Vision loss presents unique challenges for dogs and cats. Understanding the signs and managing the transition can greatly enhance their quality of life. This guide offers practical strategies to support furry friends experiencing vision changes.
Recognizing Signs of Vision Loss
Many animals adapt remarkably well to gradual vision loss. Subtle signs are often overlooked. Look for behaviors like hesitation during walks, difficulty catching treats, or confusion in familiar spaces. Sudden changes often manifest as disorientation or fear. If a companion struggles to navigate their environment, it’s crucial to consult a veterinarian. Early detection leads to better management options.
Creating a Safe Environment
Making the home environment safe is essential. Maintain a consistent layout; avoid moving furniture frequently. Use tactile aids like carpet runners near stairs. These help create familiar pathways. Introduce scent cues in different rooms. This guides furry friends and enhances their confidence. Ensure any new scents do not cause adverse reactions; discontinue if necessary.
Supporting Daily Activities
Blind animals can still enjoy their favorite activities. Engage them in playtime using sound-based toys. Keep routines consistent to provide a sense of security. Make noise when approaching, especially if they are resting. This helps them feel secure and aware of surroundings. With patience and support, they can continue to thrive despite vision challenges.
Consulting a Veterinarian
Regular veterinary check-ups are vital. A veterinarian can identify underlying causes of vision loss. Treatment options may include medications or surgery, depending on the condition. Discussing these options ensures companions receive the best care possible. Staying informed about health changes allows for proactive management.
Consider nutritional supplements rich in antioxidants. These support overall health and may slow degeneration. Omega-3 fatty acids promote eye health and reduce inflammation. Regular exercise maintains physical and mental fitness, fostering a positive outlook.
Supporting vision-impaired companions requires understanding and action. Recognizing signs early, making environmental adjustments, and maintaining routines foster confidence and security. With veterinary guidance and holistic care, furry friends can live fulfilling lives despite vision challenges.
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Spay/neuter surgery recovery for dogs can be stressful and uncomfortable, so proper post-op care is essential for a smooth and speedy recovery.
Like most things, spaying or neutering our dogs has its pros and cons. While it can reduce the risk of certain cancers and behavioral issues, it can also increase the chances of other cancers and health problems down the road. Either way, the surgery itself can be stressful and uncomfortable for your four-legged friend. If you choose to spay or neuter your dog, knowing how to support their recovery is essential. This care will ensure your dog’s comfort and well-being.
Preparing for surgery
Here are some general guidelines to help prepare your dog for the procedure:
Consult with your vet: Schedule a pre-surgery consultation to discuss the procedure, potential risks, and post-operative care instructions. Be sure you’re having the surgery done at the ideal age for your dog. For example, if you have a large breed, it’s best to wait until they’re at least a year old to avoid the possible future development of musculoskeletal problems, such as hip dysplasia or cranial cruciate ligament disease.
Follow fasting instructions: Your veterinarian will likely advise you to withhold food and water for a specific period before the surgery to prevent complications during anesthesia. Be sure to follow these instructions, even if your dog is hard to resist!
Caring for your dog after surgery
After spay-neuter surgery, your dog will need extra care and attention to ensure a smooth recovery. Here are some tips to help them recuperate:
Create a recovery area
Prepare a comfortable and quiet recovery area for your dog, with soft bedding and familiar toys to help them feel secure.
Manage pain
Your veterinarian may prescribe pain medication or alternative remedies to keep your dog comfortable during the recovery period. Follow the dosage instructions carefully and monitor for any signs of discomfort.
Restrict activity
Limit your dog’s physical activity for the first few days to prevent complications and allow proper healing. Avoid activities such as running, jumping, or rough play. Strenuous activity increases your dog’s risk of developing swelling around the incision site that could result in the sutures prematurely dissolving, or the incision opening.
Monitor the incision site
Keep a close eye on the incision site for any signs of infection, such as redness, swelling, or discharge. Contact your vet immediately if you notice any concerning symptoms. Be sure to keep the incision dry; moisture creates an environment where bacteria can thrive, leading to complications such as infection or delayed healing.
Prevent licking or chewing
Excessive licking or chewing can also cause infection or slow the healing process. To prevent your dog from irritating the surgical site, use an Elizabethan collar (cone) or a medical pet shirt to restrict access to the area. The collar or shirt should be worn for ten to 15 days following surgery.
Provide proper nutrition and hydration
Offer your dog healthy, easy-to-digest meals in small portions, along with plenty of fresh water, to support their recovery. Keep in mind they may feel nauseated at first, and that it can take up to 48 hours for their appetite to return to normal. Follow any dietary recommendations provided by your veterinarian.
