For minor pet health questions: suggest websites that are comprehensive & user-friendly? I'd like to avoid unnecessary vet visits. [more inside]
posted by pseudostrabismus on Oct 30, 2008 - 10 answers

Last week my wife put one of those toilet cleaning puck things - 2 discs, one blue and one white (a type of chlorine bleach, I think) in the toilet tank. Apparently one of us or our houseguest left the toilet open and one of our two cats - the stupid one - drank a quantity of the water, even though he had a big bowl of fresh water by his food (yes, we're now being very careful to leave it closed). My questions: 1) did he drink it because it tasted good, the way some animals will eat antifreeze, and 2) is he gonna be OK? He's acting a little odd - staring at his own shadow and attacking invisible things, growling at nothing, but then again he's kind of brain-damaged anyway (flea anemia as a feral kitten). He's 9 yrs old and otherwise in good health.
posted by luriete on Oct 25, 2005 - 15 answers

Someone at work has just asked me a bizarre question that I can't find an answer to - can horses (and in fact any other animal) actually throw up? (+)
posted by longbaugh on Jan 11, 2005 - 30 answers

Yet another dog question. My wife's dog is a shepherd-dobermann cross and so old that she's technically dead - about 16 years old. She's mostly incontinent, and scooping up turds and mopping up pee is a daily and sometimes hourly chore now - I've taken up all the rugs, and she sleeps at night on a foam cushion protected by a vinyl shower curtain. I think her kidneys are failing, but very very slowly. So she drinks a fantastic amount of water and voids it randomly about the house. My wife and I take turns letting her out out night, but she's excessively nocturnal (she's a dog) and this, combined with the incontinence and her tendency to get jammed into odd spots and whine until rescued is degrading our sleep. My wife's very attached to the dog - who otherwise isn't really suffering and is even happy - but our lives are slowly coming to be dominated by the dog. Yet....neither I nor my wife believe in killing pets or other creatures for mere reasons of convenience. Any technical advice on managing this situation until the creature dies a natural death?
posted by troutfishing on Dec 29, 2003 - 13 answers