Health Issues For Dogs(and Pets) Moving To Thailand From Overseas

[happy7]

Hi all

There has been a lot of discussion about how to bring dogs from overseas to Thailand. I was just wondering if there are any precautions we should take to ensure that newly arrived dogs (and other pets) are healthy and happy? The heat is an obvious issue that I have read about in another thread, as are ticks. Are there any other issues of concern & how to deal with them or prevent them from happening?

Thanks!

[wileycoyote]

Hi all

There has been a lot of discussion about how to bring dogs from overseas to Thailand. I was just wondering if there are any precautions we should take to ensure that newly arrived dogs (and other pets) are healthy and happy? The heat is an obvious issue that I have read about in another thread, as are ticks. Are there any other issues of concern & how to deal with them or prevent them from happening?

Thanks!

1.I would post your area & request Thai Forum colleagues to recommend a good vet in your area.

2.I would try and "quarantine" your pet from local dogs/animals ,until checked by the vet.

3.Also try to keep the diet as similar to that previously experienced.

4.If your dog is a pedigree ,I would request advice from that Pedigree forum on the web.

Hope this helps

Wiley Coyote

Edited June 26, 2007 by wileycoyote

[Nienke]

Hi all

There has been a lot of discussion about how to bring dogs from overseas to Thailand. I was just wondering if there are any precautions we should take to ensure that newly arrived dogs (and other pets) are healthy and happy? The heat is an obvious issue that I have read about in another thread, as are ticks. Are there any other issues of concern & how to deal with them or prevent them from happening?

Thanks!

Welcome to Thailand Happy7!

What pops in my mind is the Thyroid. After all what i've read and seen I started to realize that probably many dogs suffer from an impaired thyroid. Especially the full-breds are prone to this.

Symptoms can be typical such as symmetric hairloss, obesity, sad or depressed look, fear. But it can also be less clear, such as abnormal aggression towards other dogs or recurrent skinproblems.

It might be an idea to have this checked before you bring the dogs to Thailand, just to be sure.

One of these days I'm going to have my GSD checked. He has skin problems that started just after he received his first jabs. Any treatment, against mange, bacterial infection and what ever more the vet came up with, hasn't solved his problem. From what I've read now, his symptoms fit the thyroid problem. Now I just hope it's that, so that with just a few pills on a daily basis I finally can put an end to his misery.

Further:

As far as other prevention methods goes: keep your house and garden tick free which may involve pest control coming over once of twice to spray your vicinities. Moving into a new house doesn't guarantee it's tick free.

Have your dogs sleep in the house or under a mosquito net at night in order to reduce the chance they will be bitten by mosquito's that can bring over the heartworm parasite.

If your dogs have thick (under) coats, bring proper grooming gear and groom your dogs everyday.

Have a fishpond or swimming pool for them to swim.

Provide them with a high quality species appropriate diet, keeping their immune system optimum.

About the vet has been mentioned already.

Update your knowledge on health issues concerning dogs. It's better to treat minor things yourself instead of having the dog stuffed with antibiotics and prednisones time after time.

Know your dog(s). If they go off food just a little for example or behave just a little different from the usual, become alerted. The dog is telling you something, that something is bothering him/her. If the dog vomits once in the morning, that can be normal (dogs do vomit), but if s/he does it again, become alerted. In ALL cases when your dog behaves different form the usual, think always of tick fever. Ticks are part of live here, unfortunately they can bring over a nasty disease. In case of doubt, have the blood check through a SNAP test and a full blood panel plus liver and kidney. This test is about 98% accurate, while under the microscope it's less than 30%. A year, 10 days and 2 days before my boxer passed away, her blood was tested for blood parasites, every time she was tested negative, while she died from tick disease.

And uh-uh ..... well these are the first things that popped in my mind.

Hopes this helps a bit,

Nienke

[happy7]

Thanks Wileycoyote and Nienke for your replies!

Wow, Nienke, you seem to know a lot about dogs! Do you work with dogs? It's interesting you mentioned about thyroid - I'll have to look more into it - my dog has always had skin problems..and he always look sad (especially when we are eating and he wants some too!)...and in regards to the ticks - the symptoms of tick fever seem to be quite general - behaving differently than usual and may be vomitting?

Thanks again!