Be diligent about follow-up care
Attend any follow-up appointments scheduled by your veterinarian to ensure your dog is healing properly. They may need to remove stitches or assess your dog’s recovery progress.Also be sure to consult your vet if you have any concerns or questions about your dog’s post-operative care.
Helping your dog through spay/neuter surgery recovery requires patience, diligence, and a lot of love. By following these guidelines and providing the necessary care and support, you can help ensure your best friend experiences a smooth and comfortable recovery process. With proper attention and affection, your dog will be back to their happy, healthy self before you know it!
Emotional Support During Spay/Neuter Surgery Recovery
In addition to physical care, emotional support is crucial to spay/neuter surgery recovery for dogs. Here are some ways to help them feel safe and loved:
Comfort and reassurance: Spend quality time with your dog, offering gentle cuddles and reassuring words to alleviate any anxiety or stress they may be experiencing.
Routine and familiarity: Stick to your dog’s regular routine as much as possible to provide a sense of stability and familiarity during this period of change.
Positive reinforcement: Use positive reinforcement techniques, such as healthy treats and praise, to encourage good behavior and reinforce the bond between you and your dog.
Patience and understanding: Know that your dog may be feeling sore and tired after surgery, so be understanding. if they seem less active or responsive than usual.
Behavioral changes after spay-neuter
After spaying or neutering, you may notice some behavioral changes in your dog, such as a decrease in roaming and marking behaviors, reduced aggression, and a lower likelihood of mating-related behaviors like mounting. However, each dog is unique, so the extent of behavioral changes can vary from animal to animal. It’s always a good idea to talk to your veterinarian for personalized advice about your dog’s specific circumstances.
In late July 1980, a five-month-old Doberman pinscher puppy in Washington, D.C., started throwing up blood. It died the next day at an animal hospital, one of many pets that suffered that year from a new illness, parvovirus. “This is the worst disease I’ve ever seen in dogs,” a local veterinarian told The Washington Post, in an article describing the regional outbreak. It killed so fast that it left pet owners in disbelief, he said.
The world was in the middle of a canine pandemic. The parvovirus, which was first recognized in 1978, can live for months outside the body, spreading not just from animal to animal but through feces, sneaking into the yards of dog owners via a bit of excrement stuck to the bottom of a person’s shoe. It quickly traveled across countries and continents, infecting thousands and possibly millions of dogs in the late ’70s and early ’80s. Essentially every dog alive at the time caught it, Colin Parrish, a virology professor at Cornell University’s College of Veterinary Medicine, told me. And untold numbers died: A single Associated Press report from August 1980 mentions the city of Chicago losing 300 dogs by July of that year, and South Carolina losing more than 700 in just two months.
A vaccine was quickly developed, but with doses in short supply, the outbreaks dragged on for years. Today, puppies are routinely vaccinated for parvovirus, and the 1978 canine pandemic has faded from public consciousness. Since then, no outbreak has unfolded on that scale, even as dogs have become more integrated into American households. Few people stay up at night worrying about what might happen if a new and devastating disease did appear. Yet, for a moment at the end of last year, it seemed like one might have.
In late 2023, veterinarians started noticing something odd. They’d seen an uptick in cases of dogs sick with respiratory symptoms responding poorly to antibiotics. Some would develop severe pneumonia quickly and die. Soon, cases of this suspected illness started popping up in states across the country. Around Thanksgiving, media reports began warning dog owners about a “mystery dog illness” spreading nationwide.
Many experts now suggest that there probably was no “mystery dog illness.” More likely, some mix of previously known illnesses were surging around the same time. Still, the case is not entirely closed, and the prospect of a deadly new disease has left dog owners fearful and jumpy: How much should they worry? Could that seemingly normal cough in the family pet actually be something much more dangerous?
And if a new disease had started a modern dog pandemic, the world’s first in almost 50 years, what would have happened next is not entirely clear. Unlike humans and livestock, companion animals do not have sophisticated, coordinated infrastructure dedicated to monitoring and managing their diseases. The technology and science might exist to fight a dog pandemic, but any response would depend on what kind of illness we found ourselves dealing with—and whether it could infect humans as well.
