Pet insurance is an often overlooked area and is even thought to be superfluous by some. But pet owners soon learn how costly it can be not to have pet insurance when they require expensive, and sometimes urgent, veterinary treatment for their dog.

Although there are a large number of pet owners in developed countries, many of these pet owners do not see a reason to have pet insurance. It's odd, really - most of these same people would state emphatically that their pets are part of their family, and the average American will have health insurance for every human member of their family. Why then, would we not think to provide dog insurance (and cat insurance) for our pets?

Vet costs have risen tremendously over the last decade. To cater for this increase, pet insurance providers have increased their premiums, but the premium increases are very small when compared to the potential cost of veterinary care that may be required.

So the rising cost of pet insurance protection is one point to consider, but not having it can produce dire consequences.

All pet owners need to be prepared for health problems occasionally. And to ensure that when this happens, the cost of veterinary treatment won't cause financial strain.

If an injury or serious illness should occur, the last thing you want to have to worry about is how you will pay for your dog's treatment, which may well be required urgently.

The financial aspect of looking after a pet is something that must be taken seriously. Cash flow problems affect the majority of us from time to time. Raising what may be a rather large sum of money in a hurry can be prove to be financially embarrassing (contacting a relative or friend for the money), time consuming (providing evidence of income and other documents to a bank when asking for even a short term loan), very expensive (using your credit card), or even impossible in some instances.

If you do not have surplus cash on hand, and you do not have pet insurance cover, you may not be in a position to spend as much on your pet's treatment as you would like.

Having a pet insurance plan in place prevents these contingencies. Pet health insurance can usually be purchased relatively inexpensively despite recent rises.

There are a number of different types of pet insurance and similar plans available that can be purchased from anywhere between twenty to forty dollars a month, or an annual fee of much less (around a hundred dollars), which could save you a fortune in the long term. Some pet care insurance companies offer a discount if you have more than one pet on the plan.

Click Here for Pet Insurance Quote

Let me know what you think!

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The treatment that is most effective for ear infections in dogs depends upon the severity of the condition. Home remedies for dog ear mites and regular grooming are effective methods to treat and prevent mild ear infections. Chronic and recurrent ear infections that do not respond to treatment may even require surgery. Vertical Canal Ablation and Lateral Wall Resection are designed to modify the anatomy of the dog’s ear to facilitate easy exit of fluids, much like as it is done in the human ear.

Total Ear Canal Ablation involves removal of the vertical and horizontal ear canal, the ear drum and part of the middle ear. It is the ultimate treatment when nothing else works. It removes the infected ear and allows fluid to be drained from the middle ear. The process involves removing the entire amplification system of the body and if this surgery is performed on both ears, the dog becomes deaf. To understand ear ablation, it is necessary to know the significant role that the structure of a dog ear plays in ear infections.

The anatomy of a dog ear is one of the major reasons behind chronic inflammation of the external ear. including externally visible cartilaginous structure and the ear canal. Unlike the human ear that has a short, straight and a horizontal passage leading to the ear drum, dog ear has an L-shaped passage. The vertical ear canal is shaped like a funnel and takes a 90 degree horizontal turn to end up at the ear drum. Any fluid that gets trapped in a dog’s ear cannot come out easily. The typical shape also makes it difficult for any medication to reach the ear drum.

The retained fluid and external parasites like dog ear mites lead to infection. A long standing infection triggers excess production of wax and other infectious fluids making the ear a welcome residence for ear mites and yeast. The resultant inflammation causes thickening of the skin that lines the external ear creating further problems in treatment.

Chronic ear infections often lead to injury in the middle ear cavity and can thicken the ear canal to such an extent that it becomes akin to a bone. Malignant tumors in the ear that have not metastasized through the cartilage or into the middle ear cavity too should undergo surgery.

Prognosis of Total Ear Canal Ablation is encouraging as long as the procedure is performed by an experienced veterinarian surgeon. This helps in avoiding any complications during this delicate procedure. Like all surgeries, the Total Ear Canal Ablation procedure needs to be followed up so that any post surgical complications can be addressed quickly. After an ear ablation, total or partial, your dog may live long but he may never be the same as before.

Your pet is your responsibility and when you bring a pet home, it is incumbent upon you to take proper care of its health. An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. If you get down to thinking about it, whether it is dog or cat ear mites, the infection is initiated by poor grooming. Dogs and cats require help from owners. Regular and proper ear cleaning can save you a lot of expense and your pets from a great deal of discomfort.

