HE is on a mission to help our pets . . . and is here to answer YOUR questions.
Sean, who is the head vet at tailored pet food firm tails.com, has helped with owners’ queries for ten years.He says: “If your pet is acting funny or is under the weather, or you want to know about nutrition or exercise, just ask. I can help keep pets happy and healthy.”
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Q: MY ten-month-old British bulldog Mabel is amazing and very spoiled, but lately she keeps getting socks, shoes and clothes and running away with them.
She has started to be very naughty, like biting my sofa or my husband.
It’s all a big game to her but how can we stop this?
She gets walks and activities and always has attention, but if we are talking etc, she doesn’t like it and will bark until we give her attention.
Tracy Humberstone, Milton Keynes, Bucks
Sean says: She’s ten months old, Tracy. Consider it the equivalent of “the terrible twos” in children.
All that training goes out the window, they no longer listen or pay attention to you, they drive you round the bend, get up to all sorts of mischief and truly test your limits.
It’s all fun and games to them. They are exploring boundaries.
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You just need to be consistent and fair with Mabel, and hopefully by the time she is 20 months things will have settled.
In the meantime, if it all gets a bit much, enlist the help of a qualified animal behaviourist.
Got a question for Sean?
Q: SOMEONE told me that bigger rabbits have more laid-back personalities. Is this true?
I want a family-friendly pair of pets for my eight-year-old daughter.
Liz Emmerson, Glastonbury, Somerset
Sean says: I’m not sure that’s accurate, but I have a suspicion about where the myth comes from.
Dwarf rabbits, especially Netherland dwarf rabbits, can be, let’s say, a little highly strung and sometimes feisty.
And some of the giant breeds are often big old lazy bones and extremely docile.
So there are specific breed examples where it’s true, but I don’t think you can say as a general rule that bigger rabbits are more laid-back than smaller ones.
Q: I HAVE a male conure parrot called Tinks who is roughly 20 years old.
Originally he came from a small-holding in Devon, where he could fly freely and come back to his owner.
He likes being out of his cage, sits on my shoulder and he is very attached to me. I spend as much time as I can with him.
Over the past few months, he has lost all his body feathers, yet there are no feathers lying in the bottom of his cage. He has a healthy diet of seeds, fresh fruit and fresh water.
I spray him and his cage is by the window, so he gets plenty of light and sunshine. I have tried herbal sprays, also a spray which tastes horrible and would stop him plucking his feathers.
But, as I said, there are no plucked feathers in his cage or on the floor.
What can I do?
Sheila Robbins, Chichester, West Sussex
Sean says: Feather loss or feather plucking in parrots can be tricky to solve, or even diagnose the cause in the first place.
But there’s a good clue in your description of his diet. Believe it or not, a staple diet of seeds is not great for parrots.
Long-term or chronic nutritional deficiencies can develop over time, many years even, and eventually result in signs like poor feather health, loss or plucking.
Fruit is OK in moderation, but you really want to feed parrots lots of rich, colourful vegetables and pulses.
Dark green, red and orange veg in particular.
You should also try to convert him off the seed mix and on to a pelleted complete diet as his staple.
Seeds should just be a treat. I highly recommend Harrison’s parrot food. They give great information on the diet changeover on their website.
As he’s 20, a health check and blood test at an avian specialist vet would also be a good shout.
Star of the week
BIFF the newborn kitten is thriving after he was saved from a recycling container packed full of cardboard ready to be crushed.
Staff from wholesaler Makro in Liverpool called the RSPCA after hearing meows coming from the container.
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RSPCA inspector Vicki Brooks led a five-hour operation to find him.
Biff, who weighed just 200g when rescued, is believed to have been stuck for a few days.
He has now doubled in weight and is being reared by the charity.
Vicki said: “It was the most extraordinary rescue I have taken part in.
“I don’t know how he managed to survive.”
WIN: Litter box
WE’VE teamed up with PetSafe Brand to give one reader the chance to win a ScoopFree covered self-cleaning litter box, worth £279.99.
Containing crystal litter for optimum odour control, it’s 99 per cent dust-free – and there’ll be no scooping, cleaning or refilling for weeks.
Send an email headed PETSAFE to [email protected], including your name, address and number by July
9. See uk.petsafe.net. T&Cs apply.
THE WHINES THEY ARE A’CHANGIN’
DOGS like jazz and folk music, but don’t like hip hop and heavy metal, a new study has revealed.
Online gambling firm Betway asked owners to use a dog fitness tracker to monitor how relaxed their pets were when listening to different genres of music.
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The FitBark was also kept on dogs’ collars overnight to record how well they slept.
Results show that folk music, which includes Bob Dylan hits, is best for keeping dogs calm.
They spend, on average, 46 minutes listening to the genre.
Jazz music came second (42 minutes) and pop third (41 minutes).
The FitBark used a point system to score dogs per hour on their levels of activeness, play and rest.
During a normal evening at home, a dog’s anxiety level averages 87 points.
However, while listening to heavy metal music, the average score rose to 166 points.
Classical music was also high, with a score of 141, followed by hip hop, with a score of 115.
Jazz had the best score of 66, followed by folk on 90.
When it comes to helping dogs sleep better, listening to folk and classical music before bedtime is best.
The full findings of the study can be found at tinyurl.com/2s397tvc.
