Posts made in December 2015

Merry Christmas and Fabulous 2016 to You!

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DrQ and the crew (that means Sushi dog, too), wish you and yours a wonderful holiday season!
Thanks so much for your continued valuable trust in me, and my sincerity at striving to provide the best care and advice that I can for you and your furred and finned family members.

2015 has been a busy year with many transitions for the veterinary practice. Much preparation has been made for a blossoming 2016 so that we can serve you even better.

The first half of the year found Dr. Questen preparing for and traveling to business conferences and speaking engagements, including to San Diego and Boston. As well as beginning development of her new on-line university, www.stealmoreyears.com. She was also honored to be asked to assist with admin on the very popular Facebook group Positive Pet Advice. If you have not checked it out, I encourage you to do so. It is a wonderful community of animal lovers and dog trainers, who support each other and share their love of animals. The group has grown to over 3,000 members in just one year! Which is a testament to the fact it is one of the few places on the internet you can go to get good advice, quickly, and feel supported and cared about in the process.

The summer was preoccupied with focusing on the racehorse rescue and charity venture the Prince of Flame Fund, which offered free classes for children and adults on all things horses, using the rescued animals in our care. We made lot’s of new friends who are looking forward to resuming class in the spring, and feel honored we were able to spread the message of positive animal training!

The last quarter of the year found us moving to a new location, and acquiring two additional personnel to assist in making improvements to the website and operations of the veterinary practice. Soon you will be able to book your appointments on line to make reaching DrQ and scheduling appointments so much easier for you!

For 2016 we hope to be able to provide service better than ever, as well as reach and assist an unprecedented number of guardians who are seeking real answers for their animal’s health and behavior related questions.

Please take a moment in the new year to check out our project at www.stealmoreyears.com, and forward the link to your animal loving friends all around the world. I have been hinting about it for a few months now, and much love and attention has gone into preparing something that will bring TONS lot of value to YOU, the discriminating animal guardian, in on-line classes that will have you looking forward to each new lesson. In it I will be revealing ALL of the top, most important things which, in my experience, add up to the most cost effective way to help your animals all out-live their life expectancy and happily thrive into advanced age! Most of if not all of the proceeds will go right back into the Prince of Flame Fund, so that we can continue to provide free education to the public on how to keep ourselves and our animals, healthy and safe with each other. Watch for the FREE webinar, my 7 Secrets to Outwitting Your Pets Lifespan, in early January. Thank you for being the best friends and clients this girl could ever ask for!

This is DrQ, wishing you, a safe, healthy, and happy holiday!

Easy, Delicious, & Nutritious Pet Food Recipes

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These days more and more people are considering cooking for their pets. Many have concerns over the quality of ingredients, contaminants and GMO’s, or worse yet, toxins leading to pet food recalls. As my free gift to you, here follows my easy recipe template that will guide you to cooking hundreds of recipe’s for dog and cat food! When you love your pet like family, if you care about what goes on your families plate, chances are, you care about what goes in your pet’s dish. Most of my best clients cook for their pets, at least some, if not all of the time. It is easy to do, and easy to feel good about. It is often a lot cheaper too when you consider the high price needed for all that packaging, marketing, shipping, and distribution of your commercial pet food.

As always, discuss the recipe’s you want to cook and feed to your animal, with your vet, before doing so. This should be a quick, easy, relatively painless conversation at your next yearly or semi-annual visit. If your vet is discouraging, perhaps it is only because they are unaware of the health benefits. A good veterinarian will be open to the discussion, willing to learn more, and address all your legitimate concerns. For example, here is a link to a study discussing adding fresh food to your dog’s diet, and it’s affects on cancer http://tiny.cc/ivkc7x. This should come as no surprise to those of us that realize how much good nutrition is essential for good health. Once you have your vet’s blessing to try adding home cooked foods (generally not more than 25-50% at first, or additional supplements are needed such as egg shell calcium) to your pet’s nutritionally complete diet, then it is time to get creative, and have fun!

Keep in mind that all of these recipe’s can be equally fed to anything that will eat it; cats, dogs, people, and bearded dragons included. It is pretty hilarious when the kids ask for a second helping of dog food!

The real simple base for any meal is:

1/3 veggies+

1/3 grain (rice, bulgar, millet, quinoa, etc.) +

1/3 legumes (red or green lentils, garbanzo beans, black beans, butter beans, etc. ) = nutritious and delicious!

