Pet Insurance Tips

March 2, 2020 By admin Leave a Comment

The pet insurance industry has become increasingly diverse and complicated over the past several years. The structure remains very different from what you are accustomed to with your own health insurance but at its’ premise it serves the same purpose which is to lessen the financial burden when unexpected illness and accidents happen. At Charleston Harbor Veterinarians we have seen an uptick in the number of our clients and patients who are covered by a pet insurance policy and have witnessed first hand the benefit it can provide. Most often, those who are covered by a policy are able to make decisions to provide the best possible care for their pet without hesitation as they’ve removed the financial consideration. We also see these pets sooner in the onset of illness or after injury compared to pets without an insurance policy which can absolutely deliver a better medical outcome than waiting for things to worsen before visiting the vet.

Tools to Select a Policy

So while for many pet owners pet insurance may be a great option, the question remains, which one should you choose. In truth, we see a multitude of different insurance companies with happy clients for each of them. The best company and policy is different for each pet and each person. Therefore, we like to recommend to our clients who ask about pet insurance that they use a free tool called Pawlicy Advisor that helps you evaluate your insurance options and find the best price. Visit their website at https://www.pawlicy.com/advice where you’ll enter info about your pet and quickly receive a recommendation on the best policy for you. Pawlicy Advisor collects no money from you and you pay no more for a policy than you would have without their recommendation. Often you’ll pay less than if you didn’t use their recommendation in fact.

For additional information about pet insurance, we also like Pawlicy Advisor’s blog on “What is Pet Insurance“.

While Pawlicy Advisor is actively growing their list of companies they can recommend from, not every option is currently included. You may also want to separately research options from Nationwide, HealthyPaws, Progressive and Embrace.

Other payment options

If pet insurance still isn’t right for you or the idea of making monthly premium payments or annual fees is not appealing, we wanted to mention two other options to help you pay for unexpected or large veterinary expenses.

CareCredit and Scratchpay both offer veterinary specific payment plan options featuring a variety of payment plans. You can choose from short term plans that allow you to just spread out payment over anywhere from 5 weeks to a few months and require no more than a soft credit check or more traditional longer term financing options. Charleston Harbor Veterinarians is an approved vet clinic for both of these options if you choose to go that route.

The FDA Alert on Nexgard, Bravecto, Simparica and Credelio: What You Need to Know

September 24, 2018 By admin Leave a Comment

On Thursday, September 20, 2018, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) issued an alert concerning Isoxazoline flea and tick preventatives. These products include Nexgard, Bravecto, Simparica and Credelio. The alert is for potential neurologic side effects of these products.

Background:

The information that the FDA is providing is not necessarily new. Before releasing a pharmaceutical product to become available for animal use, rigorous safety studies must be completed to receive FDA approval. During the process of testing these flea and tick medications, rarely, neurologic side effects were noted, including muscle tremors, stumbling, and seizures. After 3 ½ years of prescribing these products we have had one patient experience seizures shortly after administration of an isoxazoline product and alerted the manufacturer. The patient has had no further seizures or other side effects since discontinuing the product. However, other rare side effects such as brief nausea or diarrhea were reported more often. These products are labeled as prescription and we require a physical examination of your pet prior to sending home the first dose due to these types of reasons.

After a medication is released by the FDA to be freely prescribed to the general population, the FDA continues to monitor the medication’s effectiveness and safety. This is general rule for all pharmaceuticals, and we think this is an important one. Once a pharmaceutical enters the general population, it is used by thousands and potentially millions more pet patients than could ever be tested through clinical trials. With the higher numbers of product use, sometimes side effects that were not known previously become evident. At that time, the FDA may elect to submit alerts to veterinarians and the general population, change the labeling of a product, or completely remove it from distribution.

Flea and tick concerns:

Veterinarians do know that diseases caused by fleas are exceptionally common in the South Carolina lowcountry. Fleas cause significant pathology/discomfort for our pets, can spread diseases to people and when severe, can be life threatening. It is not uncommon for our practice to see multiple appointments with our patients each day that involve skin infections and discomfort secondary to flea bites and flea infestations. We often use antibiotics and anti-inflammatory products to treat these conditions. Those products unfortunately can also have adverse side effects for the patient.

