Ask the Vet - by Sasha Nelson, DVM

Pet Insurance. By Sasha Nelson DVM

How much money would you spend to save your pet’s life?

That’s a really hard question, and there’s a different answer for every person and every pet. What if you didn’t have to worry about the money – then instead I could ask, how many years do you want your pet to live? Would you put your pet in the hospital for a week if it would help him live two years longer? Would you put him through major surgery if it would only buy him another four months? To me, these are much more important questions. So how do we get around worrying about the money when taking care of a pet? The answer is pet insurance!


Pet health insurance is one of the best things that has happened to pet medical care in the last 30 years. It’s good for your wallet, because you don’t have to worry about paying for unexpected large bills, and it’s good for your pet – you’ll be able to afford the care you’d like to give to your pet, rather than leaving a disease untreated, or maybe even having to euthanize your pet because you can’t afford to pay for treatment.


There are three basic cases where pet health insurance is useful. The first is covering unexpected major events – things like surgery to fix broken legs, or to remove something that’s gotten stuck in your pet’s intestines. One of my professors in veterinary school had a dog who jumped over a fence, thinking there was flat ground on the other side – but instead she fell down a 20-foot hill and broke her leg. Luckily we were able to fix it, but imagine if she couldn’t afford the surgery. She would have had to choose between amputating the leg (which would have cost around $800 instead of the $3,000 needed to put on a bone plate), and euthanasia. You can’t always avoid an accident like this, and it’s really sad to know there’s a surgery to fix an injury, and have to turn it down. We’re not talking about kidney transplants here – these aren’t unusual or extreme treatments! (Although there are many policies that will cover those too.)

The second situation when pet insurance comes in handy is in paying for injuries that are very common, where it’s almost a matter of time before your dog’s number comes up. Back injuries, for example, are frequent in Dachshunds and other dogs with short legs. Sometimes these injuries are really severe, and there’s little chance your dog may walk again – but sometimes they are not very severe, and with surgery your dog could go back to being normal. But between the MRI needed to diagnose the injury and the surgery, you might spend $4-5,000 on one back injury – and some dogs will have more than one! And then there’s hip dysplasia, or the knee injuries like kneecap instability or cruciate ligament tears (like an ACL tear in a human) – almost every dog ends up with hip or knee arthritis eventually! Having pet insurance saves you from needing to start a new bank account to save money for pet medical care, like the kind of account you might start for your child’s college payments when your baby is born.

The third case where you might want pet insurance is for treatment of long-term, chronic medical conditions like diabetes or thyroid disease. These diseases don’t usually require $5,000 all at once like a broken leg, but the blood tests and medications can really add up over time.


So how do you pick a plan? Of course the insurance companies will all tell you that their plan is the best. Generally, you’ll see reimbursement plans – you pay up front at the vet’s office, send the company a claim form, and they will send you a check in the mail. Make sure you choose a plan that reimburses you for a percentage of what your vet actually charges you, not some “reasonable and customary charge” – these pre-calculated estimates are usually set way too low. Choosing what premium and deductible you would like depends on your finances, and on the cost of vet care in your area.

There are a lot of bad plans out there, so make sure you read the fine print – especially the sections that say what the plan doesn’t cover. Look for a plan that has the fewest restrictions you can find – per-condition maximums, annual maximums and lifetime maximums are all common. Since a single injury could easily cost you $3-6,000, a plan with any of those limits set below $10,000 is not worthwhile. And don’t choose a plan that excludes hip or knee conditions, because these are both so common.

All types of insurance are a gamble – you’re gambling that you’ll save money by paying a small amount every month, rather than being faced with occasional big expenses. Obviously without being able to predict the future, you can’t be sure that you’ll win that bet! But the chances are high enough that your pet will need SOME kind of expensive care in her lifetime, that I think it’s a bet worth taking.

Ask the Vet - by Sasha Nelson, DVM

Whats in the Bag? By Sasha Nelson DVM

Sometimes it seems like the more pet foods there are on the market, the harder it is to pick the right one. “What should I feed my pet?” is one of the most common questions that people ask me. I wish I could just give Michael Pollan’s advice: “Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.” It’s not quite that simple, though – dogs’ and cats’ nutritional needs are pretty different from ours. Dogs are omnivores, like humans, but their bodies still need a different nutrient balance than we do. Cats, on the other hand, are carnivores – they need to eat animal meat to be healthy.

When you look at all the foods on the shelves, remember this: the most important thing is to feed your pet a balanced diet. You don’t have to spend hours and hours doing nutrition research though – the Association of American Feed Control Officials has already done it for you. It’s their job to create nutritional standards for dog and cat foods. If a food meets AAFCO standards, you know that it’s nutritionally balanced – a healthy food that your pet will do well on.

