COVID-19 Update: The Drake Center, 4/25/2020

The most important thing to know is that there's no cases of humans contracting this virus from a cat or dog. So again, I think while this is interesting news, it is nothing to make your anxiety level go up at all. Always it's a good idea for us all to continue social distancing, and we are recommending that people try to social distance with their pets also, just for extra added caution.

Morning everybody. It's Dr. Michele Drake at the Drake Center and I'm here with Moki, our house cat. I wanted to chat with you a little bit about the occurrence of two positive house cats, or domestic cats, that were tested positive for the Coronavirus. There is actually a test that we can use on dogs or cats. We are not currently recommending that test at all, here in the Drake Center. The two cats that did test positive, one of them did have a confirmed case in their house. The other one was an outdoor cat. They're not sure how he was exposed. He may have been in several households and/or there was inapparent carriers, which... There are many, many humans who are inapparent carriers, or a lot of people go through this virus and don't even know they had it. So, it's very possible that their own owners had that.

The most important thing to know is that there's no cases of humans contracting this virus from a cat or dog. So again, I think while this is interesting news, it is nothing to make your anxiety level go up at all. Always it's a good idea for us all to continue social distancing, and we are recommending that people try to social distance with their pets also, just for extra added caution. But still, on that note, to move tracks here, I want to discuss puppies right now. We are seeing lots of puppies that are having a little bit higher anxiety and separation issues, because it's so tough to have a puppy right now and get them into a socialization opportunity. And so we're going to encourage you really to work on making sure that the puppy is left alone sometimes during the day. If you're using a crate, leave them in the crate, make it a very uneventful experience where the puppy just goes in, you quietly go out for your own walk, whatever.

These puppies do need to have the ability to stay home by themselves sometimes, because we will all be returning to work and school soon, hopefully soon. So anyway, I just want to kind of have you guys think about that as you go through your day-to-day interactions with your puppy. Make sure they do have some time on their own. Great amount of fun you're all having with your puppy, probably house training's really easy. The harder thing, again, is the socialization these dogs do need. If you guys do have others, maybe there's another family members that you have kept in your social circle. Maybe aunts, uncles or grandma, please have them interact with the dog also, the puppy also, so that we make sure these puppies do have other experiences. You can certainly get them out for walks a lot and have them experience noises and sounds and other people being around even if you're not allowing them really to interact with other people much.

We just really don't want to have a bunch of puppies that have anxiety and just fears and separation anxiety. So, do your best to work on those in the environment that you have available to you. Of note, we've been seeing tons of fleas really early this year. Lots of them, and I don't know if maybe people are forgetting about their preventatives, but we strongly encourage you guys to use Sentinel once a month and Bravecto once every three months. So Sentinel prevents the eggs from ever hatching. So if your dog picks up a flea, the eggs will never hatch, so your home will never be infested if you keep your dogs on Sentinel. And Bravecto of course kills fleas and ticks for three months. So we do see... We're seeing lots more ticks. Ticks are especially more common when we have issues with lots of rain and we've had tons of rain so there's lots of ticks out there.

So we'd like for you guys to be using Bravecto also if you have any exposure to ticks whatsoever because ticks do transmit disease and we don't want to add anything into the household. Right? So let's be really good about that. We are continuing curbside service here at the Drake Center, so our staff is getting really good at it. Thank you for your patience. If you guys want to do more of a drop off, we just need to make sure we have correct phone numbers. That's the only problem we've been having is please be available on your cell phone because the doctor wants to do the exam and then call you and get permission to do whatever treatment is necessary, and we do need to have a conversation with you. So please do your best to stay on your cell phone. And again, thank you all for being so gracious with our staff. We've had some staff bring some fun things in for the staff. We had somebody bring a case of wine the other day for all of the staff over 21. It was a really sweet gesture and it is very much appreciated. So thanks so much for being great clients and we're here seven days a week to take care of. Your dogs and cats both have a great weekend.