Just because a food is wet or dry doesn't tell you anything about its nutritional value. The difference between wet and dry food is basically the amount of water in it. If your pet has a condition that requires them to have more water, like kidney disease or bladder stones, canned diets may be a direction you want to go in because they would help alleviate that water deficit.

In general, there's no better quality with a canned food diet than a dry diet. However, it’s a costly way to feed. Unless you have a picky eater or have a dog that needs more water in the diet, it's unnecessary to feed canned food.

Dogs can live on vegan diets. First, let me define a vegan diet. That’s a diet that does not have any animal products in it. The primary protein sources come from things like seeds, nuts, legumes.

Dogs can get their protein requirements from a vegan diet. However, studies have been done on the commercially available vegan and vegetarian diets that show that the amino acid profile, amino acids are the building blocks of proteins, are not in most of those diets described on the label. They're deficient in the amino acids that are required for normal growth and maintenance for dogs. Also, the other thing that's been found with those diets is that they are often contaminated with mammalian DNA, meaning there are animal products in those diets.

I would not recommend that a dog goes on a vegan or a vegetarian diet given the lack of an appropriate commercial diet available currently unless the dog had a medical condition that required a vegan diet. I have to admit, I would either use a prescription vegan diet, or I would work with a nutritionist and formulate my own cooked vegan diet for my pet because, quite honestly. Right now, I don't trust the over-the-counter commercially available diets.

Depending on the procedure is the answer to that. In many procedures, such as spays and neuters, cats receive pain medications. Occasionally our kitty cats will receive long-lasting medications in hospital and won't need other oral meds to go home with. Depending on the procedure, we'll need to send some medications for a bit longer after surgery, and that will be discussed at the time of their procedure.

After surgery, many of our kitty patients will go home with some post-op pain medication, so understanding how to administer oral medication is essential. And some cats will also have some activity restrictions placed on them, so knowing what those activities can and can't occur are important. And occasionally, we will have some dietary recommendations, immediately post-op or a little while postop, depending on what procedure they had. So those are some things to pay attention to at home.

So on the day of their procedure, your veterinarian will be in touch with you about your cat's recovery, how the procedure went, and also set up the time that they will be going home. The staff will go over all of the discharge instructions with you. Typically, most of our patients will be going home from the Drake Center late afternoon or early evening with their discharge instructions and will have been well recovered.

So any questions related to any previous experiences that you've had with any cat surgeries are important to address upfront with your veterinarian so that you know what to anticipate going into the surgery. Understanding recovery time and any medications that your cat might be going home with are some other things to ask beforehand so that you know what to expect.

Have a conversation and a visit with your veterinarian in preparation for the surgery to know what we're getting into. But with the majority of our cat surgeries, we're going to want to have them fasted before the procedure, so no food in frequent proximity before the procedure. We want them fasted overnight, so no breakfast on the day of. Getting your cat into a carrier or being used to being in their carrier is essential so that they can travel safely to the Drake Center.

So depending on the procedure, the post-surgery pain medication will be dispensed. The majority of our surgical procedures go home with pain medication. Dogs that have had spays, neuters, wound repairs, and mass removals will go home with pain medication. With dental cleanings, they don't always need them afterward. And those will be discussed with you both before and after the procedure.

So there is a little bit of variability with that, depending on the procedure that they've had. Most dogs can resume eating the night of their procedure. Sometimes we will alter the volume or the type of food they're eating, and activity level is a bit variable. Many of our dental procedure patients can return to their normal activity level the following day, versus some of our soft tissue surgeries that will require waiting about a week to 10 days before we let them do much physical activity.

So all of our canine patients will go home with some written discharge instructions, and your veterinarian, or one of their assistants, will go over those instructions beforehand. The majority of our post-op cases go home with some pain medications, antibiotics, and so all of the instructions will be given out with those. Most of these dogs need some rest or activity restriction for a while, as well as a cone or an E-collar to wear during their recovery. So the instructions with that are essential to not only have, but also to refer back to.