How do you know if the food meets AAFCO standards? Pet food companies will compare their food to the AAFCO standards during production, and nutritionally complete foods are allowed to put on their packaging a very specific statement: that the food is “formulated to meet the nutritional levels established by the AAFCO Nutrient Profiles” for puppies or kittens, maintenance of adult cats or dogs, etc. This statement is usually very small and hard to find, but it’s very important! It’s not mandatory for companies to match their foods to the AAFCO standards, though. There are lots of foods out there that advertise themselves as being “healthy,” but they’re not.

If you’re wondering about canned vs. dry foods, that depends on what kind of pet you have. For dog food, both can be nutritionally complete and healthy, so it really just depends on what your pet likes and what’s convenient for you. It’s a different story for cats, though. It’s really important that cats ALWAYS eat canned food! There are two very good reasons for this. One is that cats normally don’t drink a lot of water. They’re related to desert animals that barely drink any water at all – they get all the moisture they need from their food. If your cat likes to drink from the sink, you already know that today’s housecats do drink water, but it’s still not enough to keep their bodies fully hydrated. Many cat specialists believe that long-term dehydration is a major cause of kidney disease, which is very common in cats. So we need to prevent them from turning into shriveled prunes by feeding them wet food.
The other reason to feed cats canned food is that it has fewer carbohydrates than dry food. Carbohydrates are useful in dry kibble to hold it together (and they’re very important for a healthy diet for a dog), but as carnivores, cats don’t need a lot of carbohydrates. A small amount is fine (in the wild, cats get some carbohydrates from eating whatever was in their prey’s stomach), but eating too many carbs can cause diabetes and other diseases.

So you know you need to find a food that’s nutritionally balanced, and you’ve made a decision about canned vs. dry foods. That narrows the field by…well, it doesn’t, really. There are still tons of foods out there. Pick one that matches your values, and that your pet likes. Some people prefer natural, grain-free, small-batch food made with extra care and attention. Others want a food they find easily in their grocery store. Unless your pet has special dietary needs diagnosed by a veterinarian, most of those factors aren’t going to affect your pet’s health.

One thing not to do is feed your pet lots of table scraps instead of packaged food that’s been nutritionally analyzed. Since your pet’s nutritional needs are so different from yours, it’s very difficult to make a home-cooked diet that is healthy and balanced for a dog or cat. I do not recommend doing this unless you’re working closely with a nutritionist. And no, you can’t simply feed a bunch of foods and hope it balances out over a few weeks, since most of the foods you’d choose are deficient in the same nutrients – like calcium, iron and copper. Substituting beef for chicken, pork or fish won’t make a difference; you’ll still end up with the same deficiencies.

One of the current fads in pet food marketing right now is to avoid using animal by-product meal. By-products are everything that comes from an animal besides the skeletal meat – like organ meat and bones. It doesn’t mean that your pet is eating junk, or diseased meat. Bones are a great source of calcium, and liver is rich in many important minerals. Meal refers to dehydrated food. They’ve just taken the water out so it’s easier to package, process and sell. Some people think it’s a sign of lower quality, but really it’s just less expensive for the pet food companies – which of course means it’s less expensive for you too. And if you read the ingredients on foods that you eat, you’ll probably see that you eat lots of foods that are made from concentrate, or include dried, dehydrated products. I would much rather focus on the whole nutritional profile of my dog’s food than on whether the chicken ingredient was whole or came from meal.

Believe it or not, there are vegetarian pet foods out there. Don’t trust them! Cats are true carnivores and cannot survive on a vegetarian diet. Dogs, as omnivores, could eat a vegetarian diet, but again, it would have to meet AAFCO standards, and that’s hard to do for a vegetarian food. Face it: animals are animals, and they need to eat meat.

Okay, now that we’ve picked a food, how much should you feed? Just like with people, it varies from one pet to the next. We all know someone who never seems to gain weight no matter how many hamburgers or snacks they eat – and then there are other people who seem to gain a pound every time they just think of cheesecake. The difference is in your activity level and how efficient your body is at dealing with those calories (your metabolism). Your vet can calculate how many calories the average cat needs based on your cat’s weight – but then you need to watch how your pet does with the food you’re giving him, and change the amount if he gains or loses weight. In general, older animals need fewer calories than younger ones, so as your pet ages, you will probably find that you need to decrease her food to keep her at a steady weight.