[Nienke]

Hi,

If you go to the thread about the thyroid, you can start informing yourself about the thyroid.

If you live in America and you doubt about your dog's thyroid I strongly recommend to have it checked out by Dr. Dodds before you come here.

About ticks a good link is: http://www.mirage-samoyeds.com/tick.htm

And of course you can google: Erhliciosis canis

The tick symptoms can be quite easily mistaken for symptoms of other diseases. They are also quite similar to the distemper symptoms. It's quite important to recognise these symptoms, so if the dog has the disease, and you catch it in the acute stage, it can be cured as the parasite is still in the blood stream. But once it has gone over in the chronic stage, the parasite has entered the bone marrow, where the antibiotics can't reach. Also, the antibiotics can't reach the parasites when they are in dorm periods.

Best advice I can give here is to educate yourself a bit on general dog health issues, so you can recognise quicker when something is wrong with the animal and then can act quicker.

And above all, provide your animals with a species appropriate diet! None of the dog foods you can buy in the supermarkets are good. (just two days ago i got an old customer in. Her dog was fed on a cheap dog food when boarded at my kennel. He had ongoing skin problems, eye and ear inflammations. On my advice they changed to a higher quality diet and within 3 weeks the problems started clearing up, she told me, and the dog is fine now)

Nienke

P.S. And in answer to your question if I work with dogs? Yes I do, it's my passion , my life

[happy7]

Hi Nienke

Thanks for your advice and information! Will be looking into the above links. Have also read the thyroid thread - very interesting.

I definitely agree that diet plays a very important role in the health of dogs (and humans!). What do you mean by "species appropriate diet"? The way I read your post is to give high quality food, may be appropriate to the age and size? There are so many brands of dog food out there - can certainly get very confusing to the average person!

Regards

happy7

[Nienke]

I definitely agree that diet plays a very important role in the health of dogs (and humans!). What do you mean by "species appropriate diet"? The way I read your post is to give high quality food, may be appropriate to the age and size? There are so many brands of dog food out there - can certainly get very confusing to the average person!

A species appropriate diet means a diet that that certain species normally would eat.

That is herbivores eat vegetation, and not some sort of dryfood mixed with meat left overs. We all know where that can lead to.

Omnivores eat both meats and greeny stuff, etc.

And carnivores, a dog is a carnivores, should eat meat bones and organs. Grains and rice are NOT appropriate for dogs, and if insisting of giving it (for whatever reason) then it should be given in very moderate amounts. Kibble is full of this.

Again an example of a St. Bernard with generalized demodectic mange that is under my care at the moment. She already has received two cures of ivermectin, antibiotics and corticosteroids, which didn't solve her problem. I know her already for a while and each time she came to the kennel, she had sores all over, was almost bold and continuous cratched. At my place we give Science Diet and treated her topical with herbs etc. Initially she always went better, but after a while the problems returned.

About 3 weeks ago I've finally put her on raw feeding. Her skin has improved already a lot and and the coat is growing back beautiful shiny and thick. She still has two spots where she scratches, though. So, now I'm in doubt. Shall I wait, because the improvement goes pretty fast actually and I'm just impatient (again) and treat the spots with herbs as before OR shall I give her the antibiotics that I collected from the vet yesterday to stop the bacterial infection that comes with the mange and after just treat the particular spots with amitraz. I need to think about this. Gave myself a day to do so. (got the permission of the owner, BTW. Actually the owner asked me to do it my way as the allopathic treatment didn't work).

Anyway, long answer to a short question. Can't help it, it's genetic ... from my father's side

Nienke

[happy7]

I definitely agree that diet plays a very important role in the health of dogs (and humans!). What do you mean by "species appropriate diet"? The way I read your post is to give high quality food, may be appropriate to the age and size? There are so many brands of dog food out there - can certainly get very confusing to the average person!

A species appropriate diet means a diet that that certain species normally would eat.

That is herbivores eat vegetation, and not some sort of dryfood mixed with meat left overs. We all know where that can lead to.

Omnivores eat both meats and greeny stuff, etc.

And carnivores, a dog is a carnivores, should eat meat bones and organs. Grains and rice are NOT appropriate for dogs, and if insisting of giving it (for whatever reason) then it should be given in very moderate amounts. Kibble is full of this.

