Edie MacKenzie

Edie MacKenzie is a published author, traveler, dog lover, and tortoise enthusiast. Passionate about what she does, her books provide peopel a firm grounding in the dog breed and their unique characteristics with a nice touch of humor.

Common Golden Retriever Health Problems

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Golden Retriever Health

There are many common health problems that your Golden Retriever will experience from time to time.  Most of these ailments are nothing serious, providing you know how they should be treated and prevented.  Below, we will take a look at the most common ailments, and tell you how to prevent your Golden from getting them.

Distemper virus
The distemper virus is an airborne disease that poses a high risk.  This virus can be prevented by getting your Golden 3 different vaccinations when he is between 6 and 16 weeks of age, along with his regular annual booster shot.  The symptoms from this virus include fever, cough, diarrhea, and vomiting.  If your Golden Retriever has these symptoms, you should immediately take him to see the vet.

Heartworms
Heartworms are among the most common ailment with all dog breeds.  They can reach lengths of up to 12 inches in the heart and the lung arteries, leading to heart failure, a decrease in blood circulation, and even death in some cases.  The symptoms with heartworms may not appear until it is too late, so you are better off preventing them with the correct heartworm medicines.

Heatstroke
During the summer months or hot days, your Golden Retriever can get a heatstroke.  You can prevent this from happening by giving your dog plenty of water, and never leaving him in direct sunlight.  If you are playing together on a hot day, you should give him plenty of time to rest so he doesn’t overdo it.  The symptoms indicating a heatstroke include a lot of panting or drooling, dark gums, a glazed expression, rapid pulse, and even vomiting.  If your dog starts to show any of these symptoms, you should immediately take him to the vet.

Rabies
Rabies is one of the more serious ailments that your Golden Retriever can get, as it has an adverse affect on your dog’s nervous system.  Normally, dogs get rabies through a bite of another animal that is infected with the disease.  There are rabies shots that helps to prevent the disease, and your dog should get them at least once a year.  The symptoms of rabies include seizures, aggression, and foaming at the mouth.  If you suspect your Golden has rabies, you should call the vet immediately.

Tapeworms
Tapeworms are normally caused by fleas, and affect your dog’s stomach.  The symptoms for tapeworms include a loss in weight, diarrhea, and even biting of the rectal area.  You can easily prevent your Golden from tapeworms by using a rigid flea control.  If your Golden Retriever exhibits symptoms for tapeworms, you should take him to the vet immediately.  If the vet catches them in time, he may be able to kill the tapeworms with an oral medicine.

Hookworms
Hookworms result from your Golden coming in contact with feces, his mother, or the worm simply burrowing under exposed skin.  You can prevent your dog from getting hookworms by cleaning his living area and keeping his skin clean.  The symptoms that accompany hookworms include a dry coat, weight loss, weakness, and blood in the stool.  As with all other ailments, you should immediately contact your vet if your Golden Retriever starts to show any of these symptoms.

Although these are just some of the most common ailments for Golden Retrievers, there are other ailments and health problems that your dog can get.  If your Golden starts to show any signs of ailment, disease, or health problem, you shouldn’t hesitate to contact your vet and set up an appointment.  Some of these diseases and ailments can be pretty serious – although they can be treated if you catch them in time.

The Classic Toilet-Drinking Dog Issue (Part 2)

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A dog who drinks from a stagnant puddle, a lake, or a pond is exposed to more potentially hazardous germs than one who drinks from a toilet.

This doesn’t mean that dogs can’t get sick from drinking toilet water. A toilet that’s stopped up or hasn’t been cleaned in a long time will contain enough germs to trigger a day or two of diarrhea or vomiting. More worrisome than germs are chemicals.

In our perpetual battle to keep bathrooms clean, we pour all sorts of chemicals into toilet bowls and tanks. Some of these products taste perfectly fine to dogs, but can make them ill if they drink enough.

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Even though toilets are sanitary enough for quenching canine thirst, most people prefer to keep the lids closed. Mainly, it’s about etiquette. No one wants to listen to their dog noisily lapping up a toilet-water cocktail. And no one wants to clean up the trail of spittle and water that invariably follows.