Brought to you by Pet Alive

References:

http://www.southpaws.com/topics/ears.htm

http://www.vetsurgerycentral.com/ear_ablation.htm

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Hope you enjoy the following article by Nedda Wittels, who is an Animal Communicator, among other things. Enoy!

Telepathic Communication With Animals

by Nedda Wittels

Animal Communication, or telepathy with animals, is as common an occurrence in some people's lives as it is an oddity in the lives of others. Telepathy is an energetic exchange between two sentient beings for the purpose of communication. Combined with body language and sometimes vocalizations, animals use this form of communication among themselves and even across species.

Only humans in Western Civilization in the last 2500 years have rejected this form of communication. Indigenous peoples all over the planet consider messages from animal guides a natural part of life, and shamans or medicine men and women, rely on their animal helpers in their spiritual service to their communities.

Native peoples around the world consider themselves part of the "web of life". This web includes the subtle energetic pathways that allow for intuitive and psychic energy exchanges. This includes our auric field and the subtle energetic pathways known as meridians, as well as the ley lines of the Earth, who is thought of universally as our Mother, a part of us and of whom we are all a part.

Thus, shamans and other healers among native peoples expect to work with animal spirit guides. Hunters call on the spirits of the animals they hunt to ask for offerings of their physical bodies to feed the tribe. Young men and women being initiated into adulthood may expect to receive a communication or lesson from an animal.

Telepathic communication, then, is as natural as breathing. Many small children in our culture who have animals in their families communicate telepathically with them even in infancy. It is only in response to the pejorative comments of adults and older siblings, and eventually of their peers, that we either stop using our telepathic abilities or relegate them to the realm of imagination, i.e., outside reality.

Telepathy can be thought of as an expansion of intuition, which even in our modern culture is considered anathema, unless you are a top dollar CEO who is willing to admit that your best decisions are those you made based on intuition. For the rest of our society, intuition is often relegated to a place not remotely related to intelligence or sound decision-making. We live in a culture which teaches us to take pills when we are sick and ignore the subtle and not-so-subtle messages of our body telling us we need to rest and re-create itself. We rationalize that we must do this to pursue the almighty dollar. Being so out of touch with ourselves is a symptom of being out of touch with others.

Our educational system also rejects the intuitive, creative aspects of our intelligence as soon as budget cutting is required. Even in healthy economic times, we are taught to develop our logical, sequential, analytical thinking, focusing on mathematics and science as the most valued subjects, with the arts and music at the bottom of the pile.

How, then, can we restore our natural talents to include our birthright of telepathic communication? Spending time with animals and in nature is a beginning, but not sufficient. Learning to communicate telepathically requires breaking down limiting assumptions and beliefs that have caused us to reject this aspect of our Being.

Animals are spirit in physical bodies, just as humans are. The bodies they inhabit are very different in form and sensory systems from the human body, and that has a lot to do with how they experience the world. It also affects how humans and animals communicate with each other.

For example, if a dog is unhappy, he may whine or he may just look sad. He can't cry with tears as a human would and he can't speak the words to tell you that he's unhappy. In the same way, if a cat has a urinary tract problem, the cat can't tell you in words, "Hey, I'm in pain and need help." Instead, the cat may start urinating outside the litter box to let you know that something is wrong. Animals have to improvise because humans, from their perspective, are "deaf" and "dumb" to telepathic messages.

Telepathic communication includes a wide variety of vibrational frequencies that allows for full communication at many levels. As a professional Animal Communicator, I receive information in a number of ways, including mental images or pictures; physical sensations; words, phrases, and even whole sentences; knowings; intuitions; and emotions. I actually experience in some way what the animal is experiencing. To communicate the message to another human requires that I translate what I receive into spoken language, which for me is English.

While animals who live with humans often learn to understand specific words in the preferred spoken language of the human, animals are simultaneously receiving our thoughts and emotions, which we broadcast unconsciously all the time. If our thoughts are jumbled and confused because of our frenetic lifestyles and mental states, the animal may not understand the message completely.

In contrast, animals tell me that the sounds they make when communicating with other animals are usually a form of emphasis or punctuation for a telepathic message which the sound accompanies. It is natural for animal mothers to speak this way with their young and for the young to continue to use telepathy for the rest of their lives.

Today can be your moment to awaken to the idea that the animals who live with you are more than child substitutes, more than "pets" kept for our amusement or our personal companionship. All animals are, in fact, sentient beings - conscious and intelligent, with life purposes and goals. They are aware of themselves and of their situations. They are capable of feeling the entire range of emotions we so arrogantly have labeled "human". They make life choices. They often express unconditional love for the humans who are part of their families.

