A cou­ple of years ago we added a health hand­book to our library of dog books. Last year, we found our­selves reach­ing for it again and again. It is called Dog Owner’s Home Vet­eri­nary Hand­book and is writ­ten by three DVMs and a doc­tor, Eldredge, L.Carlson, D. Carl­son, and Giffin.

It is a ref­er­ence book, set up to find health top­ics eas­ily. The book states the con­di­tion, the symp­toms, things you can do at home, if pos­si­ble, and treat­ments most often used by a vet­eri­nary prac­tice. Text is writ­ten suc­cinctly and is easy to under­stand with­out need­ing a med­ical back­ground. It’s great for look­ing up symp­toms to decide if you pet needs to go to the vet (the book often states whether you can treat at home, or if it’s imper­a­tive you see a vet.). It’s also great to have as a ref­er­ence to get the ter­mi­nol­ogy cor­rect when speak­ing to your vet or to review once you get back from an office visit. (What was that word? How is it spelt?) It does a won­der­ful job of cov­er­ing a wide range of dog health top­ics from emer­gen­cies, to dis­ease and infec­tions, to even breed­ing and geri­atrics in one book.

You may have noticed, as we have, dogs have a ten­dency to develop symp­toms after-hours and on week­ends. This hand­book has eased a few wor­ries of whether we should wait for the vet’s office to open the next day, or take some­one to the emer­gency clinic right away. And if dog health is an inter­est­ing topic to you, it is actu­ally a good read.

While it’s easy to do a web ref­er­ence search on a topic when you have time, dur­ing an emer­gency you just can’t beat the ease of open­ing a book, writ­ten with the author­ity of med­ical pro­fes­sion­als, which needs no pow­er­ing up and is so well orga­nized by topic. Being able to com­pare and ver­ify inter­net info is a com­fort, too.

Maybe some­day they will per­fect that “What exactly is the dog think­ing? device. Bet­ter have a box­ful of treats and toys handy, and in the case of Rock­sie, a hand­ful of cat toys! Oh wait; she’s pretty good com­mu­ni­cat­ing THAT thought already. :-)

Link to book on Amazon:

Dog Owner’s Home Vet­eri­nary Handbook

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