Again an example of a St. Bernard with generalized demodectic mange that is under my care at the moment. She already has received two cures of ivermectin, antibiotics and corticosteroids, which didn't solve her problem. I know her already for a while and each time she came to the kennel, she had sores all over, was almost bold and continuous cratched. At my place we give Science Diet and treated her topical with herbs etc. Initially she always went better, but after a while the problems returned.

About 3 weeks ago I've finally put her on raw feeding. Her skin has improved already a lot and and the coat is growing back beautiful shiny and thick. She still has two spots where she scratches, though. So, now I'm in doubt. Shall I wait, because the improvement goes pretty fast actually and I'm just impatient (again) and treat the spots with herbs as before OR shall I give her the antibiotics that I collected from the vet yesterday to stop the bacterial infection that comes with the mange and after just treat the particular spots with amitraz. I need to think about this. Gave myself a day to do so. (got the permission of the owner, BTW. Actually the owner asked me to do it my way as the allopathic treatment didn't work).

Anyway, long answer to a short question. Can't help it, it's genetic ... from my father's side

Nienke

Very interesting with the St Bernard - would you let me know how she goes? What kind of herbs did you use? Is it a concoction you made yourself? Sorry to ask so many questions - I just find it all very interesting!

Happy7

[Nienke]

Very interesting with the St Bernard - would you let me know how she goes? What kind of herbs did you use? Is it a concoction you made yourself? Sorry to ask so many questions - I just find it all very interesting!

Happy7

Just got a phonecall of the St. Bernard's owner and she goes home one of these days. Bit a pity as she isn't 100% cured yet and I would love to establish that. But, then, this is part of the job. Just hope the owner will continue the treatment as I was doing it, as the dog clearly benefits from it.

Herbs etc. that I've used till now (only topical, though) are turmeric, betel nut, sulphur and coconut oil, depending on the problem. When a dog has fungal infection, mainly when it is ringworm, I use vinegar-water (50-50). This works great!

But, in any case, if it's with herbs or other home treatment, and I don't see quick result, i'll bring the dog (or cat) to the vet. So I had once a dog in boarding that scratched a huge hotspot over night. In the morning I did the usual thing: clipped the hair away, cleaned the wound with hydrogen peroxide and then antibiotic powder. Often this is enough for a hotspot but not for this dog. It kept on scratching like crazy, leaving an ugly wound. An E-collar could prevent her from scratching that particular spot, but did not solve her itch problem, so in the afternoon dog in the car and off to the vet, who prescribed antibiotics and prednisone. She still got the E-collar on, though.

Internally I hardly ever use herbs. Can't take any risks with other people's animals and my knowledge on the herbs isn't sufficient yet. This doesn't mean, of course, that allopetic treatment is completely risk-free.

I did use herbs, though, on my German Shepherd bitch who developed some tumors. Within two weeks they were becoming smaller. The herbs came from the States. Also with my Afghan male I used herbs, after the chemo therapy failed. He had Squamous Cell Carcinoma, and a huge tumor against the lower part of his heart. Once he received the herbs the tumor stopped growing, while on chemo the tumor grew another 2 cm in diameter in a month time (shown on the x-rays). Nevertheless, he didn't make it as the cancer had gone in his bones as well. He died just a few months ago, the 14th of April.

Currently, all dogs get coconut meat or milk mixed with their normal meals. And they LOVE it.

Nienke

[happy7]

I did use herbs, though, on my German Shepherd bitch who developed some tumors. Within two weeks they were becoming smaller. The herbs came from the States. Also with my Afghan male I used herbs, after the chemo therapy failed. He had Squamous Cell Carcinoma, and a huge tumor against the lower part of his heart. Once he received the herbs the tumor stopped growing, while on chemo the tumor grew another 2 cm in diameter in a month time (shown on the x-rays). Nevertheless, he didn't make it as the cancer had gone in his bones as well. He died just a few months ago, the 14th of April.

Currently, all dogs get coconut meat or milk mixed with their normal meals. And they LOVE it.

Nienke

Hi Nienke

Sorry to hear about the Afghan. It sounds like herbs internally can be quite effective.

Coconut meat & milk mixed with normal meals - sounds yummy!

Happy7