Veterinary or pet training questions? Ask me!

Hi all. I am very grateful for this forum. I’ve worked in veterinary medicine for 10 years, 3 as an assistant and the last 7 as a licensed veterinary nurse. TMS has largely kept me out of work the past 6 months, I work part time doing remote veterinary work, but I don’t enjoy the work and greatly miss working in clinic and miss my old job and coworkers. I miss being able to make somewhat of a difference. I’ve made so much progress regarding TMS, and am hopeful to return to in person work soon, but lately I’ve been craving to help animals and people again. Also I just got certified as a dog trainer (strictly positive reinforcement based)and want to test out the knowledge, I’d been casually training dogs for 7ish years, but needed a certification to apply for certain jobs.

so if you have any questions about your pets (dogs or cats mainly, I know small amounts about other species) let me know. I can’t promise my advice will be anything more than you have to go to a vet, but I’m happy to listen to your concerns and try. Even if you just want advice about good supplies and medications to have on hand in case of issues. Any behavior questions for dogs or even cats let me know, I love discussing animal behavior!

feel free to post here or pm me! For specific medical stuff I’ll respond via pm, but for general behavior, overall advice I’ll respond directly here.

if this isn’t allowed for whatever reason let me know, and I’ll delete.

I am very grateful for this forum and community, the knowledge of TMS has given me hope in a time of utter panic and despair. It’s been a hellish year, but the temperature seems to be steadily lowering! Let’s hope the best is yet to come!

 

Hi @Rabscuttle
Requesting your non-prescription ideas for pain relief for cats, if any? We've tried CBD and I can get some more. My cat is 16 with kidney disease and other un-answered symptoms he's had since a kitten. The current vet tried him on the Kidney pet food again and he had a terrible reaction to all of the foods over the last few months (a lot of pain and eventually yellow feces). It's always been very hard to find food he can tolerate. He is a water seeking cat (always has been) and now has some hip degeneration and can't jump up (he's an eye level guy, always on counters etc). We've decided to feed him only the things he loves and that agree more with him, and we've tried to make ways he can maintain some of his old behaviors (ways to get up on things). He will not tolerate the intravenous liquids the vet tried, and bites anyone trying to get his blood pressure (because apparently the procedure is to do it 10 times in 10 minutes and take the average. He has no patience for that).
I'm happy just making him more comfortable on hard days.