Many times, yes, you can. It is important to practice good hygiene, wash your hands, and clean up the stool when they're going to the bathroom. Throw it away, don't keep it out in the yard because you don't want to cross-contaminate everything. There are plenty of parasites that you won't catch from them, but it's out there. There are some diseases that you do need to be proactive about. It is not just a third-world country problem.

We need to be worried about our children because they're crawling around, picking things up, and putting stuff in their mouths. They love the dog, and they love putting their hands in their mouth. It's not an everyday thing that should keep you up at night, but be smart about it. Wash your hands, try to be clean, and clean up messes.

Sometimes yes, other times no. If we're talking about a litter of puppies, we'll deworm them all, but not necessarily when it comes to heartworms. We don't have to treat every pet for heartworm if we discover that one had them, but we recommend getting them on prevention. Tapeworms can be a yes or a no because a dog will not catch a tapeworm from another dog. They catch it from the flea that they ingest. So if you have pets that have fleas, they both have probably been exposed to a similar situation. They may both have tapeworms, but they didn't catch it from one another. So we use different treatments at different times.

It depends on what parasite you're treating. We have a lot of good oral treatments, which can be pills or liquids; injectable therapies, depending on what we're going for; and topicals as well. It depends on whether it's fleas, ticks, intestinal parasites, or heartworms. We have prevention for certain diseases and treatment for others. It also varies in the frequency of use. It could be single or repeated use. For example, heartworm prevention is a monthly treatment.

Yes and no. It depends on what eye issue we're looking at. It's not going to prevent high blood pressure, but if you have a cat with long hair or a smushed face, you want to make sure that the hair and the folds aren't rubbing on the cat's eyes or collecting matter that's rubbing on the cat's eyes. Keep it appropriately groomed and wiped away. With many cats, because of the way their facial features are, you don't necessarily have to clean their eyes every day.

Hypertension, kidney disease, thyroid disease, and diabetes can all be related. Another cause of blindness is when something was inappropriately addressed, like a corneal problem or a chronic herpes disease with some scarring. There can be things along those lines as well.

Cats don't always read books; they are good at adjusting to things and hiding things. For you to realize that your cat is blind or losing its vision is impressive because cats don't show you that, so it's not going to be that easy. If a cat slowly loses its vision, or if it is good at adjusting to things, you're not going to realize what's going on. Otherwise, if a cat suddenly loses its vision, it might bump into things, act a little weird, or its pupils might seem large. You should bring them in because a common cause of a cat losing its vision is high blood pressure and a blown-out retina. That could be related to hypertension from hyperthyroidism or kidney disease. We're going to look for diseases other than an eye problem.

Typically, vision testing in cats involves watching them manipulate and move about, holding their heads still and gently bringing a hand up to their face to see if they blink appropriately. We move a cotton ball, drop a cotton ball, and see if they will track something. Cats can sometimes just stand there and stare, being scared or mad, or they don't know what to do. You can be sure they can see you, but they're not responding to anything, they turn their head, or they don't want to participate in what you're doing. We can shine the lights in their eyes and see if their pupils move correctly, which may have some suggestion of vision, but it's not always an easy test in cats.