September 2025
One of the conditions the Snow Queen came with when she came to my home is chronic feline stomatitis/ gingivitis syndrome. This is a nasty condition of inflammation of the gums and sometimes the rest of the mouth. It is thought to be viral in origin with an immune system component making it worse.
The Snow Queen had a pretty bad case with even her tonsils involved. It was painful enough that she had a hard time eating dry food. She does get canned food too. I had her teeth cleaned twice in the first three months I had her. As the weather warmed up I discovered she has allergies to pretty much anything that would blow in through an open window and that when her allergies where flaring up her mouth got a lot worse too.
The standard care for Feline Gingivitis/Stomatitis is to extract ALL of the cat’s teeth. This is effective somewhere between 60 and 80% of the time. I decided to try something a little less radical for a first line of treatment.
The first things I tried were acupressure and gigong. Both were quite helpful. I tried injectable steroids for the inflammation which were helpful but not something I wanted to do long term. It is interesting that she let me do subcutaneous injections with no restraint and no complaints but even looking in her mouth was met with vigorous objections and claws if she couldn’t get away.
I wanted to find an anti-inflammatory I could use long term.
You can only give cats an NSAID for very short periods of time due to their inability to metabolize them. Three days is usually the length of time recommended to give an NSAID cats will tolerate at all.
MSM is a joint supplement that has some mild anti-inflammatory activity and as it turns out is mildly immune modulating too. It is commonly used in joint supplements for cats. She tolerates it well as long as I don’t get carried away with the dose and she eats it readily with her canned food. YEA!
I also tried bovine lactoferrin which is supposed to help with inflammation and immune system problems but it turns out the she is apparently allergic to dairy products too.
At almost 10 months out she is doing well. Her breath doesn’t stink anymore and when she yawns I can see that her mouth is much less red and inflamed. When she came she didn’t yawn at all. She still has some bad spells when the pollen is high or the smoke is bad even though I keep the window closed all of the time. Most of the time she is comfortable and happy and she still has her teeth.
I’m happy I started with less radical treatments and I like to think she is too.

August 1, 2025
Happy August.
The  unhealthy air quality from the Canadian wild fires is not only dangerous to your health but to your animals too. Since the air temperatures have dropped to more comfortable levels you may be tempted to take a long walk in the woods with your dog or do an extended trail ride on your trusty steed. This is not a good idea until the air quality index is at least back to “moderate”.
Even a moderate rating isn’t particularly safe for those of us with asthma, heart disease or in the case of the Snow Queen and I, allergies to smoke. I am currently wearing a mask when going outdoors which helps my breathing but doesn’t prevent itchy eyes.
Putting a mask on a dog or horse would take a bit of ingenuity even assuming you could convince them to keep it on, so limiting time outdoors for your dog and avoiding exercising your horse is probably the best you can do until the wind shifts and blows the smoke back north.
FYI, the levels of the Air Quality Index ratings in order of increasing hazard levels are “good, moderate, poor, unhealthy, very unhealthy and hazardous”.

5/28/2025
As you can probably guess the Snow Queen is all white. It is well known that blue eyed white cats are commonly deaf. Snow has hazel eyes but is also deaf. Doing a little on line research lead to the statistic that approximately 20% of white cats without blue eyes are  deaf. The number for blue eyed white cats is somewhere between 65% and 85%. You can learn something new everyday.

3/21/2025
Cats need spinal care too.
I adopted a new-to-me cat this year who has a few health issues. When I got her, the Snow Queen (aka Schnee Kitty) had a brown discoloration to the pretty white fur around her anus because she couldn’t clean her nether parts. Adjusting her sacrum and pelvis and doing myofascial release and acupressure on her (probably) arthritic spine has really helped. She can now do the classic hind leg behind her ear cat move and ambulates much more freely.
Cats are such amazing athletes and compensate so well so it can be hard to notice mobility issues until they are pretty advanced.

February 28, 2025.
A few months ago I received an inquiry about using acupuncture to treat a collapsing trachea in a dog. The dog owner had seen a reference to it on line after she had to take her dog to an emergency clinic over the weekend because it was turning blue.
While I know acupuncture is an excellent and effective treatment for many problems I had never considered using it for collapsing tracheas. I found a scientific paper at the National Center for Biotechnological Information that verified positive results using acupuncture. How interesting!
Collapsing trachea is an incurable condition found most commonly in small dogs. There is a narrowing of the trachea which can restrict air flow to the lungs resulting in low exercise tolerance and even collapse.
I have treated this little Teddy Bear dog several times with good results. She still has coughing episodes but fewer and less severe than before. A fun observation is that when she comes into my office her tongue is pale and a little bit purple and by the time I get done it is almost always a nice, normal pink color. Instant gratification is great.

Baby it’s cold outside!     Keeping horses warm in cold weather.                 January 2018

The horses are all very furry this time of year and all that hair can be deceiving. To make sure your horse is not losing too much weight in the cold take off your gloves and run your fingers over their ribs at least once a week.

Make sure your horses and other livestock have access to water. Good hydration is necessary to stay warm. Supplying warm water is good to do so they don’t have to use body heat to warm the water. Lack of fluid if the gastro-intestinal tract can also lead to impaction colic.

When increasing the calories for your horses in the cold the first thing to feed more of, is hay. Not only will you provide more energy but the fiber fermentation provides additional warmth for free. If your ponies already get free choice hay or can’t eat enough of it to stay warm then you need to increase the amount of grain or pellets they get to maintain their body heat without burning their fat reserves or even muscle mass to maintain body temperature.
If someone is shivering something needs to change. Some old or skinny or young horses may need to be blanketed. Maybe they need a better wind break or even be kept inside for part of the time. Run-in sheds are great.
Take your gloves off and check their ears to see if they are warm enough. The ears will be cooler than the main part of the body mass but they should not be COLD.

Make changes in feeding and housing now if necessary and avoid being shocked when they shed out in the spring or even losing an old horse who can’t eat enough hay to stay warm anymore.

August 2023