Because dogs don’t interact with one another as much as humans do, dog transmission networks are different from ours. They see one another on walks, in day cares, or in dog parks. Some might travel between states or even between countries, but many just stay in their backyard. Their cloistered networks make it hard for some viruses to move among them. In 2015 and 2016, outbreaks of a nasty canine flu called H3N2, which was traced to a single introduction in the United States from South Korea, never reached full pandemic status. “I just remember seeing so many of these pretty sick dogs, like every day,” Steve Valeika, a veterinarian and infectious-disease specialist in North Carolina, told me. “And then it just stopped.” Most of his cases were from one boarding facility.
A disease such as parvo, which can spread without direct contact, has a better chance of circulating widely. But even then, authorities could respond quickly, maybe even quicker than in 1978. The same mRNA tools that led to the speedy development of a COVID vaccine for humans could be used in a dog pandemic; the ability to test for dog diseases has improved since parvovirus. Information travels that much faster over the internet.
Still, as companion animals, dogs and cats fall into an awkward space between systems. “There is no CDC for dogs,” Valeika said. “It’s all very patchwork.” Typically, animal disease is managed by agricultural agencies—in this country, the USDA. But these groups are more focused on outbreaks in livestock, such as swine flu, which threaten the food supply, the economy, or human safety. If an outbreak were to emerge in companion animals, veterinary associations, local health departments, and other dog-health groups may all pitch in to help manage it.
The dairy and pig industries, for example, are far more coordinated. “If they said, ‘We need to get all the players together to talk about a new emerging disease issue on pigs,’ that’d be easy. They’d know who to call, and they’d be on the phone that afternoon,” Scott Weese, professor in veterinary infectious diseases at the University of Guelph, in Canada, explains. Organizing a conference call like that on the topic of a dog disease would be trickier, especially in a big country like the United States. And the USDA isn’t designed around pets, although “it’s not that they don’t care or don’t try,” he said. (The USDA did not respond to a request for comment.) No one is formally surveilling for dog disease in the way government agencies and other groups monitor for human outbreaks. At base, monitoring requires testing, which is expensive and might not change a vet’s treatment plan. “How many people want to spend $250 to get their swab tested?” Parrish asked.
Dogs aren’t human. But they are close to humans, and it is easy to imagine that, in a dog pandemic, owners would go to great lengths to keep their pets safe. Their closeness to us, in this way, could help protect them. It also poses its own risk: If a quickly spreading dog disease jumped to humans, a different machinery would grind into gear.
If humans could be vulnerable and certainly if they were getting sick, then the CDC would get involved. “Public health usually takes the lead on anything where we’ve got that human and animal side,” Weese told me. These groups are better funded, are better staffed, and have more expertise—but their priority is us, not our pets. The uncomfortable truth about zoonotic disease is that culling, or killing, animals helps limit spread. In 2014, after a health-care worker in Spain contracted Ebola, authorities killed her dog Excalibur as a precaution, despite a petition and protests. When the woman recovered, she was devastated. (“I’ve forgotten about everything except the death of Excalibur,” she later told CNN.) Countries routinely cull thousands of livestock animals when dealing with the spread of deadly diseases. If a new dog-borne pathogen threatened the lives of people, the U.S. would be faced with the choice of killing infected animals or dedicating resources to quarantining them.
A scenario in which pet owners stand by while their dogs are killed en masse is hard to imagine. People love their pets fiercely, and consider them family; many would push to save their dogs. But even in a scenario where humans were safe, the systems we’ve set up might not be able to keep pets from dying on a disturbing scale. Already, there’s a nationwide shortage of vets; in a dog-health emergency, people would want access to emergency care, and equipment such as ventilators. “I am concerned that we don’t have enough of that to deal with a big pandemic as it relates to pets,” Jane Sykes, a medicine and epidemiology professor at the UC Davis School of Veterinary Medicine and the founder of the International Society for Companion Animal Infectious Diseases, told me.
Congress has mandated that the CDC, USDA, and Department of the Interior, which oversees wildlife, work on strengthening “federal coordination and collaboration on threats related to diseases that can spread between animals and people,” Colin Basler, the deputy director of CDC’s One Health Office, wrote in an email statement. A new, deadly canine disease would almost certainly leave experts scrambling to respond, in some way. And in that scramble, pet owners could be left in a temporary information vacuum, worrying about the health of their little cold-nosed, four-legged creatures. The specifics of any pandemic story depend on the disease—how fast it moves, how it sickens and kills, and how quickly—but in almost any scenario it’s easy to imagine the moment when someone fears for their pet and doesn’t know what help will come, and how soon.
Ever been more attracted to your roommate than your significant other? One woman in Atlanta had no problem telling her fiancé that their housemate was “more handsome” than him.