The Companion Animal Parasite Council (CAPC) is formed of a group of veterinarians dedicated to tracking the prevalence of parasites affecting our pets. CAPC has reported annual increases in tick borne diseases (including Lyme disease) and continue to recommend year-round flea and tick preventatives for all at risk dogs and cats. At Charleston Harbor Vets we have begun to test for tick borne diseases annually and have found that many dogs have been exposed to diseases such as Lyme disease indicating that our local population is at risk.

Summary:

Unfortunately we do not have a proven safe and 100% effective product for our pets to prevent flea and tick infestations. However we have found that neurologic side effects are much lower when using these products than the risk of disease if we chose not to use them. Currently, our team continues to recommend Nexgard and uses it consistently for prevention for our own dogs. However, if you have any questions or concerns please call, email, or make an appointment to meet with a doctor. We can discuss the risks and benefits and help you find the right products for you and your pet.

-Dr. Blackwood and Dr. Kahuda

Puppy Social Hour for Pups 10 weeks to 5 months old

November 14, 2015 By admin Leave a Comment

Purely Positive Dog Training

Does your puppy have more energy than you ever thought possible? Is the early sunset making it tough to fit in playtime or walks?

We are excited to invite you to a puppy social hour at Charleston Harbor Veterinarians. This is an opportunity for your pup to have some playtime while you relax with a snack and a glass of wine or beer.

Purely Positive’s C.C. Casale will be here to answer your questions about behavior and training as well as to encourage appropriate puppy play.

Puppy Social Hour
@Charleston Harbor Veterinarians

Wednesday November 18^th
6pm
280 Rutledge Avenue

RSVP – CHVTeam@charlestonvets.com
Free for our CHV pups and owners – $10 at door for visitors

Please make sure your pup is over 10 weeks old (under 5 months) and up to date on deworming and the DHPP booster vaccine.
Please keep your puppy at home if you have recently noticed diarrhea, vomiting, sneezing, or coughing.

Xylitol: Toxic to Dogs and Now Found in Some Peanut Butters

July 23, 2015 By admin Leave a Comment

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By: Janette Blackwood, DVM

My husband and I have an inside joke where he knows that I become enraged when we purchase a product from the supermarket, only to get it home and find out that it contains an artificial or alternative sweetener. I take a bite out of the item, say “Why is this gross?”, and throw a fit like a toddler when I read the label. I think the last thing he accidentally purchased was Welch’s Light Grape Juice, that only reading the fine print on the label revealed that it contained aspartame. My point is always that I think that that labeling on our food should be more obvious. This could not be even more important when it comes to the recent addition of xylitol to a few brands of peanut butter during the last few months. Xylitol in peanut butter is toxic to dogs

Xylitol is actually not an artificial sweetener, but a naturally derived sugar alcohol. In 2006, I first read about the use of xylitol in sugar free gum in an article of Veterinary Medicine.

The problem occurs when dogs accidentally (or purposely) ingest the product. Due to differences in canine and human metabolism, dogs ingesting products containing xylitol experience profound life-threatening hypoglycemia (low blood sugar) and can develop hepatic necrosis (liver failure). Sometimes, pet owners have no idea when they bring their pet to the veterinarian on emergency for seizures that their home even contained products with xylitol as an ingredient. In fact, it wasn’t until today when I made the effort to look up xylitol containing products that I even realized that I had been carrying around a tin of breath mints in my purse that would be toxic for my dog Radar to find and eat.

This website may be useful for you to learn what products in your home contain xylitol.

The recent addition of xylitol to certain peanut butter brands (Nuts ‘n More, Krush Nutrition, and P-28 Foods) becomes even more tricky for a few reasons. For one thing, limited labeling on the products may make it hard for consumers to realize that they are even purchasing a product containing this ingredient. You have to really make an effort to read the fine print on the nutrition label. Limited labeling on some products has also made it difficult to know the exact amount of xylitol contained in a spoonful of the product for example, making it difficult for veterinarians to know how much of the toxic ingredient a dog has ingested. Lastly, for years, peanut butter has been recommended by veterinarians as an easy vehicle to be used by pet owners to administer pills. I know that Radar loves a little bit of peanut butter (or the sugar-loaded Trader Joe’s Cookie Butter) when my husband gives him his morning dose of gabapentin for his chronic back issues.

