Karen Halligan - Doc Halligans What Every Pet Owner Should Know: Prescriptions for Happy, Healthy Cats and Dogs

O ne of the greatest loves you can experience is the unconditional love of a pet. Through my work of treating illnesses, injuries, and providing preventative medical care to pets, I give back some of the unconditional love Ive received from animals in my life. Im privileged to have a career that gives me the opportunity to share my knowledge of petslearned in vet school and from years of practicewith their owners, thereby helping cats and dogs live long, happy, and healthy lives.

Animals have always been a part of my life. I grew up surrounded by loving dogs and cats, and learned to love animals through my experiences as well as by reading about them in books such as James Herriots novels. Early on, I realized I wanted to devote my life to caring for animals. I followed my dream and graduated from veterinary school at University of California, Davis in 1989.

My desire to care for animals became more focused after I first started practicing. When I went to social gatherings, people would hover around me asking basic veterinary health questions and requesting information about their beloved pets. My neighbors would bring animals to my house, plying me with questions.

However, my desire to educate people about pet care crystallized as I worked at shot clinics on the weekends to supplement my income and to pay back my student loans. I was shocked at the condition of most of the pets I administered vaccines todogs barely able to walk because their nails were so long; cats and dogs with severe halitosis and thick green tartar covering their teeth; arthritic pets; unspayed females whose uteruses were just waiting to become infected; unneutered dogs who would one day run after a female in heat and get struck by a car. At these shot clinics I barely had time to vaccinate all of the animals that people brought in, let alone try to educate the owners about how to take better care of their pets. I was astonished as I discovered the majority of people lacked basic knowledge about pet health care, and from that day forward, my goal was to help change that. I decided that I would educate, to the best of my ability, all the clients I saw in private practiceat the very least.

Every pet owner must also plan for disasters. The importance of disaster preparedness for animals became painfully clear in the fall of 2005 when Hurricane Katrina brought her wrath to the Gulf Coast, followed by the destruction of Hurricane Rita. Thousands of animals lost their lives and thousands of owners were torn from their pets, never to be re united. In the weeks and months of confusion surrounding these tragic events, thousands of pets were shipped all over the United States to various shelters for safekeeping. I was on the ground in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, dealing firsthand with these abandoned animals. Unfortunately for pet owners who failed to have an identification collar or microchip on their petsadly, this was the majority of animals I tended tothe odds of being re united with their pets were slim. Your pet is an important family member and must be included in your disaster plan.

Another issue close to my heart is the frustration I feel about the millions of animals that are destroyed in our country every year due to irresponsible pet ownership. As a shelter vet, this fuels my desire to educate pet owners and hopefully put an end to the euthanasia of unwanted pets. We, as a nation that loves animals, must stop the irresponsible breeding of dogs and cats in the United States. My job as a vet entails euthanizing suffering animals, but having to kill them due to the lack of available loving homes is wrong. In the twenty-first century, we should be able to come up with a solution to stop the barbaric act of killing millions of healthy puppies, kittens, cats, and dogs in the shelters. I hope this book leads to a solution by raising awareness at the very least. I know we have a long way to go, but the well-known quote by Lao Tzu, A journey of one thousand miles begins with a single step. is appropriate here. Each of us can make a difference by educating one person, saving one dog or cat.

My sincerest desire is that this book will become a resource that you refer to as your pet moves through its life stages: a guidebook to return to as questions come up so that you can enhance your pets life to the fullest. If this book saves even one animals life by encouraging people to adopt from a shelter instead of buying from a pet storeor helps owners recognize symptoms of illness early on, or makes them careful not to let their pet get poisoned by rat bait, or convinces them to neuter their cat or dogthen I have accomplished what I intended to do.