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Courtesy of Creative Commons. Photo by: U.S. Air Force Technical Sgt. Dawn M. Price

Home dental care is one of the most important ways to maintain your pet’s health. Dogs and cats with unchecked gum inflammation may be at higher risk for heart, kidney, and liver disease. And, unfortunately, dental disease is by far the most common major health problem of cats and dogs, making caring for your pet’s teeth just as important as providing him with a well-balanced diet, plenty of fresh, clean water and proper exercise. Continue reading “How to Establish a Dental Care Routine for Your Pet”

Photo by: Freddie Marriage on Unsplash

New kittens are sweet, snuggly, and downright irresistible! If you already have a resident cat or dog, though, you might hesitate: Will all of the animals get along? What if your newest furry friend gets hurt by a territorial cat or a rambunctious dog? What if your older pet feels slighted by the interloper? These are all common questions, and we can help ease your mind by giving you some tips on introducing your kitten to your current pets.

Continue reading “Top Tips on Introducing Your New Kitten to Your Current Pets”

Fleas are no fun! Many of us feel overwhelmed when they pop up repeatedly, but as long as your puppy, dog, or kitten is older than seven weeks and otherwise healthy, we’ve found some strategies to help you safely get rid of fleas on your pets and in your home. Below are seven steps to fight fleas on even the most flea-infested puppies, dogs, or kittens.

To make these steps easy to follow, let’s call your pet “Fluffy.” Be sure to check with your vet before trying any of these steps with your pet.

1) Prepare a flea-free holding room
Plan out your attack. Pick one room you will use as the ‘holding’ room, ideally one with a hard floor, like a 2nd bathroom where you will not be bathing Fluffy, or the kitchen or laundry. Confine Fluffy to a different room, or in a crate. Deep clean the holding room, including removing and machine wash in hot soapy water any fabric items like sheets, curtains, rugs. This is so in step 4 you can put Fluffy back in a flea-free holding room while you de-flea the rest of your home.

2) Bathe
Important: Do not try to bathe an adult cat. It is often extremely stressful and they could hurt you trying to escape. For adult cats, or other pets you can’t bathe for health or behavior reasons, skip this bath step. Be very careful to keep young and older pets warm — kittens especially can die if they too cold.
Get two freshly washed-in-hot-water towels ready.
Use a gentle pet shampoo or Dawn dishwashing liquid. Do not use “flea” shampoo, because you’ll apply flea medication in step 6.
Put the pet in your tub or shower, pour some soap in your hand, add a little water, and make a soapy “collar” around the pet’s neck. This can prevent fleas from escaping up to your pet’s head and in to their mouth, eyes and ears! Working you way back from the “collar” towards their tail, lather Fluffy up thoroughly then rinse and watch the dead fleas go down the drain. If there are a lot of fleas, shampoo and rinse again until you see very few or no fleas when you rinse. You may want to flea comb (see next step) while the pet is soapy and in the bath.

3) Flea comb & dry
If fluffy has a short coat, comb Fluffy with a flea comb. Start at the head and work your way to the tail. Have a dish of shampoo or dish soap sitting on the side to quickly dunk and kill the fleas that you capture in the flea comb. Towel dry Fluffy – and if Fluffy needs to be kept warm (winter, older/baby pet), gently dry Fluffy’s fur completely with a hairdryer set on low from a couple feet away.

4) Close Fluffy in the holding room
Make sure the holding room is warm enough, so Fluffy doesn’t get cold. Small kittens/puppies may do best left with a warm water bottle under the flea-free, freshly-laundered towel you leave them on (monitor that they don’t chew it), or snuggled with a helper person.

5) Treat with flea control from your vet
Ask your vet what flea control product they recommend for your pet. Some products require you wait 24 hours or more after a bath before application. For pets eight weeks and older, we like Advantage® II because you can apply it as soon as Fluffy is dry. Reapply as directed (usually monthly) so you don’t have to repeat steps one to six again!

6) Deep clean your house
Vacuum rugs, sofas, curtains and hard floors. Dump your vacuum bag immediately in the trash –OUTSIDE your home. Wipe all hard surfaces with damp cloth.  When you’re done, you can let Fluffy out of the holding room! Repeat the deep cleaning daily for the next two weeks, to reduce the chances of missed flea eggs hatching and the cycle starting all over again. Machine-wash and dry anything you can (pet beds, your bed blankets/sheets) on the hottest settings. Coating floor crevices, carpet, and fabric with food-grade Diatomaceous earth (as explained by a vet, here) can help tremendously with ongoing flea control.

7) Check & treat for worms
Fleas mean Fluffy is likely to get tapeworms. Take Fluffy to your vet to get dewormed within the next week or two, or sooner if you see the tiny sesame seed/rice-looking worm segments when they go to the bathroom, stuck to their fur, or in their bedding.