Get A New Water Bowl

Some dogs drink out of the toilet because they like the taste. Others do it because they dislike the water in their regular dishes. It’s not the water itself that’s usually the problem, but what the water is served in. Plastic dishes, for example, absorb odors and may give water an off taste. Switching to a metal or ceramic dish – and washing it regularly – can make your dog’s usual water supply a little more palatable – and make him less interested in finding alternatives.

Try Placing The Water Bowl Where It Will Be Cooler

Dogs definitely like their water cool. Water that sits in a sunny kitchen may be 10°F warmer than water that’s kept in a cool, tiled bathroom. If you don’t have a different place to keep the bowl, put in a few ice cubes every time you change the water. Dogs will appreciate the extra coolness as well as the crunchy ice.

Final Toilet Avoidance Tip

The easiest way to keep dogs out of the toilet is to lower the lid. Unless, that is, you happen to live with a very smart and determined dog who learns to uncap the toilet on his own. If that happens – and some dogs like toilet water so much that wedging their noses under the lid is hardly an insurmountable obstacle – you’ll either have to keep the bathroom door closed or secure the toilet lid by putting something heavy on top.

Nutrition And Dog Health

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When dogs were wild, or at least still hunted for their food, hunger may have been an occasional concern, but rarely were deficiencies or imbalances ever a problem when pertaining to dog health.

Dogs killed and ate almost all of their prey’s carcass including the entrails, skin, and even bones.

Domesticated and dependent upon their owners for food, today’s dogs are amply fed, right to the point of obesity, yet they often develop bad overall dog health due to a number of deficiencies from their improperly balanced diets.

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The advent over the past decade of nutritionally “complete” or “balanced” commercial dog foods, and their increasing acceptance by dog owners and veterinarians alike, has drastically reduced the incidence of dietary deficiencies. Today such nutritional problems are seen mostly in dogs who are fed homemade diets or a diet of table scraps and leftovers.

Poor nutrition, whether from dietary deficiencies or excesses, has a significantly negative effect on your dog’s ability to remain in good health. Resistance to infection is lowered, as is the production of antibodies, allowing infectious agents to multiply rapidly and spread.

The resulting fever, diarrhea, or other manifestations of illness, more than likely will make your dog less interested in eating, thus increasing the state of malnutrition and is concerning to dog health.

Housetraining: The 3 Most Common Reasons Why Your Dog Is Having Trouble

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Housetraining your dog quickly and easily can only be done by understanding what is causing him to use the bathroom inside the house in the first place. Many times the issues are not what they seem, and in fact the problems are typically connected to behavioral reasons.

Dogs can eliminate inappropriately for a number of behavior-based reasons. However, clinical signs vary for these types of issues and are not always distinguishable between medical problems or housetraining relapses.

For example, urine found on upright objects or in a place out of sight of the owner suggests an intentional marking of a surface. Urine found only in a bed at night could suggest unintentional incontinence, although there are plenty of dogs that make a point of urinating on their beds. And diarrhea could be from a physiological problem but could also be from internal stress in the animal.

A recent poll taken from experts in canine behavior problems around the country, identified the following tips as the most common causes of behavioral elimination:

1) Submissive & Excitement Urination

Submissive and excitement urination may not be under the dog’s control as it is a reaction to a social stimulus. There are lots of submissive and excitement urination in dogs younger than 1 year of age. With this behavior, dogs tend to dribble or wet when their owners come home, when they’re scolded or petted, or in the presence of other dogs.

2) Territorial Marking

Territory marking in the house occurs most often in intact (unneutered) male dogs older than six months of age, although spayed females and neutered males sometimes exhibit this behavior.

Usually, areas are marked with small squirts of urine (seldom feces) in response to a need to claim or reaffirm a territory in the presence of other dogs (including neighborhood dogs and cats seen through a window) or involving household changes (like a new baby or a new spouse).

3) Anxiety

Arousal or increased activity of the dog caused by anxiety can bring about defecation and urination. Dogs with separation anxiety may eliminate with regularity whenever the person to whom the dog is attached is physically separated from the dog.

Fear of noises, novel objects outside or an attack by another animal outside can cause a dog to refuse to go outdoors to eliminate. Some dogs refuse to leave the porch if it is raining or snowing, thus not eliminating when given the opportunity. Some dogs refuse to go in the presence of the owner.

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