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Nedda Wittels, M.A., M.S., is a telepathic Animal Communicator, Spiritual Counselor, and Shamballa Master/Teacher, offering private sessions in communication and healing for humans and animals. She teaches workshops in Animal Communication, Communication with Nature, and Shamballa Multidimensional Healing. She can be reached at 860.651.5771, NeddaW@aol.com, and. www.raysofhealinglight.com

Published by permission of IdeaMarketers.com
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Interesting, huh? Let me know what you think of the article.

And before you go, check out the site of one of my Healthy Happy Dogs newsletter readers -
- Wynter Worsthome - www.animaltalk.org.uk. Wynter is in the field of Animal Communication as well, and she has a really interesting site!

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When you have to move your dog in order to travel or relocate to a new destination, the last thing most of us want is to stuff him into a box and leave him in the cargo area during the entire flight.

Unfortunately, if you have no other choice but to use the airlines for your travel needs, dogs have to be placed in transport dog crates for the flight, and most have to travel in the cargo compartment.

If you have no choice but to travel with your dog by plane, you should make sure your dog or puppy is as comfortable as he possibly can be. Here are some tips to help you prepare your dog for the flight:

1. Dog owners who are traveling with their dogs must invest in USDA approved transport dog crates, or a kennel that is specifically designed for travel. Preferably transport dog crates should be custom fit to the size of your dog. Be sure that the transport crate unit is stable and provides enough room for your dog or puppy to stand up in, as well as offers the ability for him to turn around if he needs to.

2. Accustom your dog to the crate well prior to your expected date of travel. Never wait until the day of your flight to put your dog inside the kennel, as dogs do readily adapt to things that are out of the ordinary. It is therefore a good idea to ensure that your dog is comfortable with the crate so that he will be a little more at ease when you put him on the plane. Your dog should gradually become used to transport dog crates if you have him sleep inside the travel crate each night for a minimum of three nights before your travel date.

3. For flights longer than 10 to 12 hours, be sure to provide your dog with sustenance during the flight - a good way of ensuring this is to tape a small bag of your dog's food to the outside of the crate, along with written feeding instructions for the person who will be responsible for your dog during the flight.

4. Loss of baggage, and in particular, baggage being directed to incorrect destinations, is becoming fairly commonplace for travelers. To avoid the small chance that your dog could miss his destination, write the destination of your flight on the top portion of the transport dog crate in large, bold, letters. Be sure to also include your full name and address, as well as a phone number where you can be contacted, attached in a prominent place to the crate.

5. It is best not to feed your dog within six hours of the flight. This will help reduce the chances of him having an accident and using the bathroom inside of the kennel, or vomiting his food if he becomes distressed at the commencement of the flight.

6. In case your dog or puppy does happen to have a mess while flying, prepare the crate with a light layer of paper and bedding so that the urine and stools can be absorbed as best possible.

7. To avoid your dog from becoming dehydrated during the flight, place two bowls inside the kennel, one filled with a small amount of water, and the other filled with ice. The ice bowl will melt away bit by bit and provide plenty of fluids hours later.

8. Last but not least, if you have a very small dog like a chihuahua or a toy poodle, see if you can arrange to have a small pet carrier or crate to put your dog in that can fit underneath your seat. Do not wait until the last minute to talk with the airlines about this arrangement. Find out if boarding the flight with your small dog under your seat is possible as early as you can. You'll still need to arrange transport dog crates for these small dogs who are permitted to travel in the passenger compartment with you, but it will be a much more pleasant experience for your dog to be close to you throughout the flight.

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During the past 20 years the veterinary pharmaceutical companies have succeeded in slowly but surely taking over the practise of veterinary medicine.

How's that?

Here is a shocking article about just how that has been achieved, and how it may well be adversely impacting the health of your dog every time you see your vet. Yes, you read that right - seeing your vet may be harming your dog's health - simply because vets are now being influenced from the day they enter veterinary school, and on a regular basis in their practices, by veterinary pharmaceutical companies which ostensibly provide "treatments" and "cures" for all manner of ailments that you take your dog to the vet for, but which are solely profit driven and couldn't care less about dog health at all.