These are our seven steps to a flea-free Fluffy and home. You can now enjoy your itch-free and healthy life together!

This post was modified from its original version published on April 19, 2011

LOS ANGELES, March 21, 2018  — Following the third major pet incident on United Airlines in merely a week, Adopt-a-Pet.com has announced an offer to the airline to aid in educating employees on implementing best practices in humane travel for companion animals. The proposal comes on the heels of a turbulent week for pets flying the airline, with dogs in two separate incidents ending up in the wrong destination and one beloved family dog dying as the result of a flight attendant insisting his carrier be put in the overhead compartment.

“As a leader in consumer air transportation, United Airlines has a profound obligation to protect the families who choose to fly with them. As a leader in pet adoption and experts in animal welfare, Adopt-a-Pet.com is ready to extend its hand and help ensure companion animal family members are protected as well,” said David Meyer, CEO and Co-Founder of Adopt-a-Pet.com. “Our team is standing by, ready to work with United Airlines – and any airline that wants to keep its four-legged travelers safe – to make their service the most sound, pet-friendly way to travel.”

According to the U.S. Department of Transportation, since 2014 United Airlines has had more consumer complaints regarding the death of animals during air transportation than any other airline. That, Meyer says, should be cause for concern by travelers and a wake up call for the airline that the time to act is now.

Any airline flying companion animals is encouraged to contact Adopt-a-Pet.com for guidance on employing safer travel practices for pets.

About Adopt-a-Pet.com
Adopt-a-Pet.com is North America’s largest non-profit pet adoption website, helping over 18,000 animal shelters, humane societies, SPCAs, pet rescue groups, and pet adoption agencies advertise their purebred and mixed breed pets for free to millions of adopters each month. Sponsored by companies including the Petco Foundation, Petco, and Bayer Animal Health LLC, Adopt-a-Pet.com helps homeless dogs, cats, and even rabbits and other animals go from alone to adopted.

By Dr. Dan Carey, Bayer Veterinarian
Lights, camera … adoption! There’s nothing like changing a life, unless it’s saving a life. The photos are taken, social updates are posted and you’re finally on your way home.

First steps

Playtime, mealtime, downtime: Your shelter’s staff interacts with your cat, gets to know his temperament, daily habits and, most importantly, checks on his health and well-being. The shelter knows that when it comes time to call “Here kitty, kitty,” you don’t want fleas, ticks heartworms, intestinal worms and ear mites to come, too. Checkups, vaccinations and preventives prepare him for your home.

Behind the scenes

When your cat first arrives at the shelter, it’s an overwhelming experience for everyone. By following strict rules and guidelines, the veterinarians and staff move into action. Shelter professionals understand the need to immediately identify, treat or help prevent fleas, ticks, heartworms, intestinal worms and ear mites. After all, many shelter animals bring some unwanted guests along at check-in, and it doesn’t take much for a few tiny nuisances to spread into a large shelter-wide problem. You may adopt your cat on her very first day in the shelter, or it may take some time to find each other. Regardless of how long her shelter stay is, your cat has already begun to receive the care, treatment and prevention she needs to be healthy. The staff ensures she has effective treatment or prevention products to help reduce the risk of fleas, ticks, heartworms, intestinal worms and ear mites. Your shelter staff and volunteers spend time learning more about her unique personality and needs. They look for opportunities to keep her stress level low and increase her chances of adoption. Kittens receive proper care for growth and senior cats are given special attention, too. This can include giving supplements to support joint and digestive health.

Bringing home your new cat

You may be searching for a specific breed or personality, and you’ll know when you’ve found that perfect cat match. You’ll treat him like a new family member, with plenty of scratching toys, windows for gazing and under-the-chin rubs that build your strong bond. Making good health a priority is another way to show your love. Long after he leaves the shelter, the risk of suffering and disease due to fleas, ticks, heartworms, intestinal worms and ear mites remains. These troublesome trespassers can be found year-round, even inside. Without protection they can easily cause your new cat discomfort. As a new cat owner, you can establish an ongoing prevention and wellness routine as an essential part of doing your best for his health and happiness. Learn more about caring for your cat here.

Given that a well-trained dog can learn to differentiate between, and respond appropriately to, hundreds of commands from her human family, it is only right that we should make an effort to understand what our canine companions are trying to say to us. We all know that a growl is a warning, and a yelp is a sound of distress, but there are so many verbal signals in between those two sounds, and they all communicate different messages. There are also many nonverbal signals our pups give us before they make a peep. Below are a few of the most common bark signals and some body language cues, to help you to understand what your dog is trying to say.

Verbal:

Nonverbal:

This article was originally published on October 8th, 2015

Parts of this article are excerpts from Adopt-a-Pet.com’s book, The Total Dog Manual. For more great tips on all things dog, pre-order the book now on Amazon!