The irresistible roommate in question is none other than the couple’s dog, whose name is Handsome, Travis, the fiancé, who declined to share his surname, told Newsweek.
Travis shared images of their dog, who is part chihuahua and part American Eskimo, in a viral Reddit post under the username streambeck. The post, which had 21,000 upvotes at the time of writing, was shared with a title noting that his fiancée said their roommate was “more handsome than me to my face.”
The girlfriend’s preference for her canine companion is understandable as around a third (30 percent) of millennials said they love their pets more than their partner in a 2022 survey of 1,000 pet owners in the U.S. conducted by the ConsumerAffairs website. Nearly half of those surveyed were millennials, those roughly born between 1981 and 1996.
The survey found that 81 percent of millennials love their pet more than certain family members, including their parents, grandparents and siblings, while 58 percent would rather have pets than children.
‘Obsessed’
Travis is a writer and his fiancée Amanda works in a bakery. The couple, who are both 36 years old, have been in love with their pup since they first got him around three years ago.
Travis said: “We’re both obsessed with how cute Handsome is, it’s probably our most frequent topic of conversation.”
Several Reddit users agreed with Amanda, noting that Travis is facing some stiff competition.
Posting an image of himself next to his dog, Travis wrote in a later comment: “It’s hard for me to post a side by side [pictured], because I know the truth deep down.”
TastyCuttlefish wrote: “Truth hurts bro.”
User relpmeraggy said: “Well she’s [the girlfriend] not wrong.”
MongooseDog907 wrote: “While it may hurt, your roommate is super, duper handsome. I’d keep an eye on him if I were you.”
User malaclypse noted: “Man, you better be REALLY dang handsome to go up against this King.”
Rick_the_P_is_silent wrote: “Mr. Steal Your Girl, did indeed, steal your girl. High 4, little man!”
User togocann49 said: “Betcha they sleep together right under your nose too.”
OffMyRocker2016 added: “And probably hugs & kisses him, too, while he watches in total amazement and full blown jealousy.”
Do you have funny and adorable videos or pictures of your pet you want to share? Send them to life@newsweek.com with some details about your best friend and they could appear in our Pet of the Week lineup.
A stock image of a smiling woman on a couch looking at a phone, while a man looks unimpressed next to her, looking over her shoulder. A post about a woman who says her roommate is “more handsome” than her fiancé has gone viral on Reddit. iStock / Getty Images Plus
Uncommon Knowledge
Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.
Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.
Long, long ago—five years, to be precise—Jeff Owens accepted that his calls to the vet would tax his fortitude. When the person on the other end asks his name, Owens, a test scorer in Albuquerque, says, “Jeff.” When they ask for his cat’s name, he has to tell them, “Baby Jeff.” The black exotic shorthair, a wheezy female with a squashed face and soulful orange eyes, is named for Owens, says his partner, Brittany Means, whose tweet about Jeff and Baby Jeff went viral this past spring. The whole thing started as a joke several years ago, when Means started calling every newcomer to their home—the car, the couch—“Baby Jeff.” Faced with blank adoption paperwork in 2017, the couple realized that only one name would do.
Baby Jeff is a weird (albeit very good!) name, but it’s not as weird as it would have been a century or two ago. In the U.S., and much of the rest of the Western world, we’re officially living in an era of bequeathing unto our pets some ratherhuman names. It’s one of the most prominent reminders that these animals have become “members of the family,” says Shelly Volsche, an anthropologist at Boise State University, to the point where they’re ascribed “agency and personhood.” The animals in our homes commonly receive so many of the acts of love people shower on the tiny humans under their care; pets share our beds, our diets, our clothes. So why not our names, too?
The names and nature of the human-animal bond weren’t always this way. Kathleen Walker-Meikle, a medieval historian at the Science Museum Group and the author of Medieval Pets, has found records from the Middle Ages describing dogs with names that alluded to some part of their physical appearance (Sturdy or Whitefoot), or an object that appealed to their human (a 16th-century Swiss wagoner once owned a dog named Speichli, or “Little Spoke”). Details on cats are sparser, Walker-Meikle told me, but some Old Irish legal texts make mention of a few felines, among them Cruibne (“little paws”) and Bréone (“little flame”).
