Pet Diet and Nutrition Archives - Vet Help Direct

Why is my dog eating grass?

Joanna Woodnutt BVM BVS MRCVS - Friday May 3rd, 2019

Dogs may eat grass for a variety of reasons. For many dogs it’s considered entirely normal for them to eat a small amount of grass - in fact around 70% of dogs were found to eat grass in one study, and it was also found to be much more common in younger dogs. Some dogs, however, take grass-eating to an extreme and this could be a hint of something wrong.

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How to care for your Easter (chocolate) bunny

Kate Cavanagh BVSc MRCVS - Saturday April 20th, 2019

Invented sometime around the 19th century, it’s now estimated that about 90 million chocolate Easter bunnies are produced yearly worldwide. While a larger population than the estimated one million pet rabbits currently in the UK, they are much easier to look after. Read on to discover how to care for your chocolate bunny, and why real bunnies are certainly not for Easter.

Pet Diet and Nutrition

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Is ‘Doggy Mouthwash’ Dangerous?

Joe Dunne - Monday February 18th, 2019

There has been a big push in the veterinary world in recent years to try and increase dental hygiene in pets. Vets are encouraging owners more and more to make brushing their dog or cat’s teeth, to remove plaque build-up, part of the daily routine, like you would walking or feeding them. Companies have, of course, jumped on this trend, and developed products designed to improve dental hygiene, including pet toothbrushes, toothpaste, and now ‘doggy mouthwash’. Doggy mouthwash is added to dog and cat water bowls to ‘help fight your pet’s bad breath’. The main ingredients, chlorhexidine and xylitol, are supposed to kill bacteria and reduce plaque, with the advantage being that the liquid can reach where traditional brushing might not. Anecdotal evidence and product reviews indicate these products do help reduce bad breath and keep teeth looking cleaner. However, there’s been a recent hubbub around the inclusion of xylitol in the ingredients.

Dogs

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Should we feed Rudolf carrots?

Sarah Bowen MRCVS - Friday December 21st, 2018

An important question for 24th December maybe. A serious question too, as reindeer have become popular to keep for Christmas displays in the UK; looking after them, however, can be problematic...

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Beat the Bulge and Build the Bond

David Harris BVSc MRCVS - Tuesday January 2nd, 2018

After a Christmas holiday of feasting and relaxation, I’m sure I’m not the only one who’s reluctant to face the bathroom scales this week…! After all, the British Nutrition Foundation reports that it’s disturbingly easy to eat as many as 6000 calories on Christmas Day alone (see here for the breakdown), so no wonder we're facing an increasingly overweight future. While this isn’t really a human health blog, I’d like to point out, in the spirit of One Health, that the same problems afflict our pets - especially our dogs. As part of the family, we want to indulge them - however, all those treats and extra snacks impact their health as much, or more, than ours. So in this blog, I’m hoping to harness all of our new-found New Year’s Resolutions to encourage us to work on our pets’ diets, as well as our own, and put some effort in to make all of us (human, canine, feline, whatever!) healthier, leaner and happier in 2018.

Cats