We all know that February is the month of love. Valentine’s Day is pretty unavoidable, by January 2 we are already seeing red and pink hearts splattered around all over our favorite stores. Rom-coms suddenly start to pop up in our Netflix recommendations and flowers are inexplicably 200 percent more expensive than they were a month ago.

Some of us relish in this holiday and love having an extra reason to dote on your significant other, but what if you don’t have a significant other or would rather just not spend weeks stressing over the right way to do Valentine’s Day? A few years ago we invented Galentine’s Day as a way to celebrate with you girlfriends when you are partnerless, but how about Pawlentine’s Day?

Pet’s are the most loyal and loving little fur balls in our lives and when we really think about it, they make much better Valentine’s Day dates than any human out there. Check out all the awesome benefits of asking your pet to be your Valentine.

1. Your dog will never be late for your date, won’t have high expectations about how the night should go and won’t be distracted by a cell phone or social media! All your pet truly wants is to be near you.
2. You don’t have to share your dessert with a pet (and probably shouldn’t). Let’s face it, dessert (especially chocolate) really is the best part about Valentine’s Day and if we’re really honest with ourselves, we don’t want to share our goodies. Giving your pets dessert would literally make them sick, so you don’t have to feel guilty about hoarding all the sweets. Sit back and enjoy that box of See’s, but maybe throw Fido an extra piece of cheese so he doesn’t feel left out.
3. You don’t really need to buy you pet anything for Valentine’s Day. Your little fur ball will be perfectly content with some snuggles and an extra walk or some catnip. It works out well if you’re on a budget.
4. If words aren’t really your strong suit you don’t have to worry about saying “I love you” in a fancy way. Just give your cat a long slow blink and she will know exactly what you mean.
5. Your dog, cat, bunny — or whatever other critter lives in your household — will be happy to spend the night in, watching a movie and snuggling. A big bonus to that is, you won’t have to argue over what movie to watch.

It’s official! We’re right smack in the middle of the holiday season.  Our houses are decorated, we’ve been drinking nothing but Pumpkin Spice Lattes, and we’re crossing off all our wish lists. But, in all your holiday cheer did you remember to get your pet the perfect gift?

It’s ok if you didn’t, Adopt-a-Pet.com has you covered. We’ve put together a list of some awesome presents to impress and delight all the pets and pet parents in your life. Check out our top picks below!

The social media gurus among us know that Saturdays have permanently been renamed Caturday, but did you know that October 29th is National Cat Day? Yes, it’s true, this entire weekend is all about the cats.

According to NationalDayCalendar.com, National Cat Day was founded to help the public recognize the number of cats that need to be rescued.  It’s also a day for cat lovers to celebrate the cats in their lives for the unconditional love and companionship that they give. Though the kittens in our lives aren’t always the most expressive, we think today is a great day to show them just how much we love them. Here are five ways you can show your cat how much you appreciate him/her.

#1 – Plant a Catnip Garden

Anyone who’s ever owned a cat knows that cats go crazy for catnip. This harmless herb gives our feline friends a pick-me-up and enjoyable “high.” Combine catnip with a special toy and you’ve really ramped up the fun for your pet. Or, if you want something more permanent, plant an indoor or outdoor catnip garden so your feline can have a nip every now and then. Cats will love you back when you shower them with catnip.

#2 – Bird Feeder by the Window

Cats love to watch birds. They also probably wish they could pounce on those birds. Thank your cat for being her sassy self by putting up a bird feeder or bath where your kitty can watch in the window. This way she gets all the enjoyment of bird watching and none of the gore.

#3 -Cats Massage

While cats aren’t known to be as affectionate as their canine counterparts, they still appreciate some loving from their furless pals. Simply stroking your cat, gives an all-over feel-good experience that lowers his blood pressure —your blood pressure will also go down as an added benefit. Pay special attention to the places he likes best, such as the base of the tail and under the cheeks. Touching, petting, and massaging your cat also serve as well-cat checks to find any fur mats, lumps or bumps or sores that need medical attention.

#4 – Outdoor Play Enclosure

Sometimes you kitty may want to give into her wild side and go for a romp outside. She may sit at the window and dream of going on a hunt, but you know it’s not safe, so what do you do? Get your kitty a outside play enclosure as a way of saying thanks for putting up with the required monthly bath.

#5 – Cat Grooming

Cats spend half of their waking hours self-grooming. What can we say, cats like to stay spiffy, they also like to groom their friends as a sign of affection. Not only does the comb/brush feel like an all-over massage, it keeps fur mat-free and skin clean, reduces fur-balls, and enhances the bond between you and the cat. If you really want to amp up the bonding opportunity you can try licking your cat during the grooming session. Don’t worry, we don’t mean literally, but there is a cat brush that is made to simulate a cat tongue — if you’re into that kind of thing.