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Pet owners urged to take animals for regular checkups

By Meggie Lu
STAFF REPORTER
Saturday, Aug 30, 2008, Page 2

When it comes to the health of your pooch or kitty, an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure, a group of animal health professionals said yesterday, urging pet owners to take their animals for regular checkups.

“Many common pet diseases are not symptomatic until the later stages ... Since animals cannot communicate their discomfort to their owners using words, preventative health checkups can help safeguard their well-being,” said Andrew Kuo (郭東源), chief executive of Taiwan Genome Sciences, a company that does medical lab analyses for animals.

Kuo said many pet owners may lack the necessary knowledge to look out for signs of illness in their pets.

For example, Kuo said, 74 percent of dogs infected with the canine Helicobacter pylori bacterium, which can result in ulcers or gastric cancer, vomit because of the disease.

“However, most of their owners assume that these incidents are only caused by stomach upsets,” he said.

Many pet owners also do not know that dogs should not be allowed to eat chocolate or raisins, and that lilies are poisonous to cats, he said.

Since caring for an animal requires a long-term commitment, Kuo said owners should learn as much as they can about diseases and health hazards that could hurt their pets.

Such awareness may be gained by bringing one’s pets to a vet, as Doris Chien (簡麗娟), the owner of a two-year-old Persian cat named QQ, discovered when her cat was diagnosed as a carrier of hereditary polycystic kidney disease (PKD) when it was just two months old.

“When I took QQ for a checkup, we found that she had PKD, a disease that doesn’t usually manifest itself until the cat is about seven years old,” she said.

Afraid to take QQ back to the pet shop, “because they might just put her down,” Chien said she now has her cat on a special dietary routine to keep her healthy.

“The vet said that with the diet, PKD may never bother her, or the onset of the disease may be delayed,” she said.

In addition to taking measures to circumvent disease, owners can also stop illnesses from spreading by neutering pets that have genetic illnesses, said Liu Chen-hsuan (劉振軒), the dean of National Taiwan University’s school of veterinary medicine.

“You can provide better care for your pet and reduce the prevalence of genetic diseases in them at the same time,” he said.
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