A dog or cat in Northern Arizona with a cough that will not quit, unexplained weight loss, or a limp that keeps shifting legs could very well have valley fever, a fungal infection caused by Coccidioides spores living in the soil across the arid Southwest. Every time a dog puts their nose to the ground [...]
A dislocated hip or elbow in a dog or cat is a true orthopedic emergency, because every hour the joint stays out of place damages the cartilage, stretches the ligaments, and cuts off blood supply to the joint surfaces. Hip luxations happen when the ball of the femur pops out of the socket in the [...]
Leptospirosis is a bacterial infection dogs contract through contact with contaminated water, soil, or the urine of infected wildlife, and it is one of the most widespread zoonotic diseases in the world, meaning it can also pass to people. The bacteria attack the kidneys and liver and can progress quickly from early flu-like symptoms to [...]
A red, swollen, or squinting eye in your dog almost always deserves same-day veterinary attention, and in some cases it's a true emergency where hours matter. Eye problems in dogs move fast: a corneal ulcer can deepen overnight, and glaucoma, where pressure inside the eye spikes rapidly, can cause permanent vision loss within hours if [...]
One minute your dog is tearing across the trail after a squirrel, and the next they're hobbling back on three legs with a hind paw held off the ground. A sudden hind-leg limp like that is very often a torn cranial cruciate ligament, the dog version of a blown ACL and one of the most [...]
Many common yard and houseplants are genuinely toxic to dogs and cats, and some are dangerous enough that even a small exposure can cause serious organ damage. The challenge is that popular and pretty do not mean safe, and pets rarely give you warning before they investigate something they should not. Some plants cause immediate [...]
The drive home from an emergency veterinary hospital is its own particular kind of exhausted. The immediate crisis has been managed, your pet is either home with you or stable enough for you to leave, and the adrenaline that got you through the past several hours is just starting to release. Then the paperwork hits [...]
In Northern Arizona, foxtail season runs a long time, and the consequences of a foxtail that finds its way into a nostril, ear canal, paw web, or skin fold can be severe and difficult to detect with conventional imaging. The grass awn that starts as a surface irritant does not always stay there. Foxtails are [...]
There is perhaps no more alarming thing to witness than your dog passing large volumes of bloody diarrhea. Acute hemorrhagic diarrhea syndrome (AHDS), also known as hemorrhagic gastroenteritis (HGE), can develop so rapidly that your dog who was completely normal at breakfast can be in life-threatening shock by early afternoon. The severity and speed of [...]
Few moments are scarier than watching your pet go from "a bit off" to clearly very sick in the space of an afternoon. With auto-immune blood diseases, that's often exactly how it plays out. Conditions like immune-mediated hemolytic anemia and immune-mediated thrombocytopenia happen when your pet's immune system, which is supposed to be defending against [...]
