Holiday Gift Guide: Staff Recommendations for the Pet Care Depot

Lucy holds her Rosy's Crinkle Catnip Toy

Our staff share their favorite pet toys from the Pet Care Depot to help you out with your holiday shopping!

Erin, Social Media Director, recommends Rosy's Crinkle Catnip Toy for the cat on your life. 

"My cat Lucy absolutely LOVES her crinkle catnip toy! She goes crazy - holding it in her paws, licking it, rubbing it against her head, and bunny kicking it with her hind legs! Not only does she love it but it is super entertaining for her humans to watch her play with it!"

Rosy's actually has an entire line of cat products that are all readily available at the Pet Care Depot: Rosy's 100% Organic Kitty Grass, 100% Organic Catnip Plant, and indicdual 100% Organic Catnip packets! We're pretty sure your kitty friend will go wild for Rosy's!

The Pet Care Depot also has some fun kitty stocking stuffers. There are a variety of fun and simple cat toys for the awesome price of $0.99! You can't go wrong!

 

Margaret, Hospital Administrator, recommends any of the Premier Classic Sheepskin Collection toys.  

Kelp with one of her "babies"

"Kelp loves these - we call them her babies - and they are super soft as well as durable. They come in a ton of different shapes and sizes. Plus, you can toss them in the wash when they are dirty!"

Diane from the Pet Care Depot also recommends these classic toys. And if you are looking for something super tough and long lasting for your canine chewer she suggests any of the Tuffy and Mighty toys.

"These are fun, cute, and durable. They are great for dogs that love to chew."

And don't forget the large variety of comfy pet beds, stylish collars and leashes, and tasty pet treats available at the Pet Care Depot! It really is a great place to find the perfect gift for your favorite pet! What is your pet's favorite toy? We would love to hear from you!

 

Happy holidays from the doctors and staff at Bishop Ranch Veterinary Center & Urgent Care! 

Monday Pet Tip!

Monday Pet Tip: Trim your pet's toe nails frequently! There are many benefits to this. First, the more frequently you handle your pet's paws and trim their nails, the more used to the process they will become. Hopefully, with regularity a squirmy or unruly pet will learn to calm down. Secondly, trimming the nails often helps keep the "quick" from growing out. The quick is the area that provides the blood supply and nerves for the toe nail. When pet's toe nails bleed it is because the quick has been nicked. It is much more difficult to avoid nicking the quick when it has grown long. Lastly, frequent toe nail trims means short nails all the time -a major plus for most pet owners! 

 P.S. If you do happen to cut into the quick when trimming your pet's nails - don't worry; accidents happen. To stop the bleeding you can keep a store bought styptic powder such as Kwik-Stop on hand or use a home remedy such as flour or baby powder. 

Microchipping Your Pet

Accidents happen. The gate isn’t closed all the way, a guest leaves the door open a moment too long, you forget to shut the screen. It only takes a second. What about a natural disaster? In California we don’t have to contend with hurricanes and tornadoes but we do have earthquakes.  

One thing you can do to help ensure your pet’s return is to have them microchipped.  People often bring in missing pets to our office to be scanned for microchips. The pets with a registered chip are usually reunited with their ecstatic owners the same day if not within minutes. Pets without microchips or current ID tags end up having to stay the night at the shelter where, hopefully, their loving family will locate them. A microchip, in combination with a collar and current ID tag is the best way to be sure your pet will come home again.

The facts do not lie:

• 30-60% of lost pets in shelters are euthanized because they cannot be properly identified and returned to their owner.  Only about 14% of dogs and 4% of cats who end up in shelters are returned to their rightful owners.

• Less than 25% of all animals that enter shelters are adopted by new owners.

• About 2 million pets that are reported missing each year may be victims of theft.

• Collar tags are a great way to identify lost pets and reunite them with their owners, but they can easily come off or be removed.

• Tattoos are difficult to remove from an animal, but they are still not 100% reliable. Tattoos can be altered, fade, or blur, and are not always easy to read.

• Reading a microchip is far easier than trying to read the tattoo of a frightened stray animal.

• Microchipping is permanent, completely unalterable, and does not change or harm the appearance of the animal in any way.  The procedure is safe, inexpensive, fast and virtually painless for the animal.

• There are about 50,000 microchip scanners currently in use by shelters, veterinarians, and municipal organizations in the U.S.

Recently the development of microchip implants to assist in pet identification has become widespread. These are small chips, about the size of a grain of rice. Each chip has its own unique number encoded in it, which can be detected with a hand-held scanner. 

The procedure is simple: with a pet completely awake the chip is injected with a syringe under a pet’s skin over the back of the neck like any other injection. This may be done at the same time that other injections, such as immunizations, are given and takes no more time to do than a regular injection.

Each microchip comes with a registration form that Bishop Ranch Veterinary Center & Urgent Care will fill out for the pet owner and submit to the national registry. This will register their pet and link it with the code number for that microchip. In the event that the pet is subsequently lost and taken to an animal shelter the microchip can be scanned there to identify who the pet is so it can be returned quickly to its owner.

Dogs and cats of any age can receive a microchip. After implantation the microchip remains in place under the skin for life. It is so small that in most pets it cannot be detected at all without the use of a scanner. Microchips have not been shown to cause irritation to the skin where injected.

An office visit fee is not required in order to have a microchip implanted in your pet. Please contact us at 925.866.8387 or email us at info@webvets.com with any questions about microchips. We will be happy to help you! For more information about the HomeAgain Pet Recovery Service, please visit www.HomeAgainID.com on the World Wide Web.