Jeff (right) and Baby Jeff (Brittany Means)
Even when people-ish names did appear during this era, and the few centuries following, they trended zany, cheeky, cutesy, even pop-cultural—nothing that would be easily mistaken for a child’s given name. The 18th-century English painter William Hogarth named his pug Trump—perhaps an anglicization of a Dutch admiral called Tromp, according to Stephanie Howard-Smith, a pet historian at King’s College London. Catherine Parr, the last of King Henry VIII’s six wives, had a dog called Gardiner, after the anti-Protestant Bishop of Winchester. “This was her enemy, who wanted to destroy her,” Walker-Meikle told me. The idea was “to take the piss out of” him.
Then, as the Victorian era ushered in the rise of official dog breeds, people began to reconceptualize the roles that canines could play in their homes. Once largely relegated to working roles, dogs more often became status symbols, and items of luxury—and as their status grew, so did the list of names they could acceptably bear. People no longer considered it such “a slight, necessarily, to share your name with a dog,” Howard-Smith told me. Diminutive names for animals—Jack or Fanny rather than John or Frances—became more common, too, paving the path for even more overlap down the line.
The big boom happened in the 20th century, and by its latter half, lists of the most popular dog and baby names were getting awfully hard to tell apart. Nowadays, you could probably “go to a playground and shout ‘Alice!,’ and perhaps both dogs and girls would come rushing to you,” says Katharina Leibring, an expert in language and dialect at Uppsala University, in Sweden. Cats, meanwhile, seem to “have been kind of behind the curve in getting human names,” or perhaps receiving any names at all, Volsche told me. Even in 19th-century texts, Howard-Smith has spotted accounts from families who named their dogs, but would refer to “the cat” as only that.
Findings such as these have heldtrueacross several countries, but pet naming trends have never been universal. In Taiwan, for example, dogs and cats might get food names, onomatopoeic names, or even English human names, such as Jasper or Bill. They don’t, however, “get Chinese human names,” which hold particular significance, says Lindsey Chen, a linguist at National Taiwan Normal University. “We love them, but they’re not humans.” In Togo, the Kabre people sometimes name their dogs with pointed phrases—such as Paféifééri, or “they are shameless”—that, when spoken aloud, communicate their frustrations with other humans without confronting them directly.b
American animals who lack human-esque names aren’t loved any less, but the degree of intimacy we have with modern companion animals may almost demand anthropomorphism. Joann Biondi, a photographer in Miami, does not view her Maine coon as a “pet”; a frequent model for her artwork, he is her travel companion, her roommate, her business partner—“a creature who shares my life,” she told me. When she adopted him 13 years ago, she wanted a name befitting of his dignified features. But he also “looked like a hairy Italian soccer player,” Biondi told me, so she chose Lorenzo, sometimes tacking “Il Magnifico” on to the end.
Several experts told me they’d feel a bit uncomfortable if a close family member decided to name a new pet after them. “There is still a reluctance to call animals things that really make them sound indistinguishable from a human,” Walker-Meikle told me. But some pet owners are downright inspired by that uncanny valley, including Sean O’Brien, an enterprise-software salesperson in Iowa, who deliberately sought out a very human name for his cockapoo, Kyle. “It’s just funny to see people’s reactions, like, ‘Did you say Kyle?’” he told me.
A smidge of the species barrier can still be found in the ways some owners play with their pets’ names. Howard-Smith’s family dogs, Winnie and Arabella, have been gifted some unhuman monikers: Babby Ween, the Weenerator; Bubs, Bubski, Ballubbers, Ballubber-lubbers. Volsche’s pug, Lucy, is frequently dubbed Pug Nugget, Chunky Monkey, and Lucy, Devourer of Snackies, Demander of Attention. My own cats, Calvin and Hobbes, enjoy titles such as Chumbowumbo, Chino Vatican, Fatticus Finch, Herbal Gerbil, and Classic Herbs. Children with nicknames this unhinged would suffer all kinds of public humiliation. But with pets, “I think we can be a bit freer,” Howard-Smith told me. It’s funny; it’s embarrassing; it’s “a snapshot into someone’s relationship with their pet.” These are the impromptu names that are offered up in private, and the animals can’t complain.
Means and Owens, Baby Jeff’s people, plan to keep giving their animals starkly human names. In addition to the cat, their home is also shared by a quartet of chickens: Ludwing van Beaktoven; Johenn Sebastian Bawk; Brittany, Jr. (named for Means, of course—“it was my turn,” she told me); and Little Rachel (named for their human roommate). The next bird they adopt will be named Henjamin, in honor of Means’s brother Ben. But Means and Owens, too, have a sense for which names just don’t feel quite right. “I knew this guy with a cat named Michael,” Means said. “Every time I think of it, it blows me away.”
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