Here is a link to an article in DVM360 with more information.
Janette Blackwood, DVM

What you should know about the confirmed case of canine influenza in Mount Pleasant

June 26, 2015 By admin Leave a Comment

June 26, 2015

A case of the new canine influenza H3N2 has been diagnosed and confirmed by laboratory testing at a veterinary clinic in Mount Pleasant this week. This is the first confirmed case in South Carolina. This is the same strain that made headlines earlier this year with an outbreak in the Midwest. The dog is a visitor to our state from Georgia, a state that has had several reported cases of H3N2 over the past month. From speaking with the attending veterinarian directly, it is my understanding that this dog had recently stayed in a boarding facility in Georgia that later had confirmed cases of H3N2.

What you should know about canine influenza:

There have been 2 strains of canine influenza in North America. The first one was H3N8, which was documented in 1999. The second strain is the new one H3N2, the one of which there is current concern.
Although there is a vaccine that has been available for several years for H3N8, at this time it is completely unknown if there is any cross-protective immunity for H3N2 from this vaccination. From the start of this year, two pharmaceutical companies have told us that they have been testing this older vaccine on the newer H3N2 strain, and at this time we have not received any reports on results that proves that protection exists. Even so, after the spread of H3N2 in the midwest, the vaccine has been in very high demand, and has quickly reached a backorder status.
At this time, there has been no reported cases of people getting sick with H3N2 from their dog.
Canine influenza is spread through aerosolization of the flu virus into the air. It can live for 2 days on contact surfaces, but is easily killed through disinfecting.
About 75%-80% of dogs that are exposed to influenza will develop clinical signs. These clinical signs include coughing, sneezing, lethargy, fever, and possible decreased appetite. For most dogs, the symptoms appear to be mild and they recover in 2-3 weeks.
A small portion of the above listed dogs that develop clinical signs will have moderate to severe signs that will require treatment by a veterinarian, such as fluid therapy and antibiotics for secondary bacterial infections.
Currently, it has been recorded that 1-5% of dogs contracting canine influenza will become severely ill and die from this disease, often by developing pneumonia. Like influenza in people, dogs that are the most likely to become this severely ill are ones that are immunocompromised, such as geriatrics, pediatrics, and patients receiving chemotherapy.

What you should do if your dog is sick/developing respiratory signs:

Call your veterinarian. At the time you make your appointment, let your veterinarian know that you are seeing respiratory signs (coughing/sneezing) as your veterinarian will wish to schedule your appointment in a manner that decreases the risk of other patients in the hospital being exposed. Your veterinarian will complete a physical exam to confirm if the signs you are seeing are consistent with canine influenza or possibly another disease that can cause a cough (for example: heartworm disease).
Your veterinarian can offer you a diagnostic test to be completed by sending a sample to an outside laboratory to help try to confirm if influenza is present.
If influenza (or another type of contagious respiratory infection is suspected), your veterinarian will strongly recommend that you protect other pets by keeping your dog separated from other dogs for about the next 2 weeks. This will include not going to boarding facilities, grooming facilities, dog parks, etc.

How you can protect your healthy dog:

Restrict your activity with any dog that is coughing, sneezing, or showing other signs of contagious illness. Unfortunately, as canine influenza can be spread in the 2-4 days from when a dog has been exposed to before it develops clinical signs (incubation period), just because a dog is clinically healthy it does not guarantee that they are not spreading the virus.
If your dog has a chronic medical illness, is very old, very young, or otherwise immunocompromised, I would recommend limiting exposure to other dogs in high volume areas such as boarding facilities, dog shows, and dog parks.
If your pet is going to board, especially in areas like the Midwest or Georgia where several cases have been reported, you may consider getting the influenza vaccine for H3N8. However, as mentioned above, supply for this vaccine is not completely reliable due to the recent backorder. The vaccine requires 2 doses administered 3 weeks apart and has not been proven to be effective against H3N2.

For more information see:

Canine Influenza Facts from The University of Georgia College of Veterinary Medicine: http://vet.uga.edu/news/view/canine-influenza-facts

AVMA- Influenza frequently asked questions

https://www.avma.org/KB/Resources/FAQs/Pages/Control-of-Canine-Influenza-in-Dogs.aspx

Wednesday November 18th 6pm 280 Rutledge Avenue

RSVP – CHVTeam@charlestonvets.com Free for our CHV pups and owners – $10 at door for visitors

Wednesday November 18^th
6pm
280 Rutledge Avenue

RSVP – CHVTeam@charlestonvets.com
Free for our CHV pups and owners – $10 at door for visitors