Possible combinations include green lentils, bulgar, and sweet potatoes, or black beans, rice, and carrots, and finally millet, red lentils, and butternut squash. The possibilities are limited only by your imagination and your pet’s pallet! The health benefits include absorbing all the bioflavonoid antioxidants (the bright colors in vegetables) as nature intended, before it was processed, put in a bag, and shipped in a truck. The diet includes lots of fiber which is excellent for digestive health recalling that 80% of the immune system is in the intestinal lining (if introduced slowly as directed should cause minimal gaseous discharge), and without having to be a chemist, or a nutritionist, you will be most likely providing a complete protein, and well as nearly all the essential amino acids any animal needs. You can add additional protein if you so desire (or not, and not worry about overdoing it), multiple types of fresh, preferably organic veggies known to be safe for pets, fresh milled golden flax seeds, or just about anything else that sounds healthy and nutritious, for you.

Here is today’s recipe:

In a sauce pan, saute 1/2 cup chopped celery in a small amount water until translucent with one pinch of salt. Optional, add 1 TB Organic Olive Oil.Add 1 cup diced yellow unpeeled potatoes, 1 cup chopped organic unpeeled carrots, 1 cup rinsed bulgar wheat, 1 cup rinsed green lentils, 4-5 cups water, and simmer until root vegetables pierce easily with a fork. Done. Serve warm spooned over commercial kibble, or serve in a dish sprinkled with nutritional yeast for extra vitamins, texture, and flavor. It’s as simple as that!

Quick, easy, delicious, cheap, and healthy. Your animals will love you even more for it! Use this guide to create your own homemade recipe ideas, and share with us here or on Facebook or Instagram. For specific questions about types of veggies to choose, what grains to choose for different conditions, or other questions you might have about cooking up your own pet food, please join us at http://www.stealmoreyears.com starting in January, where one of our 7 Secrets to Outwitting Your Pet’s Lifespan lessons will focus on diet and nutrition.

Looking forward to to seeing what you have ‘cooked’ up! I’m DrQ, here to help you, take control of the health of your beloved animals!

How Not To Kill Your Dog (or Cat)

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This year veterinarian Dr. Ron Hines found himself in a lot of trouble for giving away a lot of free advice over the internet. Read more about it here:

U.S. top court rejects Texas veterinarian’s pet-care advice case

What does that mean to us who seek information for taking great care of our beloved animals? The internet is teaming with great, and some really bad advice. The trouble, of course, knowing what advice is credible.

Prescribing treatment plans, and giving specific dose recommendations for medications for animals is actually considered practicing veterinary medicine, and punishable by law if done by well meaning folks giving advice without 1) having a license to practice medicine, and 2) not seeing the animal in person before making those recommendations.

It is important for folks to understand, before they go on line to find what they need for a first aid kit, or when they consider giving over the counter medications, the risks with using social media sites for calculating dosages. It always causes me much concern when people ask me to review blogs, pictures, memes, etc. which give away specific dose recommendations and treatments for animals. There can be a lot of unknown factors involved, so please take care when following the advice from the internet. And don’t get yourself in trouble, either, by innocently sharing something, and then inadvertently putting yourself in a position where someone might say you were practicing medicine without a license!

For example: I recently saw one (I won’t include it to protect those who posted it), which gave a specific dose of Benadryl for pets. Benadryl is fairly safe, but my issue with the meme is that it did not specify if this was a dose for dogs, or cats, or both. Benadryl is not usually used in cats due to the fact it can cause hyper-excitability. In dogs it can also cause vomiting, diarrhea, sedation, and decrease in urination (which might be a problem, say with kidney disease). All doses for any medications on the internet have to specify what species of animal it is for, cats are not small dogs. One Tylenol can kill a cat. Don’t guess.

How about buffered aspirin? Again not something to give cats, nor to dogs already on other medications, such as pain or arthritis drugs grouped as non-steroidal anti-inflammatory medications. This can cause blood thinning and increased bleeding, as well as ulcers, vomiting, and liver damage. Best to ask a vet before ever giving aspirin.

What about dose and suggestions for giving your dog hydrogen peroxide to make them vomit? A lay person should never make the determination of whether or not a dog should be made to vomit. Some chemicals can burn the esophagus on the way back up. Another risk with giving anything by mouth, like mineral oil or peroxide, is that you could cause the animal to aspirate into his lungs if not swallowed properly, and cause pneumonia. There are entirely too many risks with taking this on yourself. Ask a vet before deciding to induce vomiting, or force your animal to swallow a large amount of any liquid.

Giving Kaopectate and/or Pepto Bismol to pets with diarrhea can cause deadly bacteria in the gut to persist longer than if the body had flushed it out, and could potentially make the pet sicker, have a harder time recovering, or even death. Again, not something to give without talking to your vet first.

Animal lovers, and professionals, need to protect themselves and their clients and families, from distributing, or using, information which may inadvertently harm animals. There can be serious consequences if folks take it upon themselves to treat their animals via internet advice rather than seeking the advice of a licensed veterinarian.

On that note, I am DrQ, here to help you, and your animal friends experience the happiest, healthiest, longest friendship you ever dreamed possible! Thanks for reading and sharing!