Big Pharma Takes Over Veterinary Medicine; Dogs and Cats Drugged with Chemicals for Profit

Big Pharma has successfully completed its takeover of veterinary medicine in the United States and other first-world nations. Knowing that massive profits could be generated through the bodies of pets, drug companies have spent two decades pursuing an aggressive campaign of rewriting vet school curricula, influencing veterinarians and brainwashing pet owners into thinking their dogs, cats and horses need drugs in order to be healthy. It was an easy sell: Most consumers already demonstrate a cult-like belief in pharmaceutical medicine thanks to a barrage of direct-to-consumer advertising funded by deep-pocketed drug companies, and it was only a minor shift to get them to believe animals need synthetic chemicals in their bodies, too.

So today, the majority of veterinarians in the United States now practice chemical-based medicine on pets. At the first sign of any health symptom, they slap the animal with a prescription for expensive, patented pharmaceuticals. Arthritis, diabetes, heart disease, cancer and even depression are now being treated with dangerous prescription medications. Earlier this year, the FDA gave approval for Prozac, a powerful mind-altering drug, to be prescribed to dogs, and many of the most common drugs for people are now routinely used in pets (including chemotherapy drugs for cancer treatment).

(What's next, Ritalin for puppies? Ten years ago, it would have seemed absurd to diagnose a dog as suffering from Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder, but today, it's no more insane than the mass diagnosis of human children with this utterly fictitious disease designed to do one thing: Sell profitable amphetamine drugs to children…)

Pet health is now in rapid decline …

The result of all this is that our dogs and cats are sicker than ever. Ask any vet who's been practicing for more than ten years: They've never seen such an increase in the rate of liver disease, nervous system disorders, cancers and diabetes. Ever wonder why? It's because pets are being routinely poisoned with pet food and pet medicine. Popular anti-flea and anti-tick medications, all by themselves, are so toxic to the liver of any animal that if they were prescribed to humans, their side effects would make the Vioxx fiasco look like a harmless prank.

The idea of actually feeding your dog such high doses of poison that it ends up in the skin tissues where it kills ticks and fleas should be horrifying to any intelligent pet owner, yet most pet owners just buy what their vet tells them to buy, and they feed one chemical after another to their pets, oblivious to the fact that they're actually poisoning them. (And then they wonder why their animals die of cancer a few years later… gee, didn't anybody connect the dots here?)

Thanks to Big Pharma influence, veterinary medicine today has become just as much of a joke as the conventional medical system used to treat humans. The goal is no longer to actually heal anyone, but rather to maximize profits by treating and managing diseases without curing or preventing them. Many vets have figured this out, too: If they treat the animals with pharmaceuticals instead of actually curing them of disease (or preventing disease), they benefit from lucrative repeat business! And some of the fees charged by vets now — especially in emergency veterinary care — are just as outrageous as fees charged to sick humans in hospitals. I once spent more than $1,000 for a single day of treatment trying to rescue a sick dog, and half of those fees were for bags of saline solution dripped through an IV. $500 for saline solution? Give me a break. I got ripped off and taken advantage of by a pet care clinic that was exploiting pet emergencies for maximum profits. (There are crooks and dishonest practitioners in the pet care industry just like in the people care industry.)

Holistic animal care practitioners:

It's not all bad news, though. Fortunately, there are more holistic practitioners in veterinary medicine than in human medicine, and it's fairly easy to find a holistic vet in any major city if you look around. The holistic veterinarians understand nutrition, herbs, homeopathy and other natural modalities. They prescribe solutions and treat animals in ways that are outlawed in human medicine (because they actually work). If you care at all about the health of your pets, I strongly urge you to seek out and work with a holistic pet care practitioner who avoids prescribing pharmaceuticals. Any veterinarian who thinks Fido is depressed and needs antidepressant drugs should frankly have their licensed stripped away and be banished to some distant, isolated South Pacific island overpopulated with sexually aggressive baboons.

The future looks dim for mainstream pet health …

When you look at the outrageous toxicity of mainstream pet food, and you combine that with the chemical burden of pharmaceutical medicine, the future of health for pets in America looks rather dim. The pet food being sold at stores — even the so-called "scientific" brands — are mostly crap. Only specialty pet food companies offer genuine food. (My favorites are Azmira and The Honest Kitchen ).

The way pets are being treated today by many mainstream veterinarians amounts to nothing less than the chemical abuse of dogs and cats by an industry that has, sadly, exchanged ethics for profits and no longer sees its primary mission as helping improve the quality of life of our animal friends. Personally, I'm outraged by the practice of drugging dogs, cats and other animals with synthetic chemicals to treat degenerative health conditions, and I think those who promote or follow such practices are engaged in extremely unethical, cruel behaviors that should be criminalized. Just like in the human health care system, nutrition has been thrown out the window and is now replaced with a system of chemical invasion that can only lead to a worsening of the long-term health of the animals exposed to such dangerous treatments.