So what’s the bottom line? Looks like it’s actually pretty simple after all: feed them pet food, not too much, and make sure it’s nutritionally balanced.

Ask the Vet - by Sasha Nelson, DVM

What to Consider When Choosing Your Next Best Friend

The way my husband and I chose our first dog was not the way I’d planned to pick a pet. Sure, we spent some time thinking about personality traits and how much shedding we wanted to deal with, and we looked at a few different dogs without committing. But after the sweet, cuddly lab we’d picked turned out to be already promised to another family, we were feeling a little sorry for ourselves. Then we got a phone call from a rescue group, saying that a young lab mix had just been brought up to New York from a high-kill shelter in the South.
That evening, I showed up at the daycare center where the dog was staying and sighed. My husband was already sitting on the floor, watching a hyperactive puppy sniff his way around the room. As I looked from my husband to the dog, I realized that he’d already decided to take this dog home. Never mind that we were looking for a calm, floppy lab, and this was a strong young hound (more Labrador deceiver than Labrador retriever). And ignore the fact that this dog was still a puppy, who’d need lots of training. We had the option of bringing this dog home, today, and that was going to be too tempting to pass up.
“Shouldn’t we take him for a walk, or see how he responds to being rolled over?” I asked. The three of us went for a walk around the block, but it was clear that my husband was just humoring me. The 8-month-old puppy, already a sizable 60 lbs, pulled us all over the sidewalk, jumping excitedly from one trash bag to the next. And sure enough, 10 minutes later we were on our way home with the newest member of our household.

When you look for a new pet, please don’t do it the way I did. I will tell you what I’d planned to do – and hopefully you’ll do a better job of sticking to the plan than I was.

It might seem obvious, but make sure that everyone in your household agrees about getting a new pet. As anyone who’s ever had a baby or moved in with a new roommate can attest to, a change in your household is stressful. It’s hard to adjust to a different set of needs and routines! You and your new pet are going to need time to get used to each other, and things will be much more complicated if there’s someone around who isn’t on board with the plan for a pet in the first place.

The next thing to think about is the pet’s temperament. While there’s always individual variation, you can make some predictions about personality and energy level by choosing a particular breed. Thinking about dogs, terriers tend to be very strong chewers and diggers, and hounds can be extremely energetic with a constant need to run. Herding dogs can be very smart – which makes them easy to train, but since they can just as easily get bored, these breeds need a lot of mental stimulation. Opposite to what you might expect, bigger breeds are usually extremely mellow, and small breeds can be very high-energy dogs, running around the house all day and never settling down. Cats can be harder to stereotype than dogs (no surprise there), but there are still some common themes. Many long-haired breeds are sweet, affectionate and laid-back. Siamese and other Oriental breeds tend to be active, and often very vocal. If you’re looking for a curious, playful cat, you may consider getting a Bengal or Ocicat, two very energetic breeds.

Age is also important. Younger animals will usually be more playful and active than older ones. Puppies and kittens require a lot of time and energy to train, but they also give you the opportunity to help shape your pet’s personality and habits. (I also think they are tremendous fun, but I know not everyone agrees.) But if you know you won’t have the time for frequent walks, appropriate training, and socialization with other dogs, cats and people, you’d be better off choosing an older animal – either an adolescent or an adult. With an adult pet, generally what you see is what you get. There aren’t as many surprises; you can feel more confident that your pet’s personality is stable. On the other hand, it’s also harder to change annoying (or maybe even dangerous) behaviors that the pet may have been happily pursuing for years before they met you.

Once you’ve thought about all of these factors, don’t lose sight of your choices! It’s very hard to look a dog in the eyes and turn him down, but remember, you’re making a decision for a lifetime. If you choose the cat that jumps in your lap and immediately starts batting at your necklace, you’re going to have to interact with her every day – not just today when you’re giving her your full attention, but also next week when you’re trying to dust your bedroom, and a few months down the line when you are hosting that fancy party with those expensive, easily breakable wine glasses. So steel your heart and think critically: is this the pet for me? If not, think about all the other people who are waiting to fall in love with this pet, and let that knowledge help you move down and look at the next one.

A year and a half after my husband and I adopted our dog Charlie, we both agree that we’d like to do it differently next time. He can be quite a challenge, and it took a lot of hard work, stress and patience before he grew into the dog we needed him to be. He is still goofy and can be pretty crazy sometimes (and he’s definitely harder on the furniture than we anticipated), but he is also obedient when it’s really important. So please, learn from my experience and try to get a pet who matches your needs and personality from the beginning. Your housemates – and your shoes, furniture, and anything else breakable – will thank you!