Feline specialists are now recommending cats eat canned food for all or most of their diet. As we will explain below, the doctors at Riverbend, too, recommend a wet diet over a dry diet. Veterinarians used to tell cat owners to feed dry food because…

Princess Spaghetti is an eight-pound Yorkshire terrier who is 15 ½ years old. Aside from a few bumps in the road, Spaghetti had been a healthy dog all of her life. Then in May 2014, her doting mother noticed she had a little sway to…

Sam is an exuberant, somewhat chubby, 11-year-old Labrador retriever who has nothing bad to say about anyone. Sam had been sore on his right front leg for six months. His regular veterinarian discovered a wound on the central pad of the right front foot, and…

Three of my own dogs have died of hemangiosarcoma. It is just a bad disease. It is rare in people but common in dogs, especially middle-aged retrievers. Hemangiosarcoma is a cancer of the cells lining blood vessels. It can affect almost any organ, but most…

Sam’s big puppy Atlas, took a turn for the worse at one year of age. Atlas had been the most charming of puppies. Socialized with almost daily visits to Riverbend (Sam is one of our surgery techs), living with an incredibly sweet five-year-old canine role…

Laryngeal paralysis is a diagnosis I can often make as soon as the dog walks in the front door of the hospital. The dog is usually an older, large breed, and he is wheezing like a freight train or a 3-pack-a-day smoker. When a normal…

Nugget is one of the sweetest dogs around. When this young Lhasa was adopted from a local shelter, she was sickly — skinny, with a poor coat and chronic diarrhea. Although she was treated with multiple medications, pampered and loved, she continued to decline. Blood…

Most cats hate going to the vet. Even the sweetest most docile kitty can become a saber-tooth savage when brought to the clinic. For that reason, many cat owners put off seeking veterinary care until an emergency arises. This is very bad for your feline’s…

Honey had been hit by a car as a youngster, fracturing her left front leg. The bones had knit back together, but at a 90-degree angle from where they should have. When Honey ran, her left front foot turned straight out to the side. Rainbow…