has hit your wholesalers for use in clinic!

    What is Furr Boost?

    In short, it’s a nutritional superfood smoothie for your canine and feline patients. Packed with 100% natural, functional ingredients and no fillers. It’s a low fat, but irresistible blend of meat, fruit and vegetables to use as a drink, food topper or boredom breaker.

    Low in purine, protein, sodium and phosphorous, it’s ideal for encouraging inappetent patients to eat and hydrate post-operatively, during hospitalisation, and at home.

    Hydration

    Water… but tasty! More than 75% moisture content to replenish lost fluid and nutrients.

    Healthy metabolism

    Contains low-fat protein sources plus a blend of oils to provide energy for metabolism and to support a normal recovery.

    Immunity

    Packed with ingredients to support a robust immune system.

    Digestion

    Pre-biotics and dietary soluble fibre aid normal digestion and maintain healthy gut motility.

    Anxiety

    B vitamins and water combat anxiety. Use frozen or on lick mats to distract anxious patients.

    Skin and coat

    Full of naturally occurring fatty acids and omega 3 and 6 for hydrated, healthy skin and a glossy coat.

    Furr Boost case study – meet Ozzy

    Meet Ozzy the Saluki who was diagnosed with canine meningitis on 24 June, weighing in at 16Kg and was stabilised by the wonderful medical team who treated him.

    Owner Jayne was very worried for her beloved pet and could see the visible signs of not only his weight loss after his ordeal, but also his mood.

    Jayne said: “When he came home he was so skinny, dehydrated and reluctant to engage with food and drink despite what I tried. Then I discovered Furr Boost and imagine my delight when he absolutely lapped it up with real enthusiasm. He absolutely loves it!

    “I was struggling to get him interested in eating anything to try and build him up while he was taking seven steroids a day. A Furr Boost a day has aided his progress I am sure. He is still on four steroids a day but his weight is now a healthier 22kg. Hoping for dose to reduce to two per day next week.

    “It’s been a long job and he is very flat with the medication, which hopefully will start to improve. I was just so grateful to find your drink when things were looking very grim for him.”

    While Furr Boost is mainly for hydration, the all-natural and human-grade ingredients are used to entice the dog to drink or eat if used as a topper. Our highly palatable formula is irresistible to even the fussiest of dogs and is packed with oils and nutraceuticals to get dogs back on their feet. Our drinks can be used in their pourable form or, for dogs who are not drinking, watered down by up to 50% to push fluids*.

    * We recommend dogs drink 50ml of fluid per body weight and in extreme cases fluid intake should always be monitored.

    Where does Furr Boost fit into your practice?

    Whether it’s in the kennels, in recovery, or to recommend to your clients, Furr Boost is a highly palatable, convenient source of hydration and nutrition. Give as a drink to replenish lost fluids and nutrients, or feed it to encourage voluntary enteral eating and drinking, and to support normal gut motility.

    If patients are food-averse, or the palatability of recommended diets is causing food refusal, add Furr Boost as a topper to soften kibble and entice their tongues back into action, with a range of lip-smackingly delicious flavours.

    Furr Boost is suitable for:

    • all dogs and cats over the age of eight weeks
    • pregnant and whelping bitches and queens
    • recovery
    • dogs requiring a low sodium, protein, phosphorous or purine diet
    • maintaining hydration
    • supporting weight management or low-fat diets
    • encouraging inappetent dogs
    • end-of-life support
    • distraction and enrichment, particularly for anxious or immobile patients

    Get your free sample at The London Vet Show

    Have you got a patient in mind that Furr Boost could support? Would you like to test it in your clinic?

    Come along to stand F66 at the London Vet Show on 14-15 November 2024 to grab your free carton!

    Not going to be at the show?

    No worries, Furr Boost is now available via MWI Animal Health, Covetrus, and IVC Evidensia, or you can order directly at www.furrboost.com/veterinary where our team is also available to answer any questions.

  • Seizures, part 2: the differentials

    Seizures, part 2: the differentials

    In part one of this series we discussed the important questions to ask when taking a history from owners of dogs and cats that are having seizures. In this part, we look at the differential diagnoses for these cases.

    There are many ways to classify the different causes of seizures, but the simplest is as follows:

    • Structural – where intracranial pathology is causing the seizures.
    • Reactive – where an extracranial issue is causing a seizure response in a normal brain.
    • Idiopathic – a diagnosis of exclusion where we are unable to identify a reason for the disturbances in brain activity.

    Structural

    Intracranial differential diagnoses include:

    • inflammatory processes (meningoencephalitis), such as steroid responsive meningitis-arteritis
    • viral diseases (for example, distemper)
    • metabolic storage diseases
    • neoplasia
    • vascular accidents involving clots or bleeds
    • hydrocephalus
    • trauma

    Reactive

    Extracranial differentials include:

    • hepatic encephalopathy due to hepatic failure or a portosystemic shunt
    • various toxicities, such as lead, chocolate, caffeine, ethylene glycol, parasiticides and slug/snail bait
    • metabolic issues, such as hypoglycaemia, hypocalcaemia and thiamine deficiency

    Idiopathic

    If diagnostic investigations (including advanced imagery, such as MRI) are unable to identify an underlying cause of recurrent seizures, this is referred to as idiopathic epilepsy.

    To break down this list of differentials into a more relevant and concise list is to consider the most common differentials according to signalment.

    In dogs less than a year old:

    • portosystemic shunts
    • inflammatory conditions of the brain
    • distemper
    • hydrocephalus or storage disease
    • toxicity

    In dogs one to five years old:

    • idiopathic epilepsy
    • inflammatory
    • toxicity
    • cerebral neoplasia

    In dogs of five years or older:

    • cerebral neoplasia
    • inflammatory
    • toxicity
    • idiopathic epilepsy
    • metabolic disease
    • vascular issues

    In cats:

    • toxoplasmosis
    • FIP, FeLV and FIV
    • audiogenic reflex seizures (older cats)
    • neoplasia
    • trauma
    • toxins
  • Mentor tip: CSF taps

    Mentor tip: CSF taps

    I remember my first CSF tap; my hands were shaking – not ideal when you are advancing a needle towards the spinal cord.

    If you go a couple of millimetres too far, the needle goes into the spinal cord and it could cause the patient to go into respiratory arrest.

    Some things I am happy to try on my own after researching, but this was not one of them.

    Subjective versus objective

    I remember being told you should feel a “pop” when you are entering the right place, but what does feeling a “pop” actually feel like or mean? This subjectiveness is what made CSF taps so stressful for me.

    The advantage I had was that my mentor was there, and removed the subjective “pop” and replaced it with an objective “see fluid”. My mentor knew the risks, but understood the importance of emergency vets knowing how to do CSF taps, as an early diagnosis of meningitis can save a patient’s life.

    Mentor’s method

    What my mentor did was create a way of teaching CSF taps that minimised risks – by teaching to look to see if you actually “see fluid”.

    He said to advance the needle 1mm at a time, then stop and look down the hub and the barrel of the needle, and check for CSF. If you’re in the right spot it comes out within a second or two.

    This method may take longer, as you are advancing the needle much more slowly, but it makes the whole process safer as you could objectively know when you are in the right spot.

    Experience

    If you are a mentor, then you are very experienced. However, it is this experience that means we can lose perspective and forget how difficult some of the things we do actually are.

    So, if you are faced with a situation where you have to teach a mentee something with high risks, rather than avoiding teaching it and doing it yourself all the time, consider ways of reducing the risks while teaching it, or teach it in a way that has additional steps that are more objective and make it safer for first-timers.

    What high-risk procedure or task have you been taught to perform by a good mentor?