It's just, I don't know, he's a pretty anxious dog, to be honest, as well.

Okay.

I think it's a bit of trial and error because there's quite a few different things that could cause it.

But when you say, when anyone says a dog licking his paws, the first thing I always think of is allergies because nine out of ten cases, it is allergies.

Okay.

The allergy can also affect the back area as well.

It's a bit of a chicken and an egg.

Yeah, this is good.

He won't, you know, perhaps he won't chew his food right or something like that, and yeah, if that's possibly what it is, you know, perhaps sort of free this position to being sick

yes yeah it's yeah it sounds like he's feeling really queasy and really nauseous you next time you go to your your vet ask them to give you some zofran z-o-f-r-a for apple n Okay.

It's an anti-nausea, anti-queasy medication.

It's actually for people, but you can use it safely in dogs.

And they're little white, they're like pieces of paper.

And you either actually put it in his mouth and then hold his mouth closed because they have better effect...

if they get absorbed in the mouth without being swallowed.

But it's not doing tonight, so I don't know.

Yeah.

Okay.

Try one or two cubes of pineapple in their food in every meal, and that has about a 50% success rate.

So I always start with pineapple.

If that doesn't work, there is a product that you can get called Coprophagia Powder, uh, which, uh, I th- probably is about a 40% success rate, I think.

So I always like to start with pineapple, but if that doesn't work, talk to your vet about...

There's a powder you can put in their food that also might work.

Can you answer that from there?

Yes, down on the back lawn.

On the back lawn.

Right.

So you could either get a, a, a piece of proper lawn, and you can just buy squares of them if you're going to be planting a new lawn, or you can get artificial turf, and you can get sort of pads where they train puppies to go to the toilet.

So if you actually get, just, just say a piece of, a piece of lawn and put it down where he is going to the toilet, and if he goes onto that piece of lawn, then actually give him a little treat as long as he's going on that piece of lawn, and then slowly just move it further and further away from the door.

It can take a few weeks.

You're meant to do it very, very slowly.

But-

This bird flu is causing a great deal of consternation and, uh, we're getting lots of people sort of saying, "What can we do? What do we need to, to protect our pets?"

Yes.

Quite a lot, um, actually.

I mean, it, it... sadly, it is almost certainly going to spread, and it's, it's going to spread probably everywhere.

The big risk is with cats, uh, for a couple of reasons.

Um, they catch the disease much more readily and easily than dogs do and than humans do, which is fortunate for us.

But if they catch it, the outcomes are not good at all.

"Please ask Dr. Derek if we should remove a bucket of drinking water outside for our dog and only let him drink inside."

This bird flu is causing a great deal of consternation and we're getting lots of people sort of saying, what can we do, what do we need to do to protect our pets?

Yes, quite a lot, actually.

I mean, sadly, it is almost certainly going to spread and it's going to spread probably everywhere.

The big risk is with cats.

for a couple of reasons.

They catch the disease much more readily and easily than dogs do and that humans do, which is fortunate for us.

But if they catch it, the outcomes are not good at all.

really really

Plodding

on.

I don't think it's a wee bit slower in wintertime, but it's...

Yeah, maybe...

We've had, I think I mentioned it last week, we've had all these big operations we've had to do with various things getting stuck in dogs and cats' intestines and things like that.

What are the main culprits? We've actually had a couple of fur balls, I think somebody phoned up about fur balls last week, in cats.

And they don't usually get stuck in the intestines, but we've had a couple that have and...

What's going on there?

I never know because you can

overfeed cats, can't you? But I don't.

You can, but generally you'll overfeed them because of the dry food.

because the calorific level of dry foods is so much higher than wet food because wet foods are they vary from 50 to sometimes 80 percent water right so a lot of the wet foods you're not giving much food it's tasty but it's a lot of just watery gravy so that doesn't bother me uh It probably is furball.

Okay.

A lot of cats with furball do not bring them up each time.

Okay.

Yeah.

Wow.

And the, and the other one's called idiopathic, which means that there's no obvious known cause.

It's probably stress that causes it, but regardless of what you do, it clears up in about a week or, or less.

But you have to make sure it's not one of the other things.

But it's generally male cats.

I've only ever in my whole life had two female cats that have got blocked that had formed big bladder stones.

But it's usually cats will form this sandy material, and it all sort of sticks together and forms a, a gluggy, gooey ball.

Mm-hmm.

It's.

Exactly like that.

Dogs are very similar to people.

In most cases, you can view them as the same.

There are some differences.

So please don't self-medicate your dog in the same way you would yourself because you could get it wrong.

Cats are a little bit different, but cats also get arthritis.

Some very popular ones on the streets, which is a disaster.