The proper use of pharmaceuticals:

Some chemical medicines do have a limited role in quality veterinary care, however. Painkillers have a useful but narrow role. Antibiotics, although they are widely abused, can be helpful in certain limited situations. But treating dogs with antidepressants, chemotherapy, diabetes drugs, statin drugs, osteoporosis drugs and other such chemical agents is patently absurd. Most pet health conditions can be easily prevented or cured with good nutrition, and more challenging health problems can be cheaply and safely solved with herbal therapies and other naturopathic modalities. There is no scientifically justifiable role in veterinary medicine for the majority of the pharmaceuticals now being pushed onto vets, vet techs, and pet owners.

Even the pet shelters are being influenced by Big Pharma. When I rescued my pet from a local animal shelter, I was given a DVD sponsored by a drug company. It offered to teach me about pet behavior while brainwashing me into thinking I needed to give my dog toxic pills for preventing ticks and fleas. As this simple example demonstrates, even the animal shelters are now in bed with Big Pharma. There's almost no organization in pet health today that hasn't been taken over (or strongly influenced) by Big Pharma.

It's not enough to drug all the sick people in the world, you see. Big Pharma has to invent diseases and drug all the healthy people, too. And then, they have to drug all the children and infants to make sure those little beings are set up for future organ failure, which is even more lucrative for the drug companies later on. And just to drive yet more profits home, they've got to drug all the animals. Now the cats, dogs, horses, birds, lizards and other animals are no longer safe from the reach of Big Pharma. Drugs are posing a serious chemical threat to the health of pets.

There is almost no living creature left on this planet that hasn't been considered a potential revenue source by Big Pharma, and if they could make money drugging all the fish in the ocean, you can bet they'd come up with a fictitious fish disease and find a way to drop little fish pills into the oceans of the world. Profit is the purpose. Health is irrelevant. And your precious pet is only seen as a vehicle for generating profits by an industry that has zero compassion for living beings (human, canine, feline or otherwise). There is no effort to protect life. It is only an effort to protect (and expand) profits.

What you can do right now:

If you're a pet owner, I urge you to do two things right now:

1) Switch to a healthy, natural, holistic pet food. Read the report, Pet Food Ingredients Revealed to learn the truth about pet food ingredients. And make fresh meals from scratch whenever possible. Pets should not be raised to live on processed foods.

2) Fire your drug-pushing vet and switch to a holistic or naturopathic animal care expert, even if they don't have the same licensing credentials as the drug-pushing vet. State authorities, you see, are trying to de-license naturopathic vets, and there's a big effort now to push naturopathic vets out of the industry. Sometimes you have to seek them out yourself and ignore state licensing boards (which are totally owned by Big Pharma, by the way). I've found that licensing credentials are essentially useless, and the more credentials some vet has, the more deeply they're brainwashed into a pharmaceutical approach to veterinary medicine.

If you want a healthy pet, you've got to get back to basics: Nutrition, exercise, disease prevention and natural remedies for pets. There is absolutely no rationale that justifies the routine chemical treatment of pets with patented, high-profit pharmaceuticals. Mainstream veterinary medicine, as practiced today, is a cruel, exploitive industry that ultimate causes significant harm to the very animals we should be trying to save.

Don't be suckered by the "miracle pill" sales pitch. Dogs, cats and horses don't need meds. What they need is great nutrition and medicine from nature.

Just like people.

About the author: Mike Adams is a natural health researcher and author with a passion for teaching people how to improve their health He has authored more than 1,500 articles and dozens of reports, guides and interviews on natural health topics, reaching millions of readers with information that is saving lives and improving personal health around the world. Adams is an honest, independent journalist and accepts no money or commissions on the third-party products he writes about or the companies he promotes. In 2007, Adams launched EcoLEDs, a manufacturer of mercury-free, energy-efficient LED lighting products that save electricity and help prevent global warming. He's also a successful software entrepreneur, having founded a well known email marketing software company whose technology currently powers the NaturalNews email newsletters. Adams also serves as the executive director of the Consumer Wellness Center, a non-profit consumer protection group, and enjoys outdoor activities, nature photography, Pilates and adult gymnastics. Known on the 'net as 'the Health Ranger,' Adams shares his ethics, mission statements and personal health statistics at www.HealthRanger.org

Reprinted from